JAP STEAMER SEIZED BY CHINESE WARSHIP”

“11 CHINAMEN FACE DEATH FOR MURDER”

Such sensational headlines about Asians were common in newspapers a century ago, whether about events off Macao harbor or in Boston. These two were at the top of Page 1 in the Bangor Daily News on March 9, 1908.

The small group of Asians living in Bangor was much less visible. Most, if not all, were Chinese who operated a half-dozen laundries located at 212 Hammond, 31 Park, 271 Main, 14 Hodgdon, 55 State and 123 Exchange streets. They generally were left to themselves except during their new year celebration, when the newspapers would send out reporters to investigate.

The newspapers sometimes published the Chinese characters for “Happy New Year” or similar greetings. “If those who patronize the Chinese laundries would adopt the habit of greeting the proprietors with the above fitting sentiment, there is no doubt they would make themselves solid with the Celestials right away,” the Bangor Daily Commercial commented on Tuesday, Feb. 12, 1907, the day the reporter said marked the beginning of the Chinese new year.

The Commercial reporter that year interviewed Charley Goon, “a local Celestial laundry man” whose shop was on Park Street. Goon told the reporter that Bangor’s Chinese did not attempt a celebration on the scale of Boston and New York or other cities with large Chinese populations. He said in China the shops were closed for a week and everybody had a good time. In Bangor, the curtains were drawn in the street windows, giving the appearance of being closed, but the

doors were left open and one could trade if one wished.

Goon said he didn’t care much for New Year’s Day in Bangor. He told of when he was a house boy in San Francisco and his mistress let him off each afternoon to participate in the festivities of his countrymen in that city. He grinned and said, “Me havee good time. Laundry no good you bling in shirtee today, likee shirtee tomorrow, workee all time just same as Melican.” (Such dialectical mimickry is racially charged today, but it was common in newspapers and books, whether the target was a foreigner or a Down East fisherman.)

The reporter asked about the custom of paying off one’s debts before the new year. “Charley laughed and said, ‘Some Chinamen do it, some not, just like Melican man. Chinamen owe money, askee before New Year get it, askee afterwards, gettee H – Chinaman no like it.'”

In the U.S. Census of 1910, Bangor’s population of “Indian, Chinese and Japanese” immigrants was reported at 18 individuals. It’s probably remarkable there were any in Bangor or elsewhere in the U.S., given the level of suspicion and discrimination. More than any other nationality, with the exception of the Japanese, the Chinese were discriminated against by Americans. A major vehicle for this was the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which made Chinese the only national group that could not immigrate freely to the United States.

Chinese always had to be prepared to have their identity papers checked. For example, some years later, on Jan. 21, 1925, the Commercial reported that government immigration inspectors rounded up 30 Chinese living in the city and found only one who did not have the proper papers. After the raid, S.H. Howes, district director of immigration for Maine, declared, “Bangor has a class of orderly, industrious Chinese living here. To find only one out of 30 illegally living in a city, is an unusual percentage.”

Despite such treatment, the Chinese saw reasons for living in America. Education was one of them. In 1907, the Bangor Daily News reported that a Chinese student, Tse Sheng Linn, had registered at the University of Maine as a freshman to study economics. The son of a wealthy merchant, he had attended Harvard Medical School the year before, but had decided he could do more for his country by studying economics, the newspaper said on Oct. 11.

The young man impressed those who met him because he had mastered all the subtleties of acting like an American. “His ways are American in every detail and his manners perfect. He speaks good English and talks well on all current subjects,” the newspaper reported.

In 1919, the first Chinese restaurant opened in Bangor, a sure sign of growing cultural acceptance. The Oriental Restaurant was located for many years at 209 Exchange St. The operators then were Quoy Wong and his son Charles, according to a story in the Bangor Daily News on April 2, 1958, when the restaurant was remodeled. Quoy Wong, who died in 1974 at age 99, operated the restaurant for 35 years.

Bangoreans enjoyed Chinese food. A second restaurant, the Pekin, opened at 24 Harlow St. (24 Post Office Square) in 1924, according to the Bangor Daily News on July 17. Operated by Wong J. Jones, who had been the manager of The Oriental, it was designed by architect C. Parker Crowell with the striking exterior features of a Chinese pagoda.

At a “public inspection” just before opening for business, hundreds of people received “a souvenir Chinese tea cup, beautifully hand painted and imported from China.” Music was furnished by the Pekin Orchestra, promised as a regular feature. Eight waitresses were employed.

“There are two reasons for the popularity of Chinese restaurants and both are chop-suey …,” quipped a reporter. But there were no sarcastic references to Celestials or crude efforts to mimic the accents of Bangor’s Chinese, although discrimination against Asians in America was far from over.

Dick Shaw contributed information to this column.

wreilly@bangordailynews.net