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CLASSIC: How White America Tried To Destroy Chinese Restaurants · Ridiculous History

0:00
Speaker 1: Welcome back to the show Ridiculous Historians. This is a
0:03
Speaker 1: classic episode. We hope it finds you enjoying the holidays,
0:08
Speaker 1: however you choose to celebrate them. Uh, this one, I
0:12
Speaker 1: really liked this one, NOL. Yeah. If a good friend
0:14
Speaker 1: of mine from elementary school, Demetrius Wren is a very
0:17
Speaker 1: talented filmmaker, once wrote to me and her form in
0:21
Speaker 1: years and he had found the show organically and tune
0:23
Speaker 1: into this episode, and he gave us some very kind
0:26
Speaker 1: words on this episode, because I mean, I think it
0:29
Speaker 1: is a very interesting cultural study the idea of Chinese
0:34
Speaker 1: food and how the history of Chinese food is also
0:36
Speaker 1: kind of the history of Chinese immigration in the United
0:40
Speaker 1: States and some very poor treatment to Chinese immigrants and
0:44
Speaker 1: also some kind of demonization of Chinese food. I didn't
0:47
Speaker 1: realize the whole story behind MSG, how there was this
0:50
Speaker 1: kind of war on MSG that was really just a
0:52
Speaker 1: war on um Chinese immigrants. Yeah, and it's funny. Also,
0:57
Speaker 1: I don't remember if I mentioned this. I'm ben by
1:00
Speaker 1: the way, I don't remember if I mentioned this in
1:03
Speaker 1: in our original recording. But I have a lot of
1:06
Speaker 1: Chinese friends and the folks who are Chinese nationals get
1:10
Speaker 1: this love Chinese American food because it's so very different
1:14
Speaker 1: from Chinese food in China. And it's also a big
1:17
Speaker 1: tradition here in the US for any of our non
1:19
Speaker 1: US listeners. It's a big tradition for people who don't
1:22
Speaker 1: celebrate Christmas to actually go to a local Chinese restaurant.
1:26
Speaker 1: And this has almost become a stereotype in some cases,
1:29
Speaker 1: but it's based in truth, largely because in many parts
1:33
Speaker 1: of the US on Christmas, the only restaurants open were
1:37
Speaker 1: the Chinese restaurants, which is great. The food is banging, oh,
1:40
Speaker 1: it absolutely is, but it's also, as we know, not
1:44
Speaker 1: the same as food that you would get in China.
1:47
Speaker 1: It's americanized. It was made to kind of suit American
1:49
Speaker 1: palaces in certain dishes like general so it's chicken and
1:52
Speaker 1: I think even sesame chicken, and some of the most
1:54
Speaker 1: popular ones and americanized kind of Chinese restaurants were created
1:58
Speaker 1: in the United States. Um. So it's a very interesting
2:01
Speaker 1: cultural fusion story, a very interesting story of our problematic
2:06
Speaker 1: history with people from other countries, and it ultimately kind
2:10
Speaker 1: of has a happy ending. Think, yeah, are you kidding?
2:13
Speaker 1: There are more than forty one thousand Chinese restaurants around
2:17
Speaker 1: the US alone. I think you could say they won
2:20
Speaker 1: the argument ultimately. Okay, you're absolutely right. No more spoilers.
2:23
Speaker 1: Let's get right into the episode. Happy Thanksgiving folks. Ridiculous
2:28
Speaker 1: History is a production of I Heart Radio. Hello, and
2:55
Speaker 1: welcome to the show. I'm Ben, I'm no, and we
2:59
Speaker 1: are as Olds joined with our super producer Alex Williams,
3:02
Speaker 1: and we introduced Alex to the Ridiculous History crowd. Yet ah, yes, everyone, Alex, Alex. Everyone,
3:09
Speaker 1: he doesn't really talk. He only talks in our ears
3:12
Speaker 1: and bead and you know, sometimes we get him to
3:14
Speaker 1: turn up the high hats and we assure you he's
3:16
Speaker 1: very much real. It's very much super. Now he's there,
3:19
Speaker 1: we're looking at him, and he is a handsome toothsome
3:21
Speaker 1: young man. Um. Have you seen the New Blade Runner movie?
3:25
Speaker 1: I've been I have not seen the New Blade Runner yet.
3:28
Speaker 1: I saw it last night at like ten o'clock and
3:31
Speaker 1: I do really badly with falling asleep at late movies.
3:34
Speaker 1: And it's quite long, but I will tell you that
3:36
Speaker 1: it moved along at such a It's a very languid movie,
3:40
Speaker 1: but it actually has a pretty incredible clip of action
3:42
Speaker 1: and activity that kind of kept me awake and alert,
3:46
Speaker 1: and I enjoyed every second of it. And it's a
3:49
Speaker 1: it's somewhat of a slow bird, right. I'm having a
3:53
Speaker 1: hard time expression because it is a slow burn and
3:54
Speaker 1: it's a very languid kind of drone e movie. It's
3:57
Speaker 1: got this amazing score that very much matches what Van
4:01
Speaker 1: Gallis did on the original one, but this time they've
4:04
Speaker 1: got Hans Zimmer doing it. He's doing his very best
4:06
Speaker 1: Van Gellis impersonation and it's great. But it's like, you know,
4:09
Speaker 1: it's the kind of movie that used to maybe would
4:12
Speaker 1: have put me to sleep watching it at ten o'clock
4:14
Speaker 1: and it is three hours long. But I'm just I
4:16
Speaker 1: think that says a lot. I don't want to give
4:17
Speaker 1: anything away. Everyone should see it. It's really cool. This
4:20
Speaker 1: has like literally nothing to do with what we're talking
4:22
Speaker 1: about today. It kind of does, does it, yes, because
4:25
Speaker 1: because we're we're currently talking about the seventeen the new
4:30
Speaker 1: Blade Runner film. In the previous Blade Runner film, one
4:35
Speaker 1: of my favorite things about it watching watching it as
4:38
Speaker 1: a wee tyke was h Deckert right, the protagonists, Uh
4:44
Speaker 1: he is? It's it seems like there are scenes where
4:46
Speaker 1: he is walking by restaurants and stuff. Man, I totally
4:50
Speaker 1: just pulled this out of nowhere, but it absolutely does
4:52
Speaker 1: connect because it was the future depicted in the Blade
4:57
Speaker 1: Runner movies and in this new one too. There's a
4:59
Speaker 1: definite Chinese his influences. See where I'm going to, see
5:01
Speaker 1: where You're going, and there are you know, restaurants on
5:04
Speaker 1: every corner. A lot of the folks that make the
5:06
Speaker 1: manufacturer the bootleg um replicant animals and different things like that,
5:12
Speaker 1: they're they're from China, and everyone kind of also speaks Chinese. Yeah,
5:17
Speaker 1: it seems like it's a second language. It's very important.
5:19
Speaker 1: There's this implied subtext that, whether economically or culturally, the
5:26
Speaker 1: the Chinese culture is making these in roads right on
5:30
Speaker 1: places where it formally would never have existed. And in
5:34
Speaker 1: the universe of at least the original Blade Runner, this
5:38
Speaker 1: is a given. This is after the fact, after the
5:41
Speaker 1: story begins. This is already happened. And what's strange about it,
5:47
Speaker 1: you know, there is always the argument that science fiction
5:49
Speaker 1: is like prescient, right, it's predictive. In this case, what's
5:53
Speaker 1: fascinating is that in the past we have to wonder
5:57
Speaker 1: what the directors are drawing from because in the real
6:00
Speaker 1: life past and genuine American history, there was a time
6:04
Speaker 1: where people were very threatened by this notion. Yeah, it's
6:09
Speaker 1: kind of another really awful, embarrassing thing that we as
6:14
Speaker 1: a country did. It's it's pretty awful. Um, this is
6:20
Speaker 1: kind of a bit of a bummer of a topic,
6:23
Speaker 1: but it's really fascinating and for obvious reasons, completely ridiculous.
6:27
Speaker 1: But we're gonna be as sensitive as humanly possible about this,
6:30
Speaker 1: But there are some kind of upsetting racial themes that
6:33
Speaker 1: we're going to get into in talking about America's war
6:38
Speaker 1: on Chinese restaurants in the early nineteen hundreds. Now, I know,
6:42
Speaker 1: I know, I know how this sounds. We know how
6:44
Speaker 1: this sounds when you're hearing it a war on what.
6:48
Speaker 1: And of course it's not as if America as a
6:50
Speaker 1: stranger to waging war on various things, various things that
6:55
Speaker 1: aren't nations, right. Uh. And it's kind of hard to
6:59
Speaker 1: believe today because we know that there are over forty
7:03
Speaker 1: one thousand Chinese restaurants in the US. This is an institution.
7:09
Speaker 1: You know, we always think of think of about how
7:13
Speaker 1: ubiquitous some fast food places might be, but Chinese restaurants
7:18
Speaker 1: are taking the cake. I believe there are about three
7:20
Speaker 1: times as many Chinese restaurants as the number of McDonald's
7:24
Speaker 1: and General So's Chicken. I've always been concerned about my
7:28
Speaker 1: pronunciation of that as a general So yeah, yeah, Like
7:32
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go with General So it's uh one of
7:34
Speaker 1: the most ordered dishes online via grub hub um in
7:40
Speaker 1: the nation. So it's like one of the most popular
7:42
Speaker 1: takeout foods that we have. Um. So let's just set
7:46
Speaker 1: the scene a little bit, the creepy racist scene, if
7:49
Speaker 1: you will. In the early to mid nineteen hundreds, the
7:53
Speaker 1: um white establishment, which was made up of like local
7:57
Speaker 1: governments and labor unions and boy boy where the labor
8:01
Speaker 1: unions a big part of this problem which we'll get
8:03
Speaker 1: into you later, among other institutions in the US, basically
8:07
Speaker 1: put out and supported these Jim Crow laws and other
8:12
Speaker 1: regulations that were incredibly prohibitive, specifically to people of Asian descent.
8:20
Speaker 1: Right and based on these regulations and the underlying and open,
8:25
Speaker 1: we should say, this very open racist ideology, this establishment
8:30
Speaker 1: waged a campaign trying to drive the Chinese restaurants of
8:35
Speaker 1: the time out of business. And a lot of the
8:39
Speaker 1: stuff that we're a lot A lot of the stuff
8:41
Speaker 1: we're taking as inspiration in this episode comes from a
8:45
Speaker 1: fantastic study written by Gabriel J. Chen and John Ormand
8:50
Speaker 1: called the War against Chinese Restaurants. Yeah, the paper goes
8:57
Speaker 1: into every possible angle of this and it's it's more
9:00
Speaker 1: than we could hope to cover in a in a
9:02
Speaker 1: thirty minute podcast, but um, it's it's it's such an
9:06
Speaker 1: interesting microcosm for the history of racism in America too,
9:10
Speaker 1: because it comes at it from all sides. Basically, you have,
9:13
Speaker 1: you know, the idea of targeting a specific race with
9:17
Speaker 1: mistreatment and trying to exclude them from earning a living
9:21
Speaker 1: wage and being successful entrepreneurs in this country, to you know,
9:25
Speaker 1: the boycotts and all of the things that go along
9:28
Speaker 1: with that, and protests, to the whole idea of the
9:33
Speaker 1: Chinese man being painted and portrayed as some sort of
9:37
Speaker 1: insidious threat that would potentially woo unsuspecting white women into
9:43
Speaker 1: their you know, underground opium layers, and you know, just
9:48
Speaker 1: just the most awful stereotypical kinds of things you could
9:51
Speaker 1: think of. Uh, this paper really dissects all of that
9:55
Speaker 1: and gets to the heart of what's going on here. Yeah,
9:58
Speaker 1: and the heart of what's going on is unfortunately all
10:02
Speaker 1: too familiar because it obeys some of the same patterns
10:06
Speaker 1: we have seen in history before. And then the strangest
10:10
Speaker 1: and craziest thing about it is the question, did America
10:14
Speaker 1: wage war on Chinese restaurants? Sounds ridiculous and the answer
10:19
Speaker 1: is yes, absolutely and no. You mentioned some uh, some
10:24
Speaker 1: of the prongs of their argument here and there there
10:28
Speaker 1: two sides, right, there's the economic side, as South Park
10:32
Speaker 1: characters would say, they're taking our gerbs, right, Yeah, I
10:36
Speaker 1: mean there was you know, a lot of Chinese immigration
10:39
Speaker 1: happened in the early eighteen hundreds as a result of
10:43
Speaker 1: their willingness to work for less money. And you know,
10:46
Speaker 1: we built the Transcontinental Railroad and that was a huge
10:49
Speaker 1: part of that labor force. And you know, of course,
10:52
Speaker 1: you you leave your home and you come to the
10:55
Speaker 1: land of opportunity and the hopes of making a better
10:57
Speaker 1: life for yourself and then surprised, guys, you're treated like
11:01
Speaker 1: utter garbage and paid nothing and given no protections because
11:05
Speaker 1: the unions literally would not allow folks of Chinese descent
11:10
Speaker 1: to be a member, right exactly. And you know, labor
11:16
Speaker 1: unions are a complex thing in US history, so we're
11:20
Speaker 1: not denigrating the idea of labor unions overall. This is
11:24
Speaker 1: not capital l capital you labor unions the concept. This
11:28
Speaker 1: is about the provable, indisputable actions of labor unions in
11:33
Speaker 1: this time because you see, they thought that these restaurants
11:38
Speaker 1: for people who are able to literally through backbreaking work
11:44
Speaker 1: probably no small amount of luck and endless determination. People
11:47
Speaker 1: who started their own restaurants were being targeted because they
11:50
Speaker 1: were seeing a competition for American restaurants and that they
11:54
Speaker 1: were taking away jobs, right, good American jobs in this
11:59
Speaker 1: case pretty much white people restaurant jobs. And the idea
12:05
Speaker 1: of this threat was to them a to these labor unions.
12:11
Speaker 1: It was not so much an act of aggression as
12:14
Speaker 1: it was some sort of act of defense or survivalism. Noel,
12:19
Speaker 1: you've already already mentioned the fear that uh, these these
12:25
Speaker 1: strange men would capture the white women and involved them
12:29
Speaker 1: in slavery essentially for opium. And this also, I think
12:33
Speaker 1: shows how how much of a dearth of education there
12:37
Speaker 1: was regarding the history of the West, China and opium,
12:41
Speaker 1: because we we haven't talked about on this show. But
12:44
Speaker 1: in the Opium Wars, one of the main reasons they
12:47
Speaker 1: occurred is because the Chinese government said, please stop forcing
12:53
Speaker 1: opium on our people when it was really happening. So
12:56
Speaker 1: it's an interesting and heartbreaking switcher. As as you said,
13:02
Speaker 1: this immigration had been in play since the eighteen fifties,
13:08
Speaker 1: and as these as people who came over from China
13:13
Speaker 1: began to prosper and save money, they started opening their
13:16
Speaker 1: own businesses American Dream right textbook American Dream so to
13:23
Speaker 1: quote from um an email interview conducted with the author
13:27
Speaker 1: of that paper, Gabriel Jack chen Um non Chinese American
13:32
Speaker 1: cooks and waiters and restaurant owners really wanted the Chinese
13:35
Speaker 1: restaurants gone. But what got the labor movement as a
13:38
Speaker 1: whole interested was restricting immigration in general and keeping Asians
13:43
Speaker 1: out of the workforce entirely. Yeah. Absolutely, And this this
13:50
Speaker 1: is a strange case because it begins to enter legislation.
13:53
Speaker 1: This fearmongering and this prejudice led to Congress passing laws
13:59
Speaker 1: that ex iplicitly stopped, blocked, halted, cut off Chinese immigration,
14:04
Speaker 1: starting with the Chinese Exclusion Act of eighteen eighty two
14:09
Speaker 1: and The thing is, when the earliest Chinese restaurants started
14:13
Speaker 1: in the US, they were not billing themselves as quote
14:18
Speaker 1: unquote Chinese restaurants. The restauranteurs were assimilating. They were including
14:24
Speaker 1: American food, you know, like grilled steak of roast chicken,
14:27
Speaker 1: you know, whatever is around too. I mean, we also
14:29
Speaker 1: think about supply chains. In that time, they were probably
14:34
Speaker 1: making foods that were easily made from surrounding areas, right
14:38
Speaker 1: and agricultural resources. But this didn't stop the unions from
14:42
Speaker 1: going after Chinese restaurants, and they used different tactics to
14:47
Speaker 1: do this. In some communities, the white union members would
14:53
Speaker 1: do what is almost a mafioso tactic. They would go
14:56
Speaker 1: into the restaurant and they would say, well, you know
14:59
Speaker 1: we're going and give you just warn in here be
15:02
Speaker 1: about time to leave town. Wednesday is a good trip forever. Yeah,
15:08
Speaker 1: I mean in that paper, there's a whole section on
15:10
Speaker 1: some of these attempts to literally run these folks out
15:14
Speaker 1: of town like on a rail. Yes, and this was
15:17
Speaker 1: not the only arrow in the quiver of these labor unions.
15:21
Speaker 1: They also organized boycotts, and a boycott would be you've
15:27
Speaker 1: seen these in the modern day boycott in this instance
15:29
Speaker 1: would be something like a group of people getting together
15:33
Speaker 1: to maybe protests outside of a restaurant, to pass out
15:37
Speaker 1: handbills talking about this this menace, and to exhort friends, neighbors,
15:43
Speaker 1: and loved ones not to go to this restaurant, to
15:47
Speaker 1: make it feel that it's somehow a civic responsibility not
15:50
Speaker 1: to support this establishment. And when you bring it back
15:53
Speaker 1: to the labor unions, it becomes basically like a national
15:56
Speaker 1: boycott because they made a huge age deal about not
16:01
Speaker 1: patronizing any businesses that weren't connected to the labor unions,
16:05
Speaker 1: and they would not allow people of Asian descent um,
16:09
Speaker 1: whether they are you know, even children of immigrants to
16:14
Speaker 1: join the unions um. Therefore, they were essentially telling all
16:17
Speaker 1: of their members to have nothing to do with any
16:21
Speaker 1: business that had any connection with you know, these these people. Yeah,
16:25
Speaker 1: so let's let's think about this in the human perspective.
16:28
Speaker 1: I love that you point this out. So even if
16:31
Speaker 1: you were born in the US, maybe your parents immigrated
16:35
Speaker 1: and you were born in California, that law would still
16:38
Speaker 1: apply to you. It's something more. It's the layer of
16:42
Speaker 1: race instead of just the layer of citizenship and Let's
16:46
Speaker 1: imagine for a second the other side of the argument.
16:49
Speaker 1: Let's say that you are a labor union member and
16:54
Speaker 1: you don't have a problem with these other restaurants. Heck,
16:57
Speaker 1: once a week you go out for family dinner at
17:00
Speaker 1: your favorite place and you order chop suey, which is
17:03
Speaker 1: a whole different thing, right, but because you were in
17:07
Speaker 1: the union, you can. It's you're not only told not
17:10
Speaker 1: to do it, but there will be consequences if you do, uh,
17:14
Speaker 1: go to this restaurant. Yeah, And speaking of chop suey,
17:18
Speaker 1: that was actually a kind of an Americanized m Asian
17:21
Speaker 1: dish that became, you know, a centerpiece for um, these
17:26
Speaker 1: restaurants that were popping up all over the place, especially
17:28
Speaker 1: in California. They were called chop suey houses. And it
17:31
Speaker 1: was a dish that was like a stir fried mix
17:33
Speaker 1: of meat and vegetables and eggs over noodles. And I
17:36
Speaker 1: was looking it up and apparently the origin of the
17:38
Speaker 1: f the terms chop suey comes from the idea of
17:42
Speaker 1: reusing leftovers, so sort of like you know, whatever you
17:45
Speaker 1: have left in the frid So it's not a specific
17:48
Speaker 1: set of ingredients, it's just kind of like whatever's around. Um,
17:50
Speaker 1: but they were really popular. And these restaurants were popping
17:53
Speaker 1: up all over the place, and you know, the they
17:56
Speaker 1: were the target of all kinds of racist animosity, um
18:01
Speaker 1: wherever they were found, even though they were certainly also
18:04
Speaker 1: pretty popular. Right, people were people were obviously building restaurants
18:10
Speaker 1: to meet demand. Right if people didn't like this food,
18:15
Speaker 1: then these would these restaurants wouldn't exist. That's just how
18:18
Speaker 1: this business would work. When the boycotts didn't work, though,
18:22
Speaker 1: and when the threats didn't work, both to let's remember
18:26
Speaker 1: the people who own the restaurants and the people who
18:29
Speaker 1: already existed in labor unions, there was another step, and
18:33
Speaker 1: a very serious step. This is where a story takes
18:36
Speaker 1: an even darker turn. There was a missionary named el
18:39
Speaker 1: Ci Siegel and she was found murdered in nineteen nine
18:44
Speaker 1: in a room above a Chinese restaurant in New York City.
18:48
Speaker 1: And this, as Marcavelli in cold and I would say,
18:53
Speaker 1: evil as it sounds, was the opportunity that these anti
18:58
Speaker 1: immigration forces have been waiting for. Yeah, this became a
19:01
Speaker 1: really huge story, not just in New York but all
19:06
Speaker 1: across the country. And there's a really great article on
19:08
Speaker 1: the side of the tenement museum, and it's got some
19:12
Speaker 1: great clips of the headlines. One of them is fine
19:15
Speaker 1: miss Seagal dead in trunk. Her body was found in
19:18
Speaker 1: a trunk, um strangled with a rope around her neck.
19:21
Speaker 1: And she was actually the granddaughter of a very well
19:25
Speaker 1: known Union general from the Civil War, so this was
19:29
Speaker 1: a pretty big deal. One of the other headlines was
19:32
Speaker 1: Chinese suspected of slaying white girl is in custody. Yikes.
19:37
Speaker 1: It's like, how much more divisive can you get in
19:39
Speaker 1: a headline. It's like where they were definitely trying to
19:41
Speaker 1: push an agenda here and stir up hysteria and kind
19:45
Speaker 1: of like a panic you know too. Oh, we've got
19:48
Speaker 1: to do something about this problem. This the inherent threat
19:52
Speaker 1: that has now gone beyond. This is me speaking hypothetically,
19:56
Speaker 1: the voice of these kind of awful people um has
19:59
Speaker 1: gone yawn, just threatening us monetarily, but there is a
20:02
Speaker 1: legitimate threat to our children. Things insidious, menace, think of
20:08
Speaker 1: the children. We have a moral imperative. And this propagandization,
20:15
Speaker 1: this this smear campaign reached a fever pitch. It became
20:20
Speaker 1: a media tropes when when Elsie Seaguals death triggered a
20:27
Speaker 1: new era of this. It came from a pre existing thing,
20:30
Speaker 1: this white female victimization. In Chin's paper, they cite an
20:37
Speaker 1: eight film called King of the Opium Ring, and it
20:43
Speaker 1: features a clown who rescues a young white woman in
20:48
Speaker 1: dire straits on the balcony of a Chinese restaurant. This
20:52
Speaker 1: thing played around the country. People loved it. So it wasn't,
20:56
Speaker 1: you know, tabula raz It wasn't a blank slate for
20:59
Speaker 1: the labor unions too exploit this stuff emotionally. And the
21:06
Speaker 1: Seagull murder lad to lobbying for laws that completely banned
21:12
Speaker 1: white women, exclusively white women, not just from working at
21:16
Speaker 1: a Chinese restaurant, but from visiting one as a customer.
21:21
Speaker 1: And now we have the benefit of history when we
21:23
Speaker 1: think about the murder. Well, it's crazy too, because I mean,
21:25
Speaker 1: the language and this legislation is just absurdly Obviously it's racist,
21:29
Speaker 1: but it's really sexist that it talks about how women
21:31
Speaker 1: are somehow weak willed and you know, appliable and easily
21:35
Speaker 1: you know, led astray, and just very condescending stuff. But
21:39
Speaker 1: as it turns out, this case had a pretty interesting conclusion.
21:44
Speaker 1: So it turns out that the apartment where else where
21:47
Speaker 1: Elsie Siegel's body was discovered, belonged to a man by
21:51
Speaker 1: the name of Leon Ling, whose cousin owned the restaurant
21:55
Speaker 1: UM underneath the apartment, and they found a box with
22:02
Speaker 1: a whole lot of love letters from Um miss siegeal
22:06
Speaker 1: to this man Leon Ling, and apparently some of them
22:12
Speaker 1: sounded very as though she were pleading with him to
22:15
Speaker 1: not leave her, or you know, to to stay with her.
22:19
Speaker 1: And it also came out that there was another player
22:25
Speaker 1: in this story. There was a man Um who was
22:29
Speaker 1: seen as being a potential jealous uh spurned lover of
22:35
Speaker 1: Miss Seagull. And this man's name was Chew Gain, and
22:39
Speaker 1: he admitted to Um also being in a relationship with
22:43
Speaker 1: Elsie Uh and that he had received anonymous letters threatening
22:49
Speaker 1: her life. And then eventually the police discovered another man
22:54
Speaker 1: by the name of Chew Gain who admitted to of
22:56
Speaker 1: having having had a relationship with Um. Elsie any sieved
23:00
Speaker 1: all these anonymous letters threatening his life and her life
23:03
Speaker 1: if they didn't in the relationship Um. Ultimately, the cops
23:08
Speaker 1: arrested three people, and um Ling eventually left the country
23:14
Speaker 1: and was never apprehended and the murders apparently an open case,
23:17
Speaker 1: you know, more than a years later. But all of
23:19
Speaker 1: this stuff just stirred up these wild rumors that things
23:22
Speaker 1: from like Elsie had killed herself to you know, the
23:25
Speaker 1: Chinese community had smuggled ling out of the country. So
23:29
Speaker 1: all of this just served to pour fuel on this
23:33
Speaker 1: you know, racist fire that was burning already, and because
23:37
Speaker 1: it was such a sensational story, it kind of spread this,
23:40
Speaker 1: you know, all over the country, and this this went
23:43
Speaker 1: city to city. Now that's not to say that some
23:46
Speaker 1: conscientious local politicians didn't fight against these bills, some mayors
23:51
Speaker 1: vetoed them. But there was a change there was there
23:55
Speaker 1: was this wave of people who were convinced, convinced that
24:00
Speaker 1: the enemy was within and the enemy was making delicious
24:04
Speaker 1: food as a cover for some larger, perfidious motive opponents. Luckily,
24:11
Speaker 1: luckily for me, the opponents were not successful in ridding
24:16
Speaker 1: cities of Chinese restaurants, and eventually the good news is
24:22
Speaker 1: that the organized movement against the restaurants started to fade out.
24:28
Speaker 1: One of the reasons the Chin sites that have faded
24:31
Speaker 1: out is pretty ugly, but it makes sense. It's the
24:34
Speaker 1: Immigration Act of nineteen four, which made things worse in
24:41
Speaker 1: terms of immigration because it took the Chinese Exclusion Act
24:45
Speaker 1: that just banned Chinese laborers, and then it expanded it
24:49
Speaker 1: to include any immigrant from the Asian continent, which is insane.
24:55
Speaker 1: These laws, according to Chin, gave the White powers structure
25:00
Speaker 1: that Nolan I mentioned earlier, a little bit of I
25:04
Speaker 1: guess you say, reassurance, a security blanket where they said, well,
25:08
Speaker 1: we don't have to worry anymore about our jobs and
25:11
Speaker 1: our incomes being taken quote unquote, and this in the
25:16
Speaker 1: popular mindset, meant that Asian Americans were not going to
25:20
Speaker 1: be a labor threat, at least not as much as
25:24
Speaker 1: they were seen at the time. Okay, So you that
25:27
Speaker 1: I felt like there was a silver lining coming there, Ben,
25:29
Speaker 1: and I just I just don't. I don't, I don't
25:31
Speaker 1: see it. Yeah, basically you're saying like it got better
25:34
Speaker 1: because it got worse, you know. I uh, yeah, I
25:39
Speaker 1: tell you know, I think I think that might be
25:41
Speaker 1: the case. And I guess what I'm getting at. As
25:43
Speaker 1: it got better in terms of there weren't there wasn't
25:46
Speaker 1: as much of a problem for the folks that were
25:48
Speaker 1: doing horrible, angry racist stuff. So therefore some of the horrible,
25:53
Speaker 1: angry racist stuff stopped, I guess. But but it didn't.
25:59
Speaker 1: See that's the thing. It didn't get better for this
26:02
Speaker 1: power structure because it never got worse, you know what
26:05
Speaker 1: I mean, Like this, this threat, this this perspective of
26:10
Speaker 1: a threat is clearly based on racist ideology. It's not
26:14
Speaker 1: based it's it's not a solid economical argument, you know
26:18
Speaker 1: what I mean. I think it wasn't until the was
26:21
Speaker 1: it the forties that you that the US lifted this
26:25
Speaker 1: ban on on Chinese immigration or no, it wasn't on immigration.
26:28
Speaker 1: It was on Chinese people becoming naturalized US citizens. So
26:32
Speaker 1: as as far as recently as the forties, this was
26:36
Speaker 1: this was a concern. But you know what's funny, like
26:38
Speaker 1: what always happens is what really turned the popular mindset, um,
26:43
Speaker 1: you know in the favor of some of these business owners,
26:47
Speaker 1: was you know, celebrities doing stuff. And uh, you know,
26:51
Speaker 1: we've got like Bob Hope and and Ronald Reagan were
26:55
Speaker 1: big fans of a place in San Francisco called Charlie
26:58
Speaker 1: Lowe's Forbidden City, which is such a cool name, pretty place, um,
27:02
Speaker 1: And it was like a nightclub and a restaurant in
27:04
Speaker 1: San Francisco's Chinatown. Um. Yeah, I was this guy named
27:08
Speaker 1: Larry Ching who was considered, uh, the Chinese Sinatra, and
27:14
Speaker 1: I was betting this article on the San Francisco Gate.
27:16
Speaker 1: There was also like a Chinese Sophie Tucker, a Chinese
27:19
Speaker 1: Fred Astaire, probably a Chinese Sammy Davis Jr. I don't
27:24
Speaker 1: know what have you. But they always had to be couched,
27:27
Speaker 1: you know, as some American you know, popular to make
27:33
Speaker 1: it work. Yeah. Um, places like this because of the
27:38
Speaker 1: appearance of acceptance from influencers like you know, these movie
27:42
Speaker 1: stars and president presidents. Uh, it's people started to kind
27:46
Speaker 1: of like chill out about it a little bit. So
27:51
Speaker 1: what changed? You know? We have these celebrity endorsements, one
27:55
Speaker 1: of which, famously by Man would later go on to
27:58
Speaker 1: serve as US President. But the wheels of legislation often
28:03
Speaker 1: grind slow. And as we said, it was until forty
28:06
Speaker 1: three that the specific ban on Chinese people naturalizing occurred.
28:10
Speaker 1: But even after that point, immigration laws made it incredibly
28:14
Speaker 1: difficult for people of Chinese origin to immigrate. And this
28:18
Speaker 1: was in this lasted up until get this, nineteen sixty eight,
28:25
Speaker 1: three years after the immigration and Nationality Act of nineteen
28:29
Speaker 1: sixty five was enacted into law, So three years after
28:33
Speaker 1: it was supposed to happen, it happens. Mind boggling, and
28:37
Speaker 1: in the sixty takes so long to do normal stuff
28:41
Speaker 1: in this country. I don't get it. Um, But you know,
28:45
Speaker 1: now here we are, as we said at the top
28:48
Speaker 1: of the show, they're just you know, thousands and thousands
28:51
Speaker 1: and thousands of Chinese restaurants. It's like a hugely popular
28:55
Speaker 1: family meal night takeaway, you know thing. I love it,
29:01
Speaker 1: My kid loves it. It's very delicious, you know, tasty food,
29:05
Speaker 1: and a lot of it like too. This is it's
29:06
Speaker 1: such a such an amazing variety of things to like
29:10
Speaker 1: in like different styles between Sechuan and Cantonese and all
29:15
Speaker 1: of the spices, and it's just I mean, I'm I'm
29:17
Speaker 1: a huge, huge fan of Chinese food. Yeah. When we
29:20
Speaker 1: were looking at some of the research here, my my
29:22
Speaker 1: question for some of my friends started becoming, when's the
29:25
Speaker 1: last time you're ate Chinese food? Everybody, it seems, had
29:29
Speaker 1: it in like the past month. At some point, you know,
29:32
Speaker 1: people are voting with their taste butts. But the journey
29:37
Speaker 1: isn't over yet. Because the authors say that they see
29:40
Speaker 1: clear echoes of the early twentieth century today. We've got
29:44
Speaker 1: a great quote from Chin who says, there's a long
29:47
Speaker 1: tradition in the United States of good things being reserved
29:50
Speaker 1: for white folks and misguided economic race tinged xenophobia. The
29:56
Speaker 1: waves of discrimination have always proved to be unnecessary and
29:59
Speaker 1: count to productive. And honestly, I agree because when we
30:04
Speaker 1: see these sort of who wasn't Mark Twain said that
30:08
Speaker 1: history doesn't repeat itself, but sometimes it rhymes. I'm paraphrasing there. Yeah.
30:13
Speaker 1: George Lucas always also said that about them, how brilliant
30:17
Speaker 1: the Star Wars prequels were always always saying like it rhymes.
30:22
Speaker 1: I don't know what he means by that, but the
30:23
Speaker 1: slight Red Letter media that does these amazing kind of
30:26
Speaker 1: lampoons of these Star Wars prequels, they're always using this
30:29
Speaker 1: clip of George Lucas talking about everything rhyming. I am
30:34
Speaker 1: going to check that out and tell you right now,
30:36
Speaker 1: I am in the mood for some orange chicken because
30:40
Speaker 1: just doing this this episode has made me so hungry,
30:44
Speaker 1: and I feel so fortunate that we're able to go
30:47
Speaker 1: find Chinese restaurants I mean, what if this what if
30:50
Speaker 1: this went the other way man, what if they were
30:54
Speaker 1: non existent? That would be a shame. That would be
30:58
Speaker 1: a crying shame. Any One thing I really love about
31:01
Speaker 1: living in Atlanta is that we have this amazing, um
31:05
Speaker 1: explosion of fantastic you know, culinary options on We've got
31:10
Speaker 1: a place called Buford Highway where there are you know,
31:13
Speaker 1: everything from Korean to Chinese to all kinds of Latin
31:17
Speaker 1: American food, Ethiopian, whatever you want. And that's That's one
31:21
Speaker 1: thing that's cool about living in the United States is
31:24
Speaker 1: that you have access to all of this great stuff,
31:27
Speaker 1: and you know, I wouldn't have any other way. I
31:29
Speaker 1: think that's kind of what makes uh makes this country special.
31:33
Speaker 1: And this means that we are all fortunate. There's a
31:37
Speaker 1: happy ending to this story. Of course, no story ever
31:41
Speaker 1: really ends, so maybe it's better to say, at this
31:44
Speaker 1: point in time, it feels very fortunate. And for now
31:49
Speaker 1: that's where our episode ends, but not our show. We
31:55
Speaker 1: will be back very soon with more ridiculous history. And
31:58
Speaker 1: in the meantime, we'd like to hear from you, so
32:01
Speaker 1: you write us your ideas and tell us you know
32:04
Speaker 1: what a bummer this episode was spoiler alert. We know
32:10
Speaker 1: we're bummed out too, but you know, you gotta learn
32:14
Speaker 1: from the stuff and makes you appreciate where we are now.
32:17
Speaker 1: I guess, oh sorry, I'm just it's a it is
32:22
Speaker 1: a bummer because I'm starting to think about like we're
32:25
Speaker 1: not that much better. It's like people are still awful,
32:29
Speaker 1: and you know, there's just a whole another culture that
32:31
Speaker 1: people are acting this way towards. You know, there's really
32:34
Speaker 1: no silver lining at all here. I hate to sound
32:37
Speaker 1: so depressed about it, but it's just kind of making
32:39
Speaker 1: me realize, like this notion of like, oh, we've come
32:43
Speaker 1: so far, and maybe some of us have, but I
32:46
Speaker 1: don't know, like we've come so far in one regard
32:50
Speaker 1: and devolved so far in another. You know, I wonder,
32:55
Speaker 1: I wonder what other cycles like this exists. There's obviously
33:00
Speaker 1: there's obviously modern day versions of this where maybe some
33:05
Speaker 1: of the language has changed, but the intent is not.
33:09
Speaker 1: I know, I guess. I mean, I just saw an
33:11
Speaker 1: article the other day about like, you know, a Jewish
33:13
Speaker 1: deli in New York being sent an envelope with like
33:16
Speaker 1: a swastika on it and saying, you know, Jews get out,
33:20
Speaker 1: and things like that, so, you know, I mean, this
33:22
Speaker 1: is I think this stuff is is informative and illuminating,
33:25
Speaker 1: but it's like it's just a bummer to me because
33:27
Speaker 1: it's like I don't feel like we fixed it exactly.
33:31
Speaker 1: You know, I don't know how do you fix something
33:33
Speaker 1: like this that's so deep seated in certain people. I
33:35
Speaker 1: guess it's not as widespread. I don't know. Well, it's
33:39
Speaker 1: also it may be a downer, but it's very very
33:42
Speaker 1: important to have knowledge of this out in the world.
33:45
Speaker 1: And yeah, it's true. I'm sorry, but I'm sorry. This
33:47
Speaker 1: is Uh, this is so crushing to me. I just
33:50
Speaker 1: kind of like had a moment where I started to
33:51
Speaker 1: think about, you know, this is there's so many parallels
33:54
Speaker 1: with this story. I guess that we're seeing now in particular. Um,
33:58
Speaker 1: but you know, I think if if we just at
34:01
Speaker 1: least educate ourselves, then we can speak out when we
34:05
Speaker 1: see people acting like jerks and speaking and speaking out.
34:09
Speaker 1: We'd like to hear from you. What do you think
34:12
Speaker 1: about these sorts of cycles in history? Also, what's your
34:15
Speaker 1: favorite Chinese food? I think I've thrown that one in
34:17
Speaker 1: there because I'm hungry. You're into your the orange chicken guy,
34:20
Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't know. It just came to me.
34:23
Speaker 1: But it's always a game time decision when I'm in
34:25
Speaker 1: front of the menu. I mean when it comes to
34:27
Speaker 1: like super americanized Chinese food, huge fan of like orange
34:31
Speaker 1: chicken especially, I like, you know, the crappier the better.
34:33
Speaker 1: I like Mall Orange Chicken. There's a particular you know,
34:37
Speaker 1: flavor that Mall Orange Chicken has for me and a
34:40
Speaker 1: soft spot in my heart, very nostalgia because I remember
34:43
Speaker 1: being a kid and eating orange chicken at the mall.
34:45
Speaker 1: But when it comes to more traditional stuff like you've
34:48
Speaker 1: you've done the dim something, Oh yeah, yeah, Yeah. We've
34:51
Speaker 1: got a great place on Beover Highway called Canton House.
34:54
Speaker 1: Been there, yeah, which is greatwin dim Sum also a
34:58
Speaker 1: lot of regional cuisine. Fan of Sue, and I can't
35:03
Speaker 1: wait to get out there. Actually, I'm I'm gonna head
35:05
Speaker 1: out and grab something to eat. Yeah. The dim sums
35:08
Speaker 1: so cool because you literally don't know what you're getting.
35:10
Speaker 1: It's just a mixed bag. It's like a surprise every
35:13
Speaker 1: and every bite and they're all like small bites. But
35:16
Speaker 1: now we're just talking about delicious Chinese food and we've
35:18
Speaker 1: got to get out of here, don't we been? Yes,
35:20
Speaker 1: yes we do. My friends, so, speaking of speaking out
35:23
Speaker 1: and uh, speaking of surprising things, speak out right to us,
35:28
Speaker 1: surprise us. We'd love to hear from you. Yeah, we're
35:30
Speaker 1: on those social media's. Just search for us on Facebook, UM,
35:33
Speaker 1: and Instagram and you'll find us. You can also send
35:36
Speaker 1: us an email at ridiculous at how stuff works dot
35:40
Speaker 1: com and we will be back with you very soon
35:43
Speaker 1: for more ridiculous history, depending on how long it takes
35:47
Speaker 1: for the Orange Chicken. Yeah ye. For more podcasts from
36:13
Speaker 1: my Heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple podcast,
36:16
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.