Becoming Sui Sin Far by Chapman Mary;

Author:Chapman, Mary;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press
Published: 2016-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

* Eaton’s letter was followed by a letter of support for her advocacy from Brooklyn-based Chinese medical doctor J.C. Thoms.

* Several of these phrases are recycled from Eaton’s unsigned “The Chinese and Christmas.”

* Dime novels and pulp magazine fiction, beginning in the 1890s, frequently depicted Chinatown – its opium dens and dark alleys – in sensational terms.

Unsigned. “Born a Britisher. But Fifty Dollars Is the Tax

on Him as a Chinaman.”

Montreal Daily Witness, 27 October 1896.

Yen Moy is an Englishman by birth, speaking Chinese as his mother tongue. Both his parents were English; he himself, by temperament, language, intellectual and moral texture, is a Chinaman. Yen Moy has been completely transmuted; reincarnated in a new type. In this province we sometimes meet with French-Canadians whose names are Scotch or Irish. Yen Moy could not utter one word of English if you gave him the world.

Yen Moy is to become a resident of Montreal. He will keep a laundry. He was born in Sydney, New South Wales, of English parents, and was taken to China when a baby. There he was brought up as a native; there he was taught the language; there he adopted the religion, the dress, the habits of the population.

And yet the hundred or more Chinamen who landed this morning at the Windsor street depot, having completed their voyage from China over the C[anadian] P[acific] R[ailway] steamship and railway system, did not recognize Yen Moy as one of themselves. Nay, they sneered openly at him. For not only has Yen Moy English features; he is an Albino. His hair and eyebrows are as white as flax. His eyes are weak, and can poorly bear the light. He has the native costume; he has the language; he has Chinese habits of thought; but the Chinese will have none of him. He stood apart; he was silent under the sneers; he trembled with doubt, and helplessness, and fear. It was pathetic.

Yen Moy hugged his little belongings, waited till all the Chinamen laughing and sneering at his peculiarity had passed down the stairs; would not have come forward at all but for the Rev. Dr. Thompson, who spoke to him kindly in his own tongue.

“Let them all go,” said Mr. Ibbotson, C[anadian] P[acific] R[ailway] ticket agent. “They are free men in a free country.”

“Is there not a little irony here?” suggested the Rev. Mr. Nichols, who was present.

“Yes,” smiled Dr. Thompson, “free when they pay fifty dollars to be allowed to set foot on free soil. A little curious, eh?”

Mr. Ibbotson does not trouble about political or domestic economy, or even the solidarity of the race. What he understands is that when the Chinaman pays his poll tax he is a free creature.

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