While writing my historical western romance, BROKEN BLOSSOMS, I relied heavily on my research with the U. S. Customs Service and their tireless fight against the never-ending smuggling of opium by the Chinese into our country. While immersed in my study, I learned that opium wasn’t the only vice smuggled in. Young, desperate Chinese women were, too, brought over to live the horrors of enslavement in San Francisco’s Chinatown brothels.
A brief mention of a woman who had dedicated her life to rescuing these women was a
young missionary by the name of Donaldina Cameron. While grieving over a broken engagement, Donaldina quit her studies to be a teacher and found herself in a career of an entirely different sort, that of doing missionary work at the Mission House, a safe place for young Chinese women run by the Presbyterian Church.
Initially, she taught the girls sewing and helped run the House, but after the manager died, Donaldina took over. Supremely devoted to the protection and nurturing of the Asian women, she kept them on a strict schedule and taught them household skills, Christian prayers and beliefs, how to interact socially in society, and so on. A fierce guardian, she fought the courts against frivolous charges to keep them out of jail and free of prostitution and the physical abuse that came with it, even going so far as to physically rescue them from brothels herself.
In the late 1800s and early 1900s, the practice of allowing women to do missionary work was growing and deeply appreciated. Donaldina herself accepted the Chinese culture, allowing the women their accustomed foods and decorations, yet enforcing a balance of Anglo-American customs, too, such as wearing a white dress when marrying instead of the traditional red worn by the Chinese. A somewhat amazing accomplishment since wearing white was customary at Chinese funerals, not weddings!
Donaldina never married or had children of her own. Ironically, after living in San Francisco’s Chinatown for forty years, she never learned the Chinese language. She died in 1968 at the age of 98 years. Before her death, her beloved Mission House’s name was changed to the Donaldina Cameron House, and she is credited with saving more 3,000 Chinese women from horrific enslavement.
Here’s an excerpt in BROKEN BLOSSOMS taken from my research with the U. S. Customs Service and the realistic depiction of the arrival of the Chinese into the San Francisco harbor at the time.
A horde of Chinese men, mostly in their twenties, trod next down the gangway. All of them were dressed in clean blue cotton blouses and baggy trousers. Their foreheads were shaved, and their glossy black hair was braided with silk into long queues. Carleigh recognized them as coolies, or laborers, who would work in any one of a variety of low-paying industries. They carried long bamboo poles across their shoulders. Baskets attached at each end contained their meager possessions.
A dozen or so Chinese girls followed. Though they wore tunics and trousers like other Chinese women, theirs were obviously of poorer quality; their cheeks and lips were painted a gaudy red. On their heads, they wore checked cotton handkerchiefs, the chevron of prostitution.
Ignorant of morals and the contracts they signed in China, they would service their masters in a slavery more horrible than any human being should endure. After an indelicate search by the officers, their purchasers delivered them into the charge of sallow old hags, dressed in black and carrying rings of keys at their waists.
Carleigh’s heart ached for how these girls would live. Would they ever know the warm intimacy a man’s love could give them? Would their lives always be so hopeless?
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Hi Everyone!
Here are some pics of the plaza and a gorgeous horse sculpture near the entrance of City Hall. And of course, where do we choose to eat lunch while in Healdsburg in the heart of wine country? Well, at a brewery, of course! I’m not sorry, the fish and fries were delicious!
Oh and the dessert was wonderful too.
Hi everyone and Happy Wednesday! I was fortunate to be able to spend the past weekend in my favorite
oned. Eventually some of the ships were refurbished and put back into service, while others rotted away at their moorings.
The Old Ship Saloon, still in operation, opened in 1851 in the hull of the Arkansas. Original patrons had to walk up a plank to enter the saloon.
