11 apr 1850 anni - Yee Ah Tye Arrives

Descrizione:

Originally from Guangdong, the man one newspaper called a "petty despot" had sailed to San Francisco on a Chinese junk just before the gold rush, when he was approximately 20 years old. He spent the first night on the streets, huddled in a doorway. Yee Ah Tye had learned English in Hong Kong and before long he rose to a position of leadership in the powerful Sze Yup Association.

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/goldrush-chinese-immigrants/

Partly because of his command of English, and partly because of an evident appreciation of power and its uses, Yee Ah Tye became the principal agent of the Sze Yup association not long after his arrival. The association agents represented the interests of the associations to the civic authorities; they also presided over disputes among association members. In this latter regard they sometimes acted extralegally but with the acquiescence of the authorities, forming a kind of vigilance committee for Chinese.

Yee was the most notorious of the association leaders. The San Francisco Herald called him a “would-be Mandarin” and a “petty despot” who “inflicted severe corporeal punishment upon many of his more humble countrymen … cutting off their ears, flogging them and keeping them chained for hours together.” The Alta California dubbed him a “Grand Inquisitor” who was “endeavoring to coerce his brethren into such measures as he may suggest and dictate.”

Unfortunately for Yee and the Chinese community in general, their very success provoked the displeasure of many Americans. American miners repeatedly drove Chinese miners from the goldfields, as Tom Archer noted in Stockton. American workers constantly accused Chinese workers of stealing jobs and driving down wages. American politicians and editors regularly recommended barring the Chinese from California.

Ah Tye came to America around 1852 in a junk and spent his first night in American soil huddled with his companions in the doorway of a building. This might have been the reason he knew the importance of district associations.

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