“Bona Fide” Merchants: Negotiating Life, Labor, and Transnational Mobility in the Time of Chinese Exclusion

Abstract

From 1875 until 1943, various policies increasingly circumscribed the free movement of Chinese immigrants into and within the United States. These efforts had a profound and lasting impact on the Chinese diaspora in the Pacific Northwest and divided the Chinese community into two distinct classes: laborers and a privileged class that included merchants. The authors of this research article argue that merchant businesses served a critical and multifaceted role in the formation, development, and decline of rural Chinatowns and in the lives of Chinese Oregonians who used the businesses to facilitate resistance and community persistence. Attaining officially recognized merchant status offered certainty and stability, as well as social and mobility, providing immigrants and their families with opportunities for prosperity in a largely unwelcoming land. The Wing Hong Hai Company Store (永同泰) in The Dalles (姐里阜) and the Wah Chung and Company Store (和昌) in Ashland each played important roles in the maintenance of Oregon’s Chinese diaspora communities. On the surface, they bought and sold goods and services; in reality, these transnational establishments did so much more as they navigated the waters of Chinese exclusion.