John Jung

California State University, Long Beach

February 3, 2010
In Reality…
Before Chinese Laundries
(Women, not Men, did the laundry)
A Sample of Chinese Laundries --->
Some Early Laundries
Laundries As ‘Tickets’ to Gold Mountain
 Meaning of Laundry Names
Why did many Chinese laundries have Lee as part of their names?:
Sam Lee, Sing Lee, Wah Lee, Tai Lee
Lee is the most common Chinese surname.
Were these laundries owned by men named Lee?

NO, the surname, Lee, 李 , sounds like li, 利 , which refers to “profit.” Owners
often used words suggesting prosperity as part of their laundry names.

Sing Lee and Sam Lee: two of the most common Chinese male names. The
1910 Census lists
280 Chinese men named Sing Lee
(182 with the reverse name, Lee Sing)
234 named Sam Lee
Most (73%) of the Sing Lees and Sam Lees ran laundries.
3 “Sam Lee” Laundries
Iowa Chinese Laundries 1910
San Diego
How Chinese Laundrymen Were Viewed
Ridicule
 As Dangers
to White Women
Chinese Exclusion…
… and Expulsion
Groups

used
the Laundryman
as a symbol of
Chinese
 Inside and Outside
of A Holyoke, Mass. Laundry
Testimony Favoring Lee Wong Hing
Chinese Inspector Judgment Against Laundryman
An Olympia, Wa. Laundry Case
 Unfair Laws:
The Case of Yick Wo vs. Hopkins

1. In 1886, there were 310 laundries built of wood in San Francisco;

240 owned by Chinese and 70 owned by European Americans.

2. San Francisco passed an ordinance that all laundries must be built of brick
due to fire hazard.

3. All Chinese, and only one European American male laundry owner,
with laundries in wood buildings were arrested, tried, convicted, and fined.

4. Yick Wo, one of the convicted laundry owners, had operated his laundry
in San Francisco for 22 years and argued the judgment was racist and unfair.

5. The California Supreme Court upheld the San Francisco court decision.
Yick Wo appealed to the United States Supreme Court where he prevailed.
Legal and Political Biases
White Laundry Rivals
Contesting Health Safety of Laundries
Pranks and Crimes
Against Laundrymen
A Novice Laundryman’s Experience
• When I first handled the dirty clothes, I could not take the
smell. I almost threw up. Father saw my reaction and
comforted me, "Take your time. You know, picking up
these clothes is even worse than moving corpses back in
China. I never mentioned the unhealthy conditions of the
laundry in my letters to China. Knowing those things
would not do the family any good back home.

• Frankly, I was busy from dawn to dusk. How could I find

time to write about all these things? I always wrote 'I am
well and healthy here. No need to worry.' It didn't matter
whether I was well or sick. Being here, you had to endure.
 Physical Hardships of Laundry Work
• The irons weighed eight pounds each. When the iron was hot enough,
you took it off the stove where it was heated and ironed until it cooled
down. Then you heated it up again.

• After ironing all day, marks would appear on your palm. Blisters
would turn to calluses so thick that even if you cut them open with a
knife would not bleed…

• Many Chinese had health problems after only three years of laundry
work. … My father never wrote about his bad health to his wife back
in China.

• Laundry work was a difficult life but the Chinese endured it because
they wanted to send money back to their homeland.
 Life of A Laundryman’s Wife

My hu s b a n d w a s 2 0 yea rs o ld w he n w e w ere marr ie d . We w ere

int ro du ce d b y m at c hm ake r s . He was 27 yea r s o ld w h e n he c am e
her e … We sa w e a c h o th er a g a in w he n I c a me o ver , te n y e ar s
late r …I c a me he r e w he n I w a s 4 6, 48 an d I h a ve b e e n h ere s in ce
th en …I ca m e to he lp my hus b a nd with the l au nd ry… I ha d t o b e
care ful b e c a us e if we d a ma g e d an y of t h e ga r me nt s, we h a d to
p a y for the m . I wa s h e d e ve r ythin g m ys e lf, hu ge b a s ke ts full of
cl o th es . I wa s h e d a s m an y a s 50 s hir ts .
 Life of A Laundryman’s Wife (cont)

We ju st wo r ke d in t h e la un dr y ou rs e lve s . I d id th e was hing , m y

hus b a nd di d the ir oni ng …It wa s ve r y ha r d mo ne y to ma ke .
Th ere wer e no s e t w or king ho ur s. W he n the r e wa s m ore wo r k,
we ha d to s ta y up a nd d o it . We wo uld wor k la ter a t night
s om e time s to el e ve n o ’c loc k a t nig ht. My h us ba nd kne w a li ttle
En glis h. …The law -fan (white s) har as s e d u s a ll the t ime …They
use d to sc r ea m , “C hinitow n. Chi nitown!” whe ne ve r we w ould s a y
a nything… Where we wo r ke d , the r e w ere c h ildr e n wh o were
ve r y b ad …the y wo uld th r ow s n ow a t our c loth e s line s , wher e the
cl o th es we r e h un g to d r y
Laundry Interiors
Family At Work and At Rest
Lunch Break
Making Fun of Chinese Laundries
British Chinese Laundry ‘Humor’

• Chinese Laundry Blues

• Now Mr. Wu was a laundry man in a shop
with an old green door.
• He'll iron all day your linen away, he really
makes me sore.
• He's lost his heart to a Chinese girl and his
laundry's all gone wrong.
• All day he'll flirt and scorch your shirt,
that's why I'm singing this song.
• Oh Mr. Wu, what shall I do, I'm feeling
kind of Limehouse Chinese Laundry Blues.
• George Formby, popular 1930sBritish singer
Becoming A Chinese Laundryman…By Mail
Mocking the Chinese Laundry

"No one knows laundry

better than the Chinese.
They’ve even perfected the
bag. …

The real thing, these sturdy

100% cotton twill Chinese
laundry bags have a mystic,
irresistible appeal.

No fortune cookie included,

though."
Ads Portrayed Laundrymen As…
Cleverly Simple OR Simply Dumb
Children of the Laundry
 Children Worked in the Laundry
I was the “lucky one” to help grease bearings in tough-to-reach locations.
My father would routinely have me crawl into the inner cavity burner of
the mangle where the flame ports need to be unplugged with a small poker.
This was done to prevent uneven heating of the massive round cylinder.
I had to twist my body into Houdini-like contortions in order to gain
access into the inferno chamber. With a flashlight in my left hand and the
small poker in my right hand, my father would issue instructions from
outside the inferno cavity:

“Okay, Elwin, now move over to the next row.

Keep going until you get to the very end.
When you’re done, we’ll make a laundry delivery to a café and get some
free eats.”
 Injuries To Children
A Chinese laundry is not a very safe place for small children to play, and I was
living proof of that. When I was only four, my hand got locked for just seconds
inside the red-hot machine that flattened collars and cuffs on a shirt with the
press of a button. The common folklore at the time was to put butter on a burn.
I remember the butter melting so fast it seemed to vaporize. I must have been
screaming my four-year-old head off, but all can recall is seeing a wad of
butter turn to liquid…

It was a long and painful recuperation from a third degree burn. The graft
required tissue from my stomach so I could not wear pants or underwear. Air
conditioning was unaffordable, so naked made a lot of sense. The heat from
the laundry was great in the winter and was hell in the summer. I suspect the
devil may have been in the laundry business before the Chinese.
 Laundry Accidents
The laundry was not a safe place to grow up.
Nelson, my eldest brother, was horsing around the hydraulic shirt
presses while our mother was pressing collars.

With his hands on each of the two “ON” levers, which were spaced
apart for safety reasons, he sent the hot 24” x 36” iron clamp down onto
our mother’s right hand, leaving her hand permanently disfigured.

In another incident, I was doodling with a ballpoint pen on a moving

conveyer belt when my hand got caught.
I was able to extract my hand before the ambulance arrived.
 The Laundry Premises
The building that held the laundry was a converted horse barn about a
hundred years old and we lived in very cramped space in the back
with no clear separation of the work areas from the living quarters.
My ‘bedroom’ was the space where we dried clothes from lines strung
across the ceiling during the work hours.

We had no heavy equipment in the store, only ironing tables and we

sent all clothes out to a wet wash service for washing and most of the
shirts to a shirt pressing factory for ironing/folding.
 Life Of A Laundryman’s Son
Our living quarters were located on the second floor above the laundry.
There were three bedrooms: my two sisters shared a room with our maternal
grandmother, my parents shared a room with one of my brothers, and I
shared a room with two other brothers.

As young children, my brothers and sisters and I started off folding small
fluffy items such as towels. As we got older, we were assigned more difficult
jobs, such as feeding damp linen into the mangle, a massive flat iron for
pressing bed sheets and tablecloths.

I spent the bulk of my boyhood folding, packaging, and organizing

customers’linen. My time was also spent reconciling the differences
between the customers’ linen count against the actual count I had in
front of me.
 Life Of A Laundryman’s Daughter
My parents worked long hours every day.  We had no vacations, no trips to
Disneyland, or any other fun events that the average family took for granted.
I remember vividly all the limitations and deprivations that we as a family had
to deal with on a daily basis. 

Every Monday thru Friday, my father opened the laundry from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.,
but we were required to be there well before opening, and work till long after
closing. 

On Saturday, my Father opened the laundry at 10 a.m. and even after closing
at 5 p.m., he would still be working there past 8 p.m. with my mom and
older brother, Phillip. 
Life Of A Laundry Family

All of us worked in the laundry, with our responsibilities varying with

age. The older children waited on customers who dropped off or picked
up laundry, folded socks, and operated equipment like the mangle. As the
family increased in numbers, she had less time to work in the laundry.
Dad had her do the mending and sewing. We ate only Chinese meals so
she was in charge of all the food preparations for the family and also
provided lunch for the workers. Dad usually had 2 to 4 Chinese
employees and five female ironers, usually white women, to hand-finish
the shirts.
 Kids Laundry Play
We would have to be inventive to amuse ourselves at the laundry store.
We had an old iron stove that warmed the basement. As the youngest
grandchild, I, would go around with the water squirt bottle grandfather
used to moisten clothes before ironing them, and being mischievous,
as many little boys tend to be, would wet the wings of insects so they could
not fly away so I could catch them and throw them into the burning stove!

The actual machinery and parts of the laundry were kid toys. About when I
learned to walk, I played with a box of plumbing parts that were removed
From the huge boiler needed to keep the shirt presses hot. It seems that
nothing, even these spent parts, ever got thrown out. So my toy collection
just kept growing.
 Some Nasty Customers
The customer is handed his package; he rips open the package to examine
the ironed shirts. He shakes one out---

“Hey, there are still wrinkles here….

and here….and, look, right there! NOT GOOD ENOUGH!
I’m not going to pay for this!”

My father bowing, taking back the shirt….

“oh, so solee. We do it again….no chargee. come back tomorrow.”

Or, another complaining customer yelling, pointing out a stain,

“I told you to clean that spot! It’s still there. Take that out!
I don’t want to see that spot again!”

Those interactions sting in my memory.

The cranky customers caused my parents to gripe afterwards
and feel humiliated in their lowly posts of running a
Chinese hand laundry.
 Some Nice Customers
A few of the laundry customers also noticed us four siblings and treated us with
friendly attention. They gave us dolls and American board games. They
introduced us to hobbies of stamp collecting and coin collections, which then
motivated us to sort through the daily cash box to find pennies, nickels, dimes and
quarters minted by year to place in the coin books.

A few customers brought in hand-me-down clothing for my older sister and

jewelry for my mom. For Christmas, we received a few fruit baskets and
fruitcakes.

Mrs. Greer, a customer and neighbor around the corner from us,
hired me to baby-sit on occasion. There inside her house, I saw a
different lifestyle of American living---furniture, kitchen, snack foods, toys spread
all over, and children who openly argued and fought.
 Sunday Trips to Chinatown
One parent would keep the car moving while the other one shopped.
It is impossible to park in Chinatown, so the ritual was constant circling
or standing until the police said move…Constant gridlock made traffic
lights irrelevant, and the city acknowledged that fact by installing traffic
signals with only two lights, instead of three…

Through the auto glass I watched whole roast pigs emerging from
basement smokehouses to be chopped and hung in grocery windows,
and saw endless rows of juicy roast ducks hanging by their necks.
Runners with crates of vegetables or trays of cooked foods held high
in the air would navigate crowds to restock a store.

I saw lots of people who looked like me but were, as Mr. Miyagi said,
“same but different.”
At The End of The Day
A Picture is Worth 1,000 Words
My Tribute to Chinese Laundrymen