analysis of chinese prostitutes in america

Analysis of Chinese Prostitutes in America During the 1850's to the 1880's most Chinese women that came to San Francisco were prostitutes or bounded. These women were usually lured, kidnapped, bought, smuggled, and forced to slave themselves as prostitutes. In San Francisco, these prostitutes were usually worked at the brothels run by the secret society of the Tongs. Chinese prostitutes also had to work in the Comstock Mines of Nevada at the Chinatown brothels. Chinese prostitutes were identified as cheap prostitutes, for they were of the lowest order. Due to the vast sex ratio and loneliness of Chinese males from white communities created the high demand for prostitutes. Miscegenation laws prohibited Chinese men from having relationships with Caucasian women and Chinese men were usually denied from Caucasian prostitutes. Another reason female Chinese prostitutes were highly demanded was because of the shortage of Chinese women; In 1850 only seven Chinese women inhabited San Francisco, while there were four-thousand and eighteen men. The merchants and protective association members that arranged job passages for male sojourners supplied Chinese prostitutes to their profiting. The secret Hip Yee Tong organizations monopolized control of many vices—one being prostitution. Their primary purpose was to import prostitutes, also referred to as "sing-song girls". The Chinese prostitutes usually were imported as indentured servants or mui jai, Cantonese for "young girl". These women's ages ranged between sixteen to twenty-five, some were even younger. Mui jai were girls sold to domestic labor because their parents were impoverished. Their owners were supposed to provide these girls with necessities , like food and housing, and find them a husband when they were to turn of age. However, some mui jai were sold in China from seventy dollars to one-hundred and fifty dollars. They were then sold again in America ranging from three-hundred and fifty dollars to a thousand