Fu Chi Hao, "My Reception in America"
in The Outlook
August 10, 1907

AMERICA has always been a very sweet and familiar name in my ears, because I have been told by my American friends that it is the only free country in the world, the refuge of the oppressed and the champion of the weak; so I have had a great affection for this country since my childhood days. I had an idea for a great many years that America was the best nation on the earth, and a good friend to China.

There is one special feature that is peculiar to this country, of which every American ought to be proud. From the birth of this great Nation, America has stood for liberty. It was in the cause of liberty that the Revolutionary War broke out in 1776, when many thousands of heroes gave up their lives for the freedom of the human race. From their love of freedom this free country had its birth [and Americans have devoted themselves to the cause of liberty ever since]. . . .

Don't be shocked if I tell you that, after six years of careful study and close observation, and after the personal treatment I have received from your country, my attitude toward America is totally changed. . . .  I hope I shall not be misunderstood. I have no hard feelings whatever against the American people. I can sincerely say that some of my best friends are Americans, and I have a great many sympathetic friends all over the country. But I do hate the misinterpretation of the Chinese exclusion law by your Government. The original idea of the law is lost. The officials on the Pacific Coast have made it their special business to find errors in the papers of every Chinese who came to this country, so as to send them back, whether they were laborers or not.

Pardon me if I give you a brief review of the personal treatment I received from America a few years ago. In the fall of 1901 a college-mate and myself were brought by an American missionary to this country, with the hope of getting an American college education which would enable us to take part in the uplifting of China in the near future. Glad indeed were we when the steamer Doric entered the Golden Gate on September 13, 1901. The peril of the water, the seasickness on the boat, were both ended. Christian America was reached at last. Our hearts were full of anticipation of the pleasure and the warm welcome we were going to receive from our Christian friends.

I was very much surprised to learn, after waiting several days on the steamer, that the passports which we had with us were not accepted by the American Government. There were several objections to the papers. In the first place, we ought to have got them, not from Li-Hung-Chang, the highest and most powerful official in North China at that time, but from his subordinate, the Customs Taotai, the Collector of the Port at Tientsin. In the second place, our papers were in the form of passports, while the law of this country requires certificates. The careless American consul at Tientsin had made still other mistakes and omissions in his English translation. We learned that we were denied the privilege of landing, and were to go back to China on the same steamer one week later.

I wish I could end the story with the deportation, but fortunately, or, if you please, unfortunately, our friends in this country did their best to have us stay. Letters and telegrams began to fly to the Chinese Minister and the Secretary of the Treasury Department in Washington. We were finally allowed to stay in the detention shed when the Doric left for China.

The detention shed is another name for a "Chinese jail." I have visited quite a few jails and State prisons in this country, but have never seen any place half so bad. It is situated at one end of the wharf, reached by a long, narrow stairway. The interior is about one hundred feet square. Oftentimes they put in as many as two hundred human beings. The whitewashed windows and the wire netting attached to them added to the miser)'. The air is impure, the place is crowded. No friends are allowed to come in and see the unfortunate sufferers without special permission from the American authority. No letters are allowed either to be sent out or to come in. There are no tables, no chairs. We were treated like a group of animals, and we were fed on the floor. Kicking and swearing by the white man in charge was not a rare thing. I was not surprised when, one morning, a friend pointed out to me the place where a heartbroken Chinaman had hanged himself after four months' imprisonment in this dreadful dungeon, thus to end his agony and the shameful outrage.

After staying a whole week in this miserable den we were allowed to come out at the request of a doctor, because our suffering was too great for physical endurance. The Chinese Consul in that city had to give a bond for two thousand dollars before this request was granted.

We stayed in San Francisco more than half a year waiting for our new passports. . . . [When we finally started for Oberlin College, where we were to study,]  a whole year of precious time and hundreds of dollars had already been wasted. . . . We had chosen our route by the Canadian Pacific Railway, because the air was cooler and the scenery is magnificent; but, unfortunately, we did not reckon with the fact that the road lies partly on Canadian soil. The collector at the boundary was easy and kind enough to let us go out; but, after three days' traveling, when we came back to the boundary, we were stopped at midnight in a place called Portal, North Dakota, by the American authority. This was followed by six weeks' anxiety [because "according to the law of the Free Country: we have no right to re-enter America after we once get out."]

Once more telegrams and letters began to fly to Washington by the score. A professor in Oberlin College and an expert lawyer of Washington, many friends who knew us in China, and many influential friends in this country, sent in appeals in our behalf to the authorities in Washington and San Francisco, but all in vain. . . .

The papers finally came early in January, 1903, and, strange to say, they were accepted by the American Government. But here arose another difficulty. We had planned, before we started from China, to work our way through college and not depend entirely on our kind friends; but the law in this country refuses us the privilege of doing any kind of manual labor. If at any time during our course of study they find us waiting on the table, washing dishes, or mowing the lawn in summer, immediate deportation will follow. Furthermore, we must give evidence to the United States Government that we have enough money to carry us through the entire course of study for six or seven years, without doing any kind of manual labor. Unless such evidence be given, we shall not be allowed to enter this country. . . . We were more than glad to reach Oberlin on the 10th of January, 1903. Our entire journey from San Francisco to Oberlin had taken us sixteen months, which is ninety-six times as long as it ought to be. . . .

Do you blame me for having such hard feelings against America as a Nation, after the trying experience I have above described? Can you believe that hundreds, yes, thousands, of Chinese are receiving such shameful treatment all the time? . . . You blame the Chinese for going back to China with the money which they earn by their honest labor, yet hotels and restaurants on the Pacific Coast refuse to entertain Chinese, and the law of this country refuses them the right to become citizens. The Chinese are not allowed to bring their wives to this country to live, yet the State law of California forbids intermarriage between the Chinese and the Americans. How can you blame them under such circumstances?

After reading an article in The Outlook of Aug. 10, entitled "My Reception in America," by Fu Chi Hao, M.A., a Chinese, which is by no means an isolated case of the reprehensive treatment that is received by Chinese of a class who have a right to admission here under our treaty with China, the writer desires to express his condemnation of the heartlessness and the incivility of our Governmental officers who subject Chinese, who have a claim to our consideration and kindness, to such detentions, delays, and humiliations as are described in the article of Fu Chi Hao. It is enough to fill all fair-minded Americans with shame and indignation. Fu Chi Hao states that in no part of the earth are the Chinese so ill-treated and humiliated as in America. We claim to be China's best friend. Let not our manners belie our professions. It is time that our laws regulating both Chinese and Japanese immigration to this country should be modified on lines and in the spirit of the present century and not of the past. We must recognize that these countries which in the past have been exclusive are now, through our own effort largely, opening their doors to the world, and it behooves us not to make the mistake of still keeping ours closed to them.

The writer would like to see our door thrown open to the world with the proper restrictions as now, or with even more exacting ones if necessary, regulating immigration, and he would make it incumbent on Europeans as well as Asiatics who shall come here to compete in manual labor or in trades that they shall become citizens, or pay a sufficient annual tax for the privilege. This is what the writer would call a square deal.

The article in The Outlook of August 10 entitled "My Reception in America," by Fu Chi Hao, M.A., most certainly contains a great deal to make any ordinarily intelligent American think - -and think hard. Mr. Fu Chi Hao was assuredly most unfortunate in the treatment he received, and it is no comfort to a citizen of this country to know that such things can be. Yet this article is unfair in that it does not give the reasons for the fact - - as stated by him - - that "the officials on the Pacific Coast have made it their special business to find errors in the papers of every Chinese who came to this country, so as to send them back, whether they were laborers or not." Few people outside of San Francisco realize the amount of wiliness and trickery exercised by the Chinese in their efforts to enter this country, nor the extreme difficulty the officials have in meeting these conditions. Whether the exclusion law is just or not has nothing to do with the question. It seems fair to suppose that we have a right to exclude from this country all those whom we may from time to time consider as undesirable. For my own part, as far as the Chinese are concerned, I would like to see, say, a hundred thousand come into this State to counterbalance the present inflated ideas of labor, and to check to some extent the arrogant demands on the part of domestic service, at least. The fact is that the exclusion act is in force, is recognized, and the officials are expected to enforce it. As things are, the attempts at evasion, the cunning devices that are used, and the clever schemes that are gotten up by the Chinese to enable themselves or their friends to run the gauntlet are almost beyond belief, and the utmost vigilance is required on the part of the officials to thwart their schemes. It is the old proposition of the innocent suffering with the guilty. If numbers of Chinese coolies had not tried to palm themselves off as merchants, students, natives of the State, etc., many with forged or false certificates, or if the Chinese officials on the other side, together with the companies on this side supporting them, could and would assist in preventing fraud, this series of misfortunes would not have happened to Mr. Fu Chi Hao, whose good opinion and friendship we should be, and are, sorry to lose.