A look at the lost memories of the Chinese mid-valley experience

By THERESA HOGUE
Corvallis Gazette-Times

More than a century ago, Chinese immigrants working in the Willamette Valley were viewed with suspicion, treated with disdain and sometimes fell victim to violence. However, at the same time, they were seen as necessary to the booming railroad economy, and became an important, if marginalized, part of the community.

In fact, Corvallis and Albany both had their own mini “Chinatowns” in the late 1800s, and though no trace of those buildings remains, there are remnants of the Chinese experience in the mid-valley to be found in old newspaper clippings and photographs.

It was mining and the railroad that first brought Chinese workers to Oregon. By 1876, when David Newsom wrote in the Western Observer about Chinese railroad workers, they were an essential labor force.

“We cannot longer give the prices asked here for common labor. The necessity of hiring Chinamen at low rates — just what they ask — is forced upon us. And these Chinese will work at every sort of labor we wish them to perform. And they will stick to their jobs. I have never yet seen a Chinaman drunk, and I can not say that of our white folks.”

But such praise of hard-working Chinese laborers was generally not reflected in the newspaper articles of the time. The Corvallis Gazette frequently published news items about Chinese residents that referred to them as Chinks, Mongols and Celestials, mocked their accents and described them as gamblers, drug fiends and barbarians.

A turn-of-the century Gazette article about Chinese New Year celebrations in Corvallis reveals the typical language used to describe the Chinese in Corvallis.

“Unusual chatter among the Mongols has led to the belief that they too have an end-of-the century discussion, but this is hardly probable, for these things are an outgrowth of civilization.”

In another article around the same time, the Gazette discussed the recent arrest of five Chinese workers for gambling and speculated that several of the gamblers had gotten away.

“But trying to catch a wily Chink is worse than a bow-legged man trying to hold a greased pig, and the result was that when the officers made their official visit, the Chinamen’s cousins could not be found.”

Professor Jun Xing in the ethnic studies department at Oregon State University has spent years studying U.S. immigration history and, more recently, minorities in Oregon.

He and four other professors in the department have just completed “Mosaic: Ethnic Minorities in Oregon,” which is being considered by several publishers and should be available by next year.

Xing has researched Chinese immigration to Oregon and immigrants treatment in the state.

“Chinese really have a long history here,” he said. “I think they were the second- or third-largest ethnic group in Oregon in the mid-19th century.”

The Chinese laborers were frequently exploited for their work ethic, and then tossed aside when large projects were completed.

“When they were needed before the completion of the railroad they were recruited so aggressively, but with the completion of the railroad they became a problem and were redundant,” Xing said. “So (white Americans) tried to improvise all different ways to exclude them, and the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 came about. They used their labor for their own convenience, they did not treat them as human beings. They did not have any regard for their rights.”

The Chinese Exclusion Act was passed by Congress to prevent more Chinese laborers from entering the United States and competing for work with American laborers.

Xing draws comparisons between the way Chinese laborers were viewed in the late 19th century with the attitudes of many white Oregonians toward Mexican laborers.

“For me there’s an exact parallel in what happened with the Chinese and what happened to the migrant workers,” Xing said, “especially Mexican workers, that when the economy is good, they were recruited, like the Chinese on the railroad and in mining, and when they were not needed, they tried to get rid of them and exclude them.”

Railroad workers

The Chinese in Corvallis and Albany came to the area to work on the Yaquina Railroad and the building of the Santiam canal. The railroad project, which created a line from Newport to Corvallis, employed hundreds of Chinese workers.

Once the railroad and canal projects were completed, many Chinese workers found employment elsewhere, including starting laundries and restaurants, working as cooking and cleaning staff in white-owned hotels and restaurants, or doing hard labor in other businesses. For instance, the 1880 Benton County census listed six Chinese workers who worked in a local brickyard.

As the workers settled in, they congregated in Albany and Corvallis, forming small Chinatowns that harbored both their homes and businesses.

In Corvallis, Chinatown took up part of two blocks near the riverfront, vividly recalled by Minerva Kiger Reynolds in her memoir “Corvallis in 1900.”

“On the southeast corner of Second and Jefferson Street was what we called Chinatown. It was where a number of Chinamen had opened a laundry, being out of work after the Yaquina Railroad was completed. It was a common sight to see a Chinaman come trotting in, balancing a pole across his shoulders. On each end of the pole hung a bag of laundry.”

In Albany, Chinatown was located on the current site of the Albany Regional Museum. According to Albany historian Robert Potts, in his series “Remembering When,” Chinatown consisted of a group of ramshackle buildings on Lyon Street and Second Avenue, and might have included underground rooms and tunnels.

There was also a Chinese laundry on First Avenue and Washington Street in downtown Albany. The Chinese buildings appear in the background of some historical photos of downtown Albany, but never figure prominently.

In Corvallis, no existing photos of Chinatown or Chinese residents have been found.

The few records that do exist are newspaper articles, chronicling attacks on Chinese residents, and crime reports of opium dens and bootleg liquor manufacturing in Chinese businesses.

As mechanized laundries became more popular, the niche market served by the Chinese disappeared, and so did the last vestiges of Chinatown. Most of the residents likely moved north, to larger Chinese communities in Portland.

“You see the same pattern through all Chinatowns, they were either vandalized, some even bombed, people got killed,” Xing said. “I think it’s a very similar pattern to that (here). Ninety percent of (Oregon Chinatowns) disappeared, you don’t see a trace.”