SUEY HIN

In 1899 Helen Grey, a reporter for the San Francisco Call, published a remarkable interview with Suey Hin, a Chinese woman sold into sexual slavery in the United States. Many such girls, who began work as young as age ten, died of abuse before they finished serving their illegal contracts. Suey Hin survived.

I was born in Shantung, where the flowers are more beautiful and the birds sing more sweetly than in any other place. But my people were poor. There was not enough for all our stomachs. Two baby girls had been left exposed — that is, to die, you know. They were born after me and my father said often, “She is too many.”

Once there was an old woman came to our house and … talked to my father and mother. She put a piece of gold money in my hand and told me to give it to my father. … That night the old woman carried me away, and I kicked and screamed. … I remember the ship, and I remember playing with other little girls. We were brought to San Francisco, and there were five or ten of us and we all lived with a woman on Ross alley. Every little while some one would come and see us, and as we grew older the girls were sold.

[When I was twelve] it was my turn. … I was a slave for ten years. There was a man who loved me, but he was a poor washman, and he worked eight years and saved all, all the time. I saved all I could get, too, but it took eight years before we had saved $3000. Then we bought me from my owner and we were married.

Then, ah, it’s all of my life I like to think about. It wasn’t but two next years, three years. My husband got sick and didn’t get any better, and then he died. I didn’t have anything but just myself, and I had to live. … So I got a little house [i.e., she went back to prostitution]. …

Pretty soon I went back to China, but I did not go to my own village. No, my parents would not want to see me. I went to Hongkong and I bought three girls. Two of them are dead. … I went back to China again. I wanted to see my village … but I didn’t let anybody know I was there. I went to the place where they put the babies to die. There was a baby there. A little bit of a brown baby, and she didn’t look much good anyway. But I wanted some one from my own village, and so I took the baby, and she is Ah Lung. … She’s not a slave you know. She’s a good girl, just the same as white girls. She comes from Shantung, so I say she shall never be like the others. Slave girls most all die soon. It’s bad, yes. …

That trip I brought home four girls besides Ah Lung. You see it was not hard to smuggle the girls into this country then. You can’t do it so easy now. … [Last year] I brought back six girls. One girl I sold to Loo Wing. All the other girls are here now. I will not make them bad any more. … I suppose they get married. Only they must marry Christians. I Christian now. … I used to work hard for the devil, him you call, Satan, but now I work harder for Jesus.

Source : Judy Yung, Unbound Voices: A Documentary History of Chinese Women in San Francisco (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 144–153.