Huang Zunxian (1848–1905) was a Chinese diplomat and poet. In 1882, Zunxian became the consul-general in San Francisco. Disillusioned by the treatment of the Chinese immigrants he worked for and by the rising tide of violence against his people, he returned to China in 1885. The following excerpt comes from a poem that he wrote in response to the Chinese Exclusion Act.
Some said that this pack of foreign beggars
Came here only to stuff their moneybags full of cash.
As soon as they set their feet on California’s soil,
They leap for joy at the gold in the earth.
They fill their money belts with a million dollars
And catch the next boat back to their Celestial Kingdom.
None of them is willing to untie his queue
And do an honest day of hard labor for us!
Others claim the Chinese are a pack of scoundrels
Who arrived in America without a shirt on their back.
They swarm like ants, whenever they’re happy,
But as soon as they get made they’re at each others’ throats.
Fierce and pitiless, they’re natural killers;
Blood soaks their knives for no special reason.
America is not some depraved tropical river;
We have no need of man-eating crocodiles like them.
Others affirm that this bunch of Celestials
Are dirty and filthy by nature and habit.
Their houses are fouler than the kennels of dogs,
Their food more disgusting than the slop of pigs.
They manage to get by on less than a dollar a day;
No one pinches pennies harder than these Chinese skinflints.
If we let them labor at starvation wages,
Our own salaries will decline to nothing at all.
Just look at your own bodies to see how they harm you;
We don’t need to put up with this vermin any more! . . .
From now on the Americans enforce a strict ban,
And hem in the Chinese with restrictions on every side.
They close their gates tightly to immigrants of yellow hue,
Order vigilant customs officials to patrol all entries.
Deported Chinese are magpies wearily circling a tree;
Those left behind are swallows nesting nervously on curtains.
Customs officials even interrogate Chinese travelers in transit,
Nor do they spare U.S. citizens or Chinese students.
America’s laws and all its international obligations
Are filed away and most conveniently forgotten.
The boundless Pacific stretches eastward from China,
Vaster in extent than the Gobi’s trackless wastes.
Ship captains encourage our people to board,
But at U.S. Customs they hear, “No Chinamen, please.”
Anyone who arrives without a passport on his person
Is handcuffed as soon as his feet touch dry land.
You only need a face colored yellow
To get drubbed by the cops. (Who cares if you’re innocent?)
I sigh when I think of America’s George Washington
And the noble ideals that this great leader upheld.
He announced to all the American people
That a vast wilderness stretched far off to the west.
Men of all nations, folk of every country
Were free to settle in those frontier lands.
The yellow, white, red, and Negro races
Would live on equal terms with the American people.
But not even a century has elapsed since his time,
And the government is not ashamed to dishonor his pledge.
Source: From Within the Human Realm: The Poetry of Huang Zunxian, 1848-1905, by J. D. Schmidt. Copyright © 1994 by Cambridge University Press. Used by permission of the publisher.
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