The document summarizes the historical importance of Chinese laundries in America. It describes how Chinese immigrants often opened laundries as it was one of the only jobs available to them. The names of Chinese laundries often used words like "Lee" which sounds like the Chinese word for profit. It discusses the anti-Chinese sentiments that limited Chinese people to laundry work and viewed them as a danger. The document outlines the challenges Chinese laundrymen faced, including unfair laws, assaults, and health issues from the difficult work. It shares perspectives from the children and families of laundrymen about growing up and living in the laundries.

1. The Historical Importance ofThe Historical Importance of
Chinese LaundriesChinese Laundries
TICKETS TO SURVIVAL ON GOLDTICKETS TO SURVIVAL ON GOLD
MOUNTAINMOUNTAIN
John Jung
Portland Chinese Student Scholarship FoundationPortland Chinese Student Scholarship Foundation
May 5, 2013

3. Some Early Laundries

5. Inside An Early Laundry

6. Real Meaning of Popular Laundry Names
Sam Lee, Sing Lee, Wah Lee, Tai Lee
Were these laundries owned by men named Lee?
NO, the surname, Lee, 李 , sounds like li, 利 (“profit” )
Chinese liked words suggesting prosperity in their laundry names.
Sing Lee and Sam Lee: two common Chinese male names
73% of Sing Lees & Sam Lees ran laundries.

7. (From a White laundry trade publication)

8. Anti-Chinese Views
Limited
Chinese To Laundry Work

9. Chinese Exclusion…
… and Expulsion
in late 19th
century…
Used the Laundryman
as a symbol of all Chinese

11. Seen As Dangers to White Women

12. Laundrymen Self-Protection

14. A Picture is Worth 1,000 Words

15. Iowa Chinese Laundries 1910

16. Laundrymen
Also Were Mocked

17. Laundrymen As Targets of Humor

18. Become A Chinese Laundryman…By Mail

19. Love the Chinese Laundryman

20. Ad for Mrs. Potts’ SAD Cold Handle Irons

21. • Now Mr. Wu was a laundry man in a shop
with an old green door.
• He'll iron all day your linen away, he really
makes me sore.
• He's lost his heart to a Chinese girl and his
laundry's all gone wrong.
• All day he'll flirt and scorch your shirt,
that's why I'm singing this song.
• Oh Mr. Wu, what shall I do, I'm feeling
kind of Limehouse Chinese Laundry Blues.
• George Formby, popular 1930s British singer
Similar Anti-Chinese Views Over in England

22. Challenges for Chinese Laundrymen

23. Deportation Risks

24. Testimony For Lee Wong Hing

25. Inspector Judgment Against Laundryman

26. . 1880 San Francisco Ordinance required all laundries be built of brick.
. All Chinese, and 1 Euro-Am, laundrymen with wood buildings were fined
. Yick Wo filed a case to the Calif. Supreme Court and lost
. Yick Wo won his appeal to the U. S. Supreme Court in 1886.
Unfair Laws:
Landmark Case of Yick Wo vs. Hopkins

27. Laws Limiting Work Hours

28. Sanitariness of Chinese vs. White Laundries

29. White Laundry Rivals

30. White Laundry Union Campaign
Against Chinese Laundries, 1890

31. Assaults and Crimes Against Laundrymen

32. The Hard Laundry Life

33. A Novice Laundryman’s Experience
• When I first handled the dirty clothes, I could not take the smell. I almost
threw up. Father saw my reaction and comforted me, "Take your time. You
know, picking up these clothes is even worse than moving corpses back in
China.
• I never mentioned the unhealthy conditions of the laundry in my letters to
China. Knowing those things would not do the family any good back home.
• Frankly, I was busy from dawn to dusk…
I always wrote 'I am well and healthy here. No need to worry.' It didn't
matter whether I was well or sick. Being here, you had to endure.

34. • The irons weighed 8 pounds each. When the iron was hot enough, you
took it off the stove where it was heated and ironed until it cooled
down. Then you heated it up again.
• After ironing all day, marks would appear on your palm. Blisters
would turn to calluses so thick that even if you cut them open with a
knife would not bleed…
• Many Chinese had health problems after only three years of laundry
work… My father never wrote about his bad health to his wife back in
China.
• Laundry work was a difficult life but the Chinese endured it because
they wanted to send money back to their homeland.
Physical Hardships of Laundry Work

35. Life of A Laundryman’s Wife
My husband was 20 years old when we were
married. We were introduced by
matchmakers. He was 27 years old when he
came here…
We saw each other again when I came over,
ten years later… I came here when I was 46,
48 and I have been here since then…I came to
help my husband with the laundry…

36. The Laundry Premises
The building that held the laundry was a converted horse barn about a
hundred years old and we lived in very cramped space in the back
with no clear separation of the work areas from the living quarters.
My ‘bedroom’ was the space where we dried clothes from lines strung
across the ceiling during the work hours.
We had no heavy equipment in the store, only ironing tables and we
sent all clothes out to a wet wash service for washing and most of the
shirts to a shirt pressing factory for ironing/folding.

37. Laundryman Suicides Were Not Uncommon

38. Children of the Laundry

39. Children Worked in the Laundry
My father would routinely have me crawl into the inner cavity burner of
the mangle where the flame ports need to be unplugged with a small poker.
This was done to prevent uneven heating of the massive round cylinder.
I had to twist my body into Houdini-like contortions in order to gain
access into the inferno chamber.
With a flashlight in my left hand and the small poker in my right hand, my
father would issue instructions from outside the inferno cavity.

40. Laundry Accidents
The laundry was not a safe place to grow up.
Nelson, my eldest brother, was horsing around the hydraulic shirt
presses while our mother was pressing collars. With his hands on each
of the two “ON” levers, which were spaced apart for safety reasons, he
sent the hot 24” x 36” iron clamp down onto our mother’s right hand,
leaving her hand permanently disfigured.
In another incident, I was doodling with a ballpoint pen on a moving
conveyer belt when my hand got caught.

41. Life Of A Laundryman’s Son
Our living quarters were located on the second floor above the laundry.
There were three bedrooms: my two sisters shared a room with our maternal
grandmother, my parents shared a room with one of my brothers, and I
shared a room with two other brothers.
As young children, my brothers and sisters and I started off folding small
fluffy items such as towels. As we got older, we were assigned more difficult
jobs, such as feeding damp linen into the mangle, a massive flat iron for
pressing bed sheets and tablecloths.
I spent the bulk of my boyhood folding, packaging, and organizing
customers’linen. My time was also spent reconciling the differences
between the customers’ linen count against the actual count I had in
front of me.

42. Life Of A Laundryman’s Daughter
We had no vacations, no trips to Disneyland, or any other fun events that the
average family took for granted.
I remember vividly all the limitations and deprivations that we as a family had
to deal with on a daily basis.
…father opened the laundry from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., but we were required to be
there well before opening, and work till long after closing.

43. Some Nasty Customers
“Hey, there are still wrinkles here….
and here….and, look, right there! NOT GOOD ENOUGH!
I’m not going to pay for this!”
Or, another complaining customer yelling, pointing out a stain,
“I told you to clean that spot! It’s still there. Take that out!
I don’t want to see that spot again!”
Those interactions sting in my memory. The cranky customers caused
my parents to feel humiliated in their lowly posts of running a Chinese
hand laundry.

44. Some Customers Were Nice
A few of the laundry customers also noticed us four siblings and treated
us with friendly attention. They gave us dolls and American board games.
They introduced us to hobbies of stamp collecting and coin collections.
A few customers brought in hand-me-down clothing for my older sister
and jewelry for my mom. For Christmas, we received a few fruit baskets
and fruitcakes.
One customer and neighbor around the corner from us,
hired me to baby-sit on occasion. Inside her house, I saw a
different lifestyle of living---furniture, kitchen, snack foods, toys spread all
over, and children who openly argued and fought.

45. Why Chinese Laundries Declined…

46. …and Laundromats Replaced Laundries

47. Laundries Were ‘Tickets’ to Gold Mountain

49. Chineselaundry.wordpress.com
• e-mail from India, April 30, 2013.
I was thrilled to come across your website during a search for "Chinese laundries," and read
many of your entries with great interest. I am a South African but lived in Hong Kong for
almost a decade where I worked as a journalist on the South China Morning Post. Solveig