All the three managers (and main investors) in the Wah Mee Corporation were American Chinese. One was a long-time Chicago resident. The second was a new resident who had lived in Nebraska, Utah, and California. The third was a San Franciscan. It is a surprising fact that private individuals in the Chinese-American community could put together enough capital to finance a major attraction at one of the biggest world fairs in history, in competition with large corporations and state and national governments. Evidently there was wealth in the community even then.
"Dr. Gee Woo Chan is President. He came here with a commission
of government officials in 1884 to view the New Orleans Exposition.
He fell deeply in love with the country and its people. At the expiration
of his time with the Commissioners he refused to go back home and
almost immediately began the practice of [Chinese herbal] medicine in
the United States. According to the literary matters before us he has
been a success. Unlike other Chinese who come here Dr. Chan invests
his money in this country in real estate and higher standard of business
enterprises, and almost everything he touched has been a verity [sic]
gold mine."
"Mr. Hong Sling is also quite a young man yet. His principal occupation
has been a railroad contractor on the Pacific Coast. Like his compatriot,
Dr. Chan, invests nearly all his money in business and real estate in
this country, principally in Omaha, Nebraska."
"Hong Sling tries very hard to speak the English language like the doctor
but as yet has only partially succeeded. Both gentlemen have had their
cues cut off years ago and wear tailor made suits like true good citizens,
and both are very anxious to become bonafide citizens of the United
States, which they now love as their home instead of China."
"Wong Kee is a Clark Street Chinese grocer. He is reported to be the richest Chinaman in Chicago, but he does not want people to know that he has a dollar. He is the treasurer of the Wah Mee Exposition Company, of which Gee Wo [sic] Chan is president." (1)
From other sources we know that Hong Sling had moved to Chicago before the WCE and was on friendly terms with several European-American civic leaders. As the wealthy owner of the Sam Lung Co., he would play a major role in Chicago's Chinese community until the early 1930s. According to Christoff he is supposed to have introduced chop suey to the Midwest. (2)
Dr. Gee Woo Chan is called Dr. C. Gee Wo and Wong Kee is called Wong Lot on the cover of the Guide Book to the Joss House and Temple of China, as shown above. Such discrepancies illustrate one of the biggest problems in working with English-language historical sources on Chinese- Americans. One person may have several names, and each of those may be spelled in several different ways.
(1) Chinese American, Chicago, Vol. 1, No. 1, 1893
(2) Peggy Spitzer Christoff, Tracking the "Yellow Peril" (see below, Early Interracial Marriages)
Credit: the key research behind this and the following section was done by Soo Lon Moy, Chinatown Museum Foundation. She was the one who discovered and recognized the importance of copies of two issues of Chinese American, an obscure hand-written Chicago newspaper that may only have had two issues, in the archives of the Chicago Historical Society.
Chinese-Americans at the 1893 Chicago World Fair
1893年芝城哥倫比亞博覧的中國文化
This page contains data and pictures of Chinese exhibits and people at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition (WCE) in Chicago. For more pictures, please click on Midwest Fairs. See also the 1933-34 World Fair page.
Chinese Building, WCE
Menu from Cafe in the Chinese Theater
Souvenir Pamphlet for the
Theater and Joss House
Program from the Chinese Theater
Angered by the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, the Chinese government refused to take part in the WCE. Hence, the Chinese exhibit was private. It was set up by one of the two rival groups mentioned above: the Wah Mee Corp-
oration, a group of Chinese businessmen from Chicago and San Francisco. They opened a combination Chinese theater, Joss House (temple), bazaar, and cafe. The venture went bankrupt before the Fair ended but then is said to have been run profitably by the bankruptcy court.
The Chinese buildings, on the Midway at Ellis
Joss House Interior, Right. Mae Ngai identifies the two men as Hong Sling and Gee Wo Chan
Note: The word "joss" was a Pidgin English word meaning "deity." It came from the Portuguese term for god, "deus," and was often used by Westerners and westernized Chinese in connection with Chinese religion. "Joss sticks" were incense sticks; "joss paper" included sacrificial paper money, paper funerary goods, printed paper charms, etc; and "joss house" meant any kind of traditional Buddhist or Daoist (Taoist) temple. Older Chinese temples on the West Coast and Australia still are called joss houses in tourist publications.
The Chinese-American Museum of Chicago would be very interested to hear about any other Chinese objects that survive from the World's Columbian Exposition. If you have information about such objects please contact us.
These models of Chinese ships, currently in the Field Museum, were also exhibited at the WCE in 1893. However, they appeared in the Transportation Building, not the Chinese Theater and Joss House. Although made in China, they were chosen for exhibition by European-Americans and did not have anything directly to do with Chinese in Chicago.
Note: The ancestors of many Chinese-Americans came from the same parts of China as these ships. 18th and 19th century emigrants sailed to Southeast Asia in Fujian and Guangdong junks, and many descendants of those emigrants have moved to the Midwestern U.S. in recent years. Several Southeast Asian Chinese are members of the CMF.
Medium-sized junk from Shan-
tou (Swatow) in Guangdong
Province, FM 35017
Small junk from Chan-
chu (?) in Guangdong
Province, FM 35016
Large junk from Hong Kong, FM 35018.
Large junk from Jinjiangfu
(Quanzhou) in Fujian
province, FM 35021
Chinese Building, Prelim-
inary Architect's Drawing
and 59th, were designed for Wah Mee by a local non-Asian architectural firm, Wilson and Marble. The style appears to be a fanciful mixture of Chinese, Thai, and Mediterranean. The interior of the joss house must have had a real Chinese designer, however -- it was a functional temple laid out in a traditional way, even though the black-and-white mats used as skirts for the tables and altars must have looked rather strange to most Chinese who saw them.
Only a few objects from the Joss House and Theater are known to survive; pictured below, they are in the Field Museum in Chicago.
One Fair visitor described his tour through the Chinese Building as follows:
"I walked to the other end of the [Midway] Plaisance, where I was lured into a building by what in the Chinese language is called music. I looked over a variety of Chinese wares, had a good view of a paper dragon of about 150 feet, went up to the second story, where I was let into the mysterious presence of the beings that inhabit the Chinese Joss House. Next I watched the Chinese play for nearly two hours ..."
Manufacturer and Builder, v. 25, no. 7, p. 160, 1893
Chinese Building, WCE
Joss House Interior, Left. We
have not discovered the name of the Chinese boy
"We wish once again to call the attention of the English speaking Chinese of the United States, that they should send us their address as soon as possible so that we could notify members of the "Chinese Equal Rights Club" here that a sufficient number have been heard from to justify them for the necessary preparations of a national conference in Chicago during the great World's Fair, so that you could come here with a double purpose, that of seeing one of the grandest sights of your life and inaugurating one of the greatest movements the Chinese ever had in this or any other country. You will then have an opportunity to elect your own national leaders to fight for your own rights. The great Fair alone is worth many times your fare and half of your one year's earnings to see, as every nation on earth is truthfully represented.
"Address all communications to Editor Chinese American, 283 South Clark Street, Chicago, Ill."
The Political Side of the Fair
Chinese-Americans in the Midwest saw the World's Columbian Exposition not only as an extraordinary event but also as an opportunity to assert their rights as Americans and their identity as Chinese. The following notice appeared in the same newspaper as the comments on Hong Sling and his colleagues.
Credit: Soo Lon Moy, Chinatown Museum Foundation (see preceding section)
The exhibits in the Manufactures Building came from two China-based companies: the Lee Kwong Kee Company of Kinkiang [Jinjiang in Fujian] and Chun Kwong Kee & Company of Canton [Guangzhou]. Lee Kwong Kee presented “a beautiful collection of porcelains from the royal potteries at King The Chen [Jingdezhen]… The visitor may purchase here almost anything in the porcelain or china line, from a god at 80 cents to a vase at $500.” Chun Quan Kee’s exhibit was of silk goods, ivory and lacquer ware, black wood and sandal wood furniture, and many varieties of bric-a-brac and curios.
Chicago Daily Tribune, Sept 24 1893, p 35
Other international expositions in the U.S. saw the same pattern of trading companies in China operating independently of the Chinese government. The pattern was even more pronounced at Chicago's Century of Progress Exposition in 1933, where merchants in Guangzhou and Fuzhou [in Fujian] secured profitable concessions in the Chinese Village despite the opposition of the Chinese government exposition commission in Shanghai.
Little noticed in one of the Manufactures Building exhibits, perhaps Chun Quan Kee's, were several pieces of Ming dynasty furniture, including a pair of armchairs and an altar table, all made of in huanghuali wood, plus a less fine lampstand of 19th century date. The chairs, table, and lampstand are now in the University of Michigan art museum, where they were described in 1993 by Brian Flynn. According to Flynn "these pieces ... are among the first examples of classical Chinese furniture to enter the United States."
Brian Flynn, Journal of the Classical Chinese Furniture Society, vol 1, no 4, pp 48-51.
Rival Chinese Exposition Plans
In 1892, two groups of Chinese Chicagoans competed for the private Chinese concession at the World's Columbian Exposition. Both planned to focus on building a Chinese theater, to which various shops and other attractions would be added. The winning group, led by Hong Sling, Gee Wo Chan, and Wong Kee, and calling itself the Wah Mee Company, hired the architects Wilson and Marble and deposited 20,000 with officials in Washington for permission to bring 200 actors over from China. As noted below, the actors duly arrived and the theater, inside the fairgrounds on the Midway, opened on schedule.
The ambitious plans of the other group did not work out. The group was led by Moy Tong Chow (a.k.a. Hip Lung) and Sam Moy, the dominant figures of late 19th century Chinatown. In November 1892 they announced that a specially formed corporation, the Wah Yung Company, would build a second theater outside the fairgrounds on Cottage Grove Avenue, four blocks south of the Midway. The theater was to be designed by Francis J. Norton, They planned to import their own actors from Hong Kong.
Unfortunately, the Immigration Bureau concluded that the certificates of the Moys' actors -- 273 of them -- had been forged and refused them entry at Tacoma. The Moys did manage to smuggle 32 actors from Tacoma to Chicago anyway, but they were not destined to appear on the stage of the Wah Yung Company's theater. It was not finished on time and, as far as we can find, never opened.
In the meantime, representatives of the Wah Mee also tried their hand at smuggling illicit immigrants. One Chan Ming Sue landed at San Francisco in early 1893 with no fewer than 483 so-called actors, all destined for the theater on the Midway. He brought them to Chicago on a Santa Fe Railroad train for fares totaling $32,200. Manager Hong Sling, not pleased at getting so many "actors" at such a high cost, chose 200 and packed the others back to San Francisco.
It turned out that Chan had run up very high expenses in other areas too: purchases of goods in China, unauthorized stock sales, etc. The debt drove Wah Mee into bankruptcy by July of 1893, even though its exhibit was a success.
The Wah Yung Company's planned theater at 64th St and Stony Island. It was never built
Chicago Daily Tribune Nov 13 1892: p 4; Dec 10 1802, p 1; Apr 17 1893, p 3; Apr 26 1893, p 11; Feb 11 1894, p 1; Mar 16 1894, p 12
Mae M. Ngai, an associate professor at the University of Chicago, published an excellent article last year that shows she has been thinking along the same lines as we were when we first put this page on the Web.
She focuses on the fact that the Chinese exhibits at the Exposition were not sponsored by "European-American show businessmen and ethnologists," unlike many of the other attractions on the Midway, but "were conceived, financed, and operated by local Chinese-American entrepreneurs."
She is right about the importance of this. She includes more information than we did about Hong Sling and other local entrepreneurs, and uses the Chinese-American case to challenge the common idea that the Exposition represented solely a colonialist, Western viewpoint. Non-Western participants often had their own agendas, she says, including the Chinese.
Dr. Ngai and we may disagree on one point, however. She accepts an idea which we too used to hold, that the Chinese government refused to participate in the Exposition in protest against the Chinese Exclusion laws of 1882 and later years. We are starting to have doubts about this as a general proposition, finding it hard to believe that the Imperial government cared that much about the fate of working-class Chinese in other countries. Instead we suspect that the Emperor's advisors were unhappy about U.S. immigration policies as applied specifically to Chinese of the official class like themselves. If imperial representatives could be insulted at dockside in San Francisco or Tacoma, it might have been decided, there would not be an official Chinese presence in Chicago.
We are happy that researchers at local universities are taking an interest in the subject. We hope that Dr. Ngai can be persuaded to contribute a short article to this website.
Ngai, Mae M. "Transnationalism and the Transformation of the "Other." American Quarterly - Vol 57, No 1, Mar 2005, pp. 59-65
The Chinese-American Museum of Chicago is currently working on an exhibition about Chinese at the World Fairs of 1893 and 1933-4.
The curators are Andrea Stamm of Northwestern University Library and Ling Arenson of DePaul University, Advisors include Bill Hinchliffe, a leading lecturer on the Fairs, and Mae Ngai of the University of Chicago, a major Fair historian. Contents will include 2- and 3-dimensional
objects from both fairs, and will make extensive use of the rich graphic resources available in Chicago's libraries and archives.
The exhibition will be held in CAMOC's new second floor gallery, The press preview will be held on May 27. We hope that guests at the opening, on June 10, can include our out-of-town advisors, including the son of CP Chan and the daughter of Silas Fung.
The Midway at the WCE, looking east. The great Ferris wheel appears edge-on. The Chinese Theater and Joss House is just to the left of the Ferris Wheel, on the Midway's north side
These baskets and fortune sticks were in the Chinese "Joss House" [temple] at the Chicago's World's Columbian Exposition (WCE) of 1893. They were sold to the Field Museum in 1894 by the Chicago-based merchant Hong Sling, manager for the Wah Mee Exposition Co, the group that built the Chinese theater/temple.
As far as we know, the pieces shown here and at he bottom of this page are the only surviving Chinese objects from the WCE. All are now in the collection of the Field Museum (FM Accession 124). (Photos by and courtesy of Ben Bronson)
All 3 baskets and the fortune telling sticks were exhibited in the Joss House at the WCE
The Joss House featured an extensive Daoist-Buddhist shrine with statues of Guandi, Guanyin, and other deities, as well as the baskets and fortune-telling sticks shown here. Fair goers' accounts make it clear that the shrine was a real place of worship even though it was built and operated for tourists.
The Chinese Cafe
Newspaper accounts said that the cafe in the Chinese building sold Chinese food. However, the menu shown here emphasizes American dishes such as ham sandwiches and oatmeal, although it also includes lychee nuts, "Longsoy" and "Syie Seen" tea, and "Chinese style" rice.
It was one of the earliest Chinese restaurants in the Midwest to be aimed at non-Chinese diners.
The Chinese Theater 舘内的劇場
The stage with its actors and music were the most important features of the Exposition from the standpoint of Chicago Chinese. Its backers, the Wah Mee Corporation, called the whole building a theater. The rival Moy group also considered its own building to be basically a theater. Both groups expended much money and effort on importing actors from China. The actors staged numerous plays, including one titled Plot to Assassinate the Emperor. It featured a sword fight between two princesses that ended in a draw: "\Each acknowledging the other the victor, they recognized each other's generosity and turned from hatred and war into love and declared themselves sisters." Women's roles were played by men; very few Chinese theater companies in those days had coed casts.
Caption for the color image at left, from The Book of the Fair
A play in progress in the Chinese Theater at the WCE
Credit: the color image above and much new data on the WCE has been found by Andrea Stamm, Northwestern University Library; the Putnam book was suggested by Elinor Pearstein, Art Institute of Chicago
Lee Ping and Maik Quong were the stage managers. Among other dramas performed were "The Six Kings," "God in Heaven," and "The Double Thumb." According to one newspaper reporter, the star performers were the actor Sam Queng and the magician Lee Lum. The reporter concluded, "Altogether one cannot get more acting for his money anywhere else in Chicago than at the Chinese Theater, nor can he, perhaps, find more of interest in any one place on the Plaisance than in the Temple of China."
The photo of Ki Hing and Foke Sing was chosen by the noted anthropologist F. W. Putnam. A Chinese opera fan has suggested to us that Putnam's actors may not have been real ones -- they stand awkwardly and their costumes do not fit.
Chicago Daily Tribune May 19 1893, p 2; Sept 24 1893, pp 34-35., Frederick W Putnam, Portrait Types of the Midway Plaisance, St Louis, 1894.
In February the organizers announced that the chef would be Low Luck, "the best cook in Hong Kong," that he would have "a big force of expert cooks to assist him," and that the manager, H. Sling of Ogden, Utah, "has had considerable experience" in running restaurants. Even before the Exposition opened, however, the organizers seem to have recognized that an all-Chinese menu might be too much for Midwestern Fair-goers. Knives and forks would be available even though 2000 pairs of ivory chopsticks were to be imported, and the only Chinese foods mentioned were side dishes of Chinese preserves, fruit, and vegetables as well as expensive Chinese tea. The rest of the menu would consist of "American meals at reasonable prices."
The talents of Low Luck and his sous-chefs seem to have been displayed mainly on banquets for VIP visitors. At one such banquet, "a feast was spread which demonstrated much perfection in the art of cookery ... all sorts of Chinese delicacies were served with American soups and meats, as well as some strong rice wines and brandies and whiskies ..."
Chicago Daily Tribune Feb 18, p 10; May 20 1893, p 3.
Actors Ki Hing and Foke Sing. From Putnam's Portrait Types
A Husband-Wife Team from San Francisco
The couple shown here is a puzzle. The Harvard anthropologist Frederick Ward Putnam, who was a top Fair official and should have known what he was talking about, described them as "the most prominent Chinese at the fair." He wrote that Ah Que had been educated by Presbyterian missionaries in San Francisco and that "she is said to be very popular" in that city. As for Wong Ki, Putnam credits him with being "the architect of the Chinese Building and the decorator and designer of the Joss House."
Putnam goes on to say that Wong Ki was "a native of Canton, where he spent his youth in studying the peculiar architecture of his country. Arriving at manhood, he concluded to cast his lot with many of his countrymen in California, and there was successful at his trade and also fortunate in meeting the beautiful Ah Que, who is now his devoted wife."
The problem is that Putnam's captions contradict other sources. Wong Ki certainly was not the most prominent male Chinese at the Fair. Hong Sling and Gee Wo Chan received more publicity, and leading members of the Moy family were more influential. True, one Wong Kee, said to be the richest man in (the Clark Street) Chinatown, was a financial backer of the Chinese Theater and Joss House. But that Wong Kee was an established Chicago merchant, not an architect-designer from San Francisco. And we have not seen anything else about Ah Que. We don't think she is same person as the "Chinese beauty," who appears on another page of this website and may have been the wife of Hong Sling, the manager of Chinese exhibits at the WCE.
Ah Que may be the featured subject in this photograph of a Chinese farm house interior, exhibited in one part of the Chinese building, but she seems to have been not at all prominent otherwise. It is hard not to conclude that a famous Harvard anthropology professor might have been a bit careless with his facts.
Credits: the Putnam book (see below) was suggested by Elinor Pearlstein. The photo of the farm house interior was discovered by Mae Ngai.
Chinese Buildings on left, WCE, 1893. The Ferris Wheel is in the center and the Austrian Building on the right
Chinese Buildings on left, COP, 1933. The Swiss Building is on the right.
"Idol" (of papier-mache?) in Joss House. He is Sha Wujing (Sandy) from the Journey to the West story
CHINA (AND CHINESE AMERICA) AT THE FAIR 觀眾眼中的中國舘
"Much was hoped by the Exposition authorities in the way of a worthy exhibit from China, but unfortunate international legislation intervened to prevent that government from taking any official part in the Fair. The Chinese village in the Midway Plaisance is the enterprise of a syndicate of [Chicago-based] Celestial merchants, and the buildings were designed by a Chicago architect. They include a theatre, restaurant, Joss house from which the Joss has departed, and bazaar; some of the tea offered for sale is priced at a hundred dollars per pound, only a few leaves being required to make a pot of the beverage. In the pavilion in the Manufactures Building are exhibited the well-known industrial and artistic productions of the empire, porcelains, ivory carvings, embroideries, textile fabrics, etc.; and in the Transportation Building a number of models of Chinese boats and other modes of conveyance."
William Walton, Art & Architecture, Philadelphia: G. Barrie, 1893. See also http://columbus.gl.iit.edu/artarch /arch.html
Bird's eye view of Chicago's Hyde Park and Jackson Park from The Book of the Fair. Click to enlarge
