A Chinese American Describes Going to School in Chinatown

San Francisco's first public school for Chinese immigrants, known first as the Chinese School and then as the Oriental School, began operating in 1859. The school intended to segregate Chinese children from white children in the city's public schools. In 1924, after years of protest by Chinese residents who found the name "Oriental School" offensive, it was renamed the Commodore Stockton School. The first excerpt is from an oral history interview with Thomas Chinn, who attended the school; the second is from an 1896 issue of the San Francisco periodical The Wave, which comments more generally on Chinatown's children.

Thomas Chinn Recalls Chinatown’s “Oriental School”

Q: In these five years, between the time you arrived in San Francisco and the time you went to China, what schools were you in?

A: There again I have to tell you that there was only one public school that the Chinese could attend, and that was the Oriental School, which was located in Chinatown for the Chinese children. I was there from 1919 until 1924, when Father sent me to China for a Chinese education. . . .

Q: Did that school have good teachers?

A: As good as could be expected. There were some wonderful teachers. My wife remembers a lot of them. In fact, strange as it may seem, in 1921 my wife was just thirteen years old, and she won for the Chinese community the best essay written about--they called it at the time the Community Chest. She won first prize for all of the grammar schools in the City. . . . I think the San Francisco Call newspaper had all the schools in the city listed, and her name was in front, and her picture was on the front page, which was something that had never been thought possible before that time.

Q: Were they all Caucasian teachers?

A: There were no Chinese teachers from 1915 to 1926, I think it was, when Alice Fong Yu became the first qualified Chinese teacher who was finally hired. But in the beginning she was not hired as a teacher; she was hired as a teacher, but she was never given a chance to teach. She was, you might say, the principal's secretary--in other words, she did office work.

Q: But then she became a teacher?

A: Yes, in some of the future years. When teachers got sick or something she filled in, and gradually, when they felt enough confidence in her--that she would not start talking Chinese to her Chinese students . . .

Q: There was no such thing as bilingual education?

A: No, no, not at all. [laughs] . . . When we got out of school we had another problem. Almost all of the Chinese boys and girls, when they got through with American school about three o’clock or thereabouts, came home or played around and got a quick bite. At five o’clock, generally it's compulsory among all the Chinese children to go to Chinese school to learn your Chinese culture, your Chinese language--reading, writing. From five o’clock to almost eight o’clock you go to Chinese school. So you can imagine what a difficult problem these Chinese children had. It threw me for a loop, because I could never assimilate both. So as a young boy I became quite a poor student, you might say, of Chinese . . .

Q: You did not go to Chinese language school, then?

A: Oh, yes. I went, but only halfheartedly, and generally playing truant.

“Child Life in Chinatown: The Wiles and Ways of the Youthful Celestials”

Indeed, there is very little in a Chinese child’s life that a “Christian kid” need envy unless it’s having a queue to jump rope with. But down in Chinatown they don’t jump rope, or Follow My Leader . . . No little Mongolian ever drags a rattling train of cars after him, playing he’s the Southern Pacific, or whizzes down a hill with his feet on the front axle of a coaster. They don’t know a game when they see it. . . . They’re bright enough, and amazingly quick to learn, but it just isn’t in them to play. . . . If you invite them to a Christmas tree, as good people do, they sit around it in stolid silence, staring at everything, but without uttering a single whoop. . . .

It is very amusing to see the little China boys in school on the afternoons their native language is taught. They all study at the top of their lungs, and the teacher can tell by the sound if even one stops. Each learns something by heart—a passage out of Confucius, perhaps—then comes up and stands with his back to the teacher while he recites, a very trying position, for mistakes are promptly and forcibly corrected. Children are never spoilt in Chinatown, and their personal dignity gets little consideration. No China boy ever ‘sassed his pa,’ and they do what they’re told like little automatons. . . .