Dragon Stories: The Bowl of Powfah. The Hundredth Maiden.
(Chinese-Americans). (Deering, Mary Clare Craft). DRAGON STORIES: THE BOWL OF POWFAH. THE HUNDREDTH MAIDEN. Narratives of the rescues and romances of Chinese slave girls. Page decorations by Pacific Presbyterian Staff Artist. Photos by Dr. Arnold Genthe, San Francisco, and R.E. Wales, Oakland, Cal. Oakland: Pacific Presbyterian Publishing Company, 1908. Oblong 8vo. (29) pp. Six mounted half-tone illustrations. Each page with wide margins illustrated with drawings. Original embossed orange and black pictorial wrappers, cord stitching. With the original mailing envelope repeating the pictorial cover. Fine condition.
A stunning piece of book production sponsored by the Chinese Presbyterian Mission and Girls Home in San Francisco, dramatizing the plight of young Chinese girls smuggled into San Francisco where they were sold into slavery, to work as domestics until they were old enough to be forced into prostitution. In either case they were subjected to horrendous treatment, often leading to early death. The narrative describes scene after scene not only of abuse but also of dramatic rescues by a missionary acting in concert with the police. The tales are fictional but the situation was a real and, judging from the historical evidence, one that would be difficult to exaggerate.
With the growth of Chinese immigration "Yellow Slavery" became a serious social evil in California. Public officials tended to look the other way, but there were some who did not. Foremost among them was Donaldina Cameron (1869-1968) who for decades, as superintendent of the Presbyterian Mission in San Francisco, carried on a crusade against this traffic. Though not mentioned by name, it is her daring feats of rescue—like Carrie Nation, she was armed and dangerous, at least to closed doors that could be opened with a hatchet—that are described here.
The Chinese Presbyterian Mission, destroyed during the San Francisco Earthquake, was rebuilt in 1908 at 920 Sacramento Street, where it stands today. cf. Mildred Crowl Martin, Chinatown's Angry Angel: The Story of Donaldina Cameron, Palo Alto, 1977. Three of the six plates are by Arnold Genthe, copyrighted 1908, and taken no doubt from Pictures of Old Chinatown, published in the same year. The "bowl of powfah" refers to a toxic solution that a slave girl ingested to end her misery, only to be saved and ultimately brought to the mission. OCLC lists 7 copies, all but one (Princeton) in California.
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