Blog

A recent study published by Cambridge University Press, in its peer-reviewed American Antiquity journal, focused on Los Angeles’ Old Chinatown from the 1890s to the 1930s, and analyzed how the Chinese created a self-reliant network of food acquisition, distribution and consumption that linked pork butchers, ranchers and rice growers.

The Sam Sing butcher shop – and other businesses like it – provided the Chinese with employment, job training, housing, banking, and immigration and other social service  assistance.

The study was conducted by Jiajing Wang, an anthropological archaeologist at Dartmouth College; Laura Wai Ng, an historical anthropologist at Grinnell College (whose previous work include a study of the San Bernardino and Riverside Chinatowns and their links to Gom Benn Village), and Tamara Serrao-Leiva, chief deputy and curator at the San Bernardino County Museum.

Their findings were based on archival research and dental calculus analysis on pig bones and teeth recovered from archaeological digs at Los Angeles’ Old Chinatown, which was adjacent to El Pueblo de Los Angeles – the historic heart of the city – and demolished in the 1930s to make way for the Union Station rail hub. 

Jiajing Wang of Dartmouth College told the South China Morning Post, in a March 2, 2024, article: “Analysis of pig bones from the Los Angeles Chinatown suggests that the residents likely sold the more profitable parts to people outside Chinatown for additional income while consuming cheaper cuts themselves.”

From Gold to Pigs

That pigs played such a key part in Chinese communities comes as no surprise. Like the familiar basketball “proverb,” a Chinese feast isn’t over until the roast pig is served. Pigs were first domesticated in China 8,000 years ago.

Pork is arguably the favorite meat of the Chinese. Pigs are also super-efficient farm animals. They can be raised in small spaces and fed with slop or even human excrement.

The Chinese hadn’t come to America for the hogs. They were recruited to work California’s gold mountains; then urged to stay and build the Western railroads. By 1882, they were being shown the door. The racism was fierce. 

Still many stayed. And more came. It was hard, no less so for Chinese Americans who operated a business. They couldn’t be citizens. They didn’t have the full protection of the law. They couldn’t own property. Yes, they worked laundries. They grew vegetables. Within Chinatowns they operated Chinese-to-Chineses dry goods shops, housing and temples. There were also curio shops, gambling halls and worse.

In Los Angeles’ Old Chinatown, one of the longest-lived businesses was a meat market. For nearly a century, men from Gom Benn Village operated the Sam Sing butcher shop in Los Angeles and thrived – thanks to its locally raised pigs. 

Anti-Chinese Boycotts

It wasn’t easy. Chinese entrepreneurship in the pork business faced significant challenges due to anti-Chinese sentiment.

Beginning in the 1880s, unionized white butchers orchestrated public events aimed at “taking the pork trade out of the hands of the Chinese,” according to newspaper accounts. They boycotted anyone who patronized Chinese dealers, and discharged Chinese butchers from pork packing firms. 

White butchers openly promoted the unfounded notion that “Chinese-grade meat ” was inferior to the American-style “corn-fed pork.” These anti-Chinese pork movements presented significant obstacles for Chinese migrants seeking access to the pork business, leading to a decline in the Chinese pork industry in some parts of California. At the same time, some Anglo butchers may have refused to sell meat to Chinese customers due to widespread anti-Chinese racism and prejudice. 

Somehow the Chinese butchers of Los Angeles’ Old Chinatown managed to engage in small-scale, local pig husbandry. 

More than a Village

In the heyday of Los Angeles’ Old Chinatown, 1890 to 1910, it was something of a village – 15 or so streets and alleys, perhaps 200 building units and as many as 3,000 residents. The district included a Chinese opera theater, three temples, a newspaper (for a while), and later, its own telephone exchange. Also at least four butcher shops including Sam Sing.

Wang, Ng and Serrao-Leiva examined immigration records, business directories, and previous archival research to find that the butcher shops included Ong Quong Yee on 802 Alameda Street, owned by Way Lee in the mid-1890s; another was the Quong Yee Lung Chinese grocery and butcher shop on 761½ Alameda Street, owned by Loui Low in the mid-1890s; there was an unnamed butcher shop owned by Wong On, located on 427 North Los Angeles Street, that was in operation by at least 1896; and there was the Sam Sing & Company butcher shop, a store that dated back to at least 1890 and was located on 418 North Los Angeles Street and operated by Wong Done. 

Of these, the Sam Sing & Company butcher shop has the most extensive historical documentation.

Partners from Gom Benn

Between the 1890s and 1930s, Sam Sing had several addresses but was always located on the 400-block of North Los Angeles Street. The shop was run by people with the surname Wong, and one of the butchers was named Wong Done, who was from the Gom Benn Village cluster.

The butcher shop would continue to be operated by people from Gom Benn through the late 20th century, although it would eventually move to North Spring Street under the ownership of Wong Chun Sing AKA Toy Wing Wong and his son Albert.

Sam Sing is very likely to have raised and slaughtered its own pigs. According to immigration files, Wong Coon, also known as Wong Bing Sai, worked in the Sam Sing butcher shop for at least three decades starting in 1902. He noted in a 1902 immigration interview for his employee Wong Done that three partners were active in the store, whereas the fourth worked primarily at their slaughterhouse. Specifically, he mentioned that Wong Done was the person who “slaughters the hogs at the ranch for our store.” 

Photographic Evidence

Although the location of the ranch is unknown, a digitized photograph from a collection of photos taken in Los Angeles Chinatown around the turn of the 20th century provides further evidence of pig raising and pig slaughtering in or near Chinatown. The photo shows three Chinese men holding down a pig by its back legs. 

It is possible that other Chinatown butchers purchased their pigs from Sam Sing’s pig ranch, or that the ranch was a cooperative among several butcher shops. This is supported by a statement made in 1896 by Wong On, who owned a butcher shop on the same street as the Sam Sing butcher shop. An English transcription of Wong On’s interview in Chinese noted that he “killed hogs and retailed the meat” and that he carried some beef in his shop, but “not much” because “Chinamen like hog meat best.” 

Although the size of Chinese pig ranches is unknown, butcher Loui Low told immigration officers, “Sometimes I have 50 hogs and sometimes 20.” 

Dental Calculus

Wang, Ng and Serrao-Leiva analyzed pig dental calculus, archaeological data, and immigration files and concluded that there was a self-reliant network of pork supply and distribution among Los Angeles Chinatown residents. 

Their study of the Chinatown pig bones show that these hogs ate rice, and also potentially some wheat, barley, and other locally available grasses. Pigs with this diet were most likely raised locally in California rather than from major livestock centers in the Midwest, where maize was the main source of feed.

The discovery of rice husk particles from pig teeth strongly suggests that the pigs analyzed in this study were raised by Chinese migrant communities rather than sourced from other local ethnic groups. Late nineteenth-century newspaper reports reveal that American hog farmers in California predominantly relied on barley and alfalfa for feeding, with occasional supplements such as skim milk and Indian corn. 

This pig-rearing method relying on rice aligns with historical accounts from early 20th century China. The practice of using rice bran as pig feed has been especially widespread in the rice-growing regions of southern China, the homeland of early Chinese diaspora communities, where rice farming flourished. 

A Key Rice Network

The presence of rice-leaf particles also suggests the existence of a larger Chinese business network in California, possibly involving the local cultivation and transportation of rice plants. 

Historical newspaper reports from the early 20th century indicate that Chinese individuals owned and operated several successful rice fields in the Sacramento Valley and nearby areas. By-products from these fields, such as rice leaves and husks, were likely sold to pig ranchers and Chinatown residents as animal feed. Although it remains unknown whether there were rice farms in the Los Angeles region, the presence of rice-leaf particles lends further support that the pigs were raised locally by Chinese migrants.

Additional archaeological data and information from immigration files suggest that the pigs in Los Angeles Chinatown likely came from two sources: Chinatown residents themselves and Chinese pig ranches in or near Chinatown.

Bigtime Meatpacking

Besides raising pigs in their backyards, Chinese migrants might have been incentivized to operate their own pig ranches to sell some of their livestock to Cudahy, the large Midwestern meatpacking company that opened a plant in Los Angeles in 1893 at 803 E. Macy Street, less than a mile from Chinatown. 

During the latter half of the 19th century, the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad and the rapid industrialization of the meat industry led to the development of refrigerated rail cars, which facilitated the expansion of meat products to distant locations. 

These developments opened new markets for Midwest livestock and maize producers in the American West. The large Midwest meatpacking company Cudahy also looked westward and established a meatpacking plant in Los Angeles at the end of the 19th century. 

Newspaper advertisements reveal that Cudahy requested that local pig farmers from Los Angeles and Orange Counties sell their pigs to the meatpacking plant; the plant sought to slaughter 500 pigs each day, but they complained that only 200–300 were being brought to them daily. So Cudahy may have bought from Chinese hog ranchers, too. 

Cudahy did not likely compete directly with local Chinese butcher shops who were selling fresh pork meat to consumers, whereas the meatpacking plant was focused on making lard and cured pork products such as ham, bacon, sausages, and tang, a product similar to Spam. 

Social Services, too

The historical record also reveals that stores such as Chinese-owned butcher shops provided important social and financial services to Chinese migrants during the Chinese Exclusion Era (1882-1943). For example, the Sam Sing butcher shop assisted Chinese immigrants, especially those with the surname Wong, living in Los Angeles and as far inland as Riverside, California. Wong Chet (also spelled Wong Chit), the store’s manager in 1895, was formerly a merchant in Riverside, and he provided testimony verifying the identities of several Chinese migrants seeking to obtain return certificates to ensure that they could enter the United States after visiting China. 

One of these migrants was Wong Yee, a vegetable farmer in Riverside who kept his money at the Sam Sing store, which indicates that the butcher shop provided some banking services. Like most Chinese businesses, employees lived in the stores in which they were employed, and the 1900 census listed Sam Sing butchers Wong Nuen and Wong Done as residents at their place of employment. 

Also based on the 1900 census, two additional people, Wong Tue and Wong Chew, were recorded as lodgers at the same address, an indication that the Sam Sing butcher shop also served as a boarding house. Indeed, farmer Wong Tue of Los Angeles testified to immigration officials that he lived at the Sam Sing store and paid $1.25 a week for meals and a bed. 

Based on the 1940 census, my father, Bing K. Wong, and my uncle, Bing T. Wong, lived at the Sam Sing store in the 1930s, according to the 1940 census. Both of them listed Toy Wing Wong as a contact.

Providing Opportunities

These examples show how reliant Chinese migrants were on Chinese-owned stores for surviving in a society that was vehemently anti-Chinese. Chinese butcher shops provided not only a source of meat for Los Angeles Chinatown residents but also economic opportunities in a racially discriminatory society. 

Butcher stores employed laborers who worked for the meat shop, and they allowed for multiple Chinese migrants to become partners in the business, which gave them merchant status so that they were exempted from the Exclusion Act prohibition that blocked Chinese laborers from coming to the U.S. 

Despite these challenges, the study by Wang, Ng and Serrao-Levia concludes that the butchers of Los Angeles’s Old Chinatown were adept at establishing a self-reliant network of food acquisition and consumption. 

This network brought together Chinatown residents, pork butchers, ranchers, rice growers, and business dealers, providing Chinese migrants with the means to secure their own sources of fresh pork while also offering employment, housing, banking, and immigration assistance to their fellow community members. Moreover, this network may have helped Chinese migrants avoid confrontations with anti-Chinese vendors. 

By overcoming the obstacles presented by anti-Chinese sentiment through this network, Chinese migrants in Los Angeles exhibited their resilience and capacity to survive and thrive even in the face of racism.