A Cultural Crossroads at the “Bloody Angle”

Abstract

In the early twentieth century in New York City, the tongs of Chinatown established themselves as one of the most resilient, and clever, organized crime enterprises in Lower Manhattan. Through spectacular violence and shrewd political dealings, they survived by adapting to, and helping to shape, the evolution of Chinese America. Groups like the Hip Sings and On Leongs, inspiring awe and fear, spiced a chaotic urban stew in which race, class, and politics bubbled into a peculiarly American amalgam. But the tongs were never mere street criminals. These sophisticated organizations represented a formative period in New York’s Chinatown and the Chinese American community. Though rooted in Chinese culture, the tong was a uniquely American response to the racist oppression and political disenfranchisement of the Chinese, who were criminalized and legally excluded under immigration codes until the 1940s. The changes that the tongs underwent, in both their public image and their economic and political activities, reflected evolving, often contradictory, relationships with local law enforcement, civil society, and transnational political movements. Previous scholarship on the tongs is sparse, yet the tong wars appear in numerous literary, cultural, and analytical works on Chinese American history. The article examines the histories of two rival tongs with similar political underpinnings, the Hip Sings (協勝堂) and On Leongs (安良堂), who negotiated cultural and political boundaries to build power in the emerging Chinese American community. During the Exclusion Era, which lasted roughly from the late 1800s through 1943, the tongs consolidated their power by curating elements of tradition and Western urban society. In response to local, national, and global social change, the tongs continually honed and recast their public roles in Chinatown as the community came of age in modern America.