Chapter 346 China Town (4)
The becoming of humans is entirely the result of the natural evolution of organisms. The earliest human groups were purely created to hunt prey that alone or a few individuals could not resist, and at the same time resist those predators born to live at the top of the biological chain.
Humans are creatures who tend to be confused and often indulge in their own desires and biological instincts, especially the nature shared by these earth species, which is magnified by a thousand times in humans.
The views and evolutionary processes of ethnic groups in China in history can be listed as a special research topic and a great work will be written.
Confucianism is still very sensitive to problems when cultivating oneself, managing the family, governing the country and pacifying the world. In ancient China, social structure was an individual, and then the country eventually extended to the whole world. Putting aside the most basic element of individuals, the family should build the basic unit of a society, and when a family develops to the extreme, it will be upgraded to a clan.
Modern humans often gather together groups based on common points such as race, belief, occupation, etc., while the oldest and most primitive groups in history, the element that distinguishes closeness and distantness is blood.
Having the same bloodline does not mean that it will be more united, but from the perspective of ethnic survival and reproduction, ethnic groups with more blood relatives are usually more competitive in the cruel evolutionary historical process.
In the Ming and Qing dynasties, the concept of clans had evolved from pure blood connections to the same surname or even the same family. The result of the expansion of the scope was that the power of folk clans reached the peak of feudal society's development and became an important part of the national political structure at that time.
The government's control over the region can often only reach the county level, and the lower-level villages are managed by the local clans and gentry. This structure even continued until the Republic of China period.
At first, these Chinese workers who arrived in the United States to make gold and went overseas with different language and living habits in all aspects, and of course they would instinctively join together to keep warm.
In addition to resisting external pressure, competition within the ethnic group is also an unavoidable issue. Chinese workers will also conflict for various reasons, so joining a group for shelter has become the first thing every Chinese workers will think of.
The hometown has become the most basic identification standard, because it comes from the same place, which means that one can speak the same language. Don’t underestimate this point. At that time, the Qing Dynasty even divided the Manchu dialect into four or five types. There were at least dozens of dialects in Guangdong, Guangxi and Fujian and Zhejiang. Some closed mountainous areas even had "different pronunciations of five miles and different tones of ten miles". The pronunciations of the two villages not far apart may be completely different.
These most primitive spontaneous fellow villagers have a very rough organizational structure, and it is actually difficult to provide any help to their members, let alone what guarantees they provide in the work of coolies.
Some coolies did succeed in the gold rush. After completing the contract and paying off their debts, they returned to their hometowns with rich gains, built houses and landed in the local area, and lived a wealthy life as a rich local tyrant. People respected these successful people as "Jinshanbo".
Seeing these successful role models, a large number of farmers who also dream of making money embarked on a journey to the "Golden Land". These people are no longer the scattered soldiers and brave men before. Many places and even the whole village and the whole village formed a group to board a ship to the United States. Some teams with conditions that formed a "organization" have emerged, which means that the clan forces from China have landed on the American land for the first time.
At the peak of the gold rush, there were more than 50,000 gold diggers from China. In addition to the miners at the bottom, there were also a large number of traditional industries that provided services to these miners, such as Chinese restaurants, barber shops, tailor shops, shoe making shops and traditional Chinese medicine clinics. Of course, there are also a number of more traditional black industries, such as the infamous gambling stalls, prostitutes and opium halls.
The most common Chinese clan community at that time was the office. The most basic condition for participants was the same surname and family, so the office would be given the county hall name of each clan. Because some surnames were not large in number, there were still several surnames that united together to form a office.
In addition, the largest Chinese group belongs to the American guild halls in various places. Although it sounds like a domestic fellow countrymen, at the beginning of its establishment, the two were essentially completely different.
At that time, coolie exports were a profitable business, completely monopolized by some foreign companies in Hong Kong and Guangzhou. Except for the local brokers who worked as accomplices in the ports, local Chinese merchants were not qualified to intervene.
However, as the number of exported labor increases, foreign companies need some Chinese as intermediaries to be responsible for the management and supervision of coolies in the United States. Their additional tasks are to collect accounts from labor demanders while preventing workers from escaping during work, and to do some black jobs that seize territory and protect the interests of the company.
However, after some middlemen or managers gained a foothold in the industry, they put aside their original foreign company employers and started the business of recruiting coolies from China.
These managers transformed from coolie managers into coolie importers. With their relationships in China and some indescribable means, they quickly monopolized the local Chinese workers' import business.
These coolie importers united and built a series of guild halls in San Francisco based on their respective hometowns and the Chinese Association of Hometowns.
These guilds will recruit cool laborers in their respective hometowns and sign "credit" contracts with these guilds. When coolies arrive in the United States, the first thing they have to do is to "register" to become a member at the guild, and sign a clear debt agreement, and then the agency will allocate them to work at various labor contractors.
In addition to collecting repayments from Coolie, the guild hall will also charge corresponding "membership fees". At the same time, the guild hall will be responsible for the life safety of Coolie and provide medical and legal assistance. It also promises that once Coolie dies due to an accident, the guild hall will be responsible for sending his body back to his hometown. Because the guild hall is the creditor of these coolies in law, if a coolie wants to buy a ticket to return to China, it must obtain the debt repayment certificate issued by the guild hall, otherwise the shipping company will not sell the ticket to any coolie.
The guild hall can make a lot of money from every coolie. In addition to the previous credit bills and membership fees, they will also sell various daily necessities smuggled from China to the coolie at a high price. When workers want to send money to their families through the guild hall, they also charge an expensive "processing fee", and most of the industries that provide services to labor have "shares" of clubs.
At the same time, the guild hall also hired a group of professional thugs. In addition to being responsible for the security guards of the guild hall, these people are mainly responsible for monitoring and monitoring the coolies. If someone escapes during work, these people will be hunted down.
In the eyes of coolie, those merchants who sucked the blood and sweat of coolie were all respected Jinshan gentry. The reason was that they were doing monopoly business. Except for those local coolie in their hometowns, they refused to recruit any foreigners. Therefore, more than 90% of the Chinese coolie who came to the United States during that period were farmers from Guangdong and Guangxi.
San Francisco established more than ten guild halls. After competing and annexing, the six guild halls of Sanyi, Gangzhou, Renhe, Yanghe, Ningyang and Hehe were retained. At that time, the entire coolie business in California was basically the responsibility of these six mansions, and it could almost be called a hand covering the sky in the Chinese community.
But the good times didn't last long, and the situation soon changed because a group of local and vibrant social groups also came out to "break through the Kingsoft".
Seeing a large number of mud legs rushing to Jinshan, many people who return with their pockets of Yingyang, how could those brave and fierce people in the world not feel upset or jealous?
The Hongmen Zhigongtang was the first Jianghutang to reveal its name in America. Although Hongmen was hung with a brand called "Anti-Qing and Restoring Ming Dynasty", it had already transformed into a pure Jianghu gang.
Zhigongtang set an example for other dynamic social groups, and soon a group of various "tangs" were established in the Chinese gathering area like mushrooms after a rain.
The thugs under the six major companies were either gang members or were not opponents of these professional gangs at all. Soon these gangs lost control of the Chinese community, and Chinatown immediately fell into an era of gang warfare, which Americans called this period a "campaign."
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Chapter completed!