TheMaterialismofBiologicalEncounters 81
Chinese response to the medical emergency and public health
measures was intense and resourceful. The Chinese population turned
out to be anything but the pliant and desultory "coolies" of popular
imagination: they hid plague-sickened people or smuggled them out of
the city while simultaneously mounting loud, occasionally violent
protests. In this civic-ethnic crisis, they even responded with a kind of
racism similar to that brought against them. Chinese businessmen and
doctorswhoweresuspectedofhaving"whitecontacts"wereostracized,
evenphysicallyassaulted(Shah141-45).Ofcourse,thereactionsbythe
Chinesecommunitywerealsomediatedbyclasslinesandclassinterests
(Shah 131-35; Kalisch 118-19, 121). As in Honolulu, the Chinese
business community in San Francisco, represented by the Chinese
Consolidated Benevolent Association (CCBA), was worried about the
viability oftheir commercialactivitiesand their reputationin thecity at
large. Around these concerns, an informal interethnic alliance was
forming which "persuaded" the BOH to lift the quarantine, once again,
asin Honolulu,prematurely.Asnew plaguecases becameknown,even
theassurancesgivenbythecitymayortohisEastCoastcolleaguesthat
San Francisco was safe did no longer suffice. The National Public
Health Service peremptorily ordered mass vaccination of the Chinese
population, and a travel ban imposed on them made it illegal for
railroads to accept as passengers "Asiatics or other races particularly
liabletothedisease"(qtd.inShah133).
However, these travel restrictions soon had to be lifted. Like the
African American Civil Rights movement decades later, the CCBA had
become extremely effective in using the court system to fight
discriminatory practices. When the travel ban had to be lifted by court
order, Public Health authorities in places across the country considered
quarantining commercial products coming in from San Francisco. In
ordertowardoffaneconomicandfinancialdisaster,thecityauthorities
decided to re-impose the original quarantine. After all, it seemed better
to impose restrictions on one's own terms than having it imposed from
outside.Again,itwascommercewhichbroughtChineseandCaucasians
together; the city's Board of Trade raised money to finance on-the-spot
sanitary measures (Shah 139-40, 144-45). Some of this money was
coming from Caucasians who employed Chinese workers in factories,
canneries, or on farms. These measures, like the abortive attempt at a
massvaccinationfueledtheresentmentfromtheChineseworkingclass.