Smuggling Silks in His Trousers
A crew member of the steamship Olympia attempts to bypass customs, revealing the era's aggressive enforcement against Chinese laborers.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
A piece of silk cape, concealed in the leg of his flowing trousers, is what Ah Soak, one of the Chinese members of the crew of the steamship Olympia, attempted to get ashore with Saturday night and failed. Ah Soak had dreams of being a captain of industry, and so, before leaving the Flowery Kingdom, he invested in various articles and carefully planned how he would evade the customs officers. He started for the vessel's gangway, but a man stationed there, trained to scent contraband, nabbed him. Ah Soak is now aboard the ship, minus his goods and his reputation.
“The way that Celestial had goods stowed about him would have turned a stevedore green with envy.”
This account captures the climate of intense xenophobic surveillance of Chinese laborers at the turn of the century. Customs enforcement served not just as a revenue tool, but as a mechanism for the state to police and exclude Chinese workers from participating in the local economy.
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