Battle of the Third Reich Chapter 346: Chinatown (4)

Human beings become social animals, which is entirely the result of natural biological evolution. The earliest human races were created purely to hunt prey that alone or a few individuals cannot fight against, and at the same time resist predators born at the top of the biological chain.

Human beings are creatures prone to chaos, often indulging in their own desires and biological instincts, especially the common nature of these earth species for survival and reproduction, which is magnified a thousand times in humans.

The views on ethnic groups and the evolution process in the past dynasties in China can indeed be listed as a special research topic and write a great book.

Self-cultivation and family management, Confucianism is still very keen on issues. In ancient China, the social structure is the individual, the family, and the country eventually extends to the entire world. Without mentioning the most basic element of the individual, the family should be constructed. The basic unit of a society, and when a family develops to its extreme, it will be upgraded to a clan.

Modern humans often gather into groups based on common points such as race, belief, occupation, and so on. In the oldest and most primitive group in history, the element that distinguishes intimacy is blood.

Having the same blood does not mean more unity, but from the perspective of ethnic survival and reproduction, ethnic groups with more blood relatives are usually more competitive in the cruel evolutionary history.

In the Ming and Qing dynasties of Chinese history, the concept of clan has evolved from a pure blood connection to the same surname or even the same nationality. The result of the expansion of the scope is that the folk clan power reached the peak of the development of feudal society and became the country at that time. An important part of the political structure.

The government's control over regions often only reaches the county level, and the bottom countryside is managed jointly by clans and squires in various places. This structure even lasted until the Republic of China.

In the beginning, these Chinese workers who arrived in the United States for gold panning, when they came to overseas where their language and living habits were all different in all aspects, of course they would instinctively hug together to keep warm.

In addition to resisting external pressure, competition within the ethnic group is also an unavoidable issue. There will also be conflicts among Chinese workers for various reasons, so they join an asylum group and become every Chinese worker. Things that will come to mind first.

The local area has become the most basic identification criterion, because coming from the same place means that you can speak the same language. Don’t underestimate this. At that time, even the Mandarin in Manchu and Qing Dynasty was divided into four or five kinds. There were dozens of dialects less spoken in Guangdong, Guangxi, Fujian and Zhejiang. In some isolated mountainous areas, "five li different tones, ten li different tones" occurred. In the situation, two villages not far apart may have completely different pronunciation and pronunciation.

These most primitive spontaneous associations have a rather rough organizational structure. In fact, it is difficult to provide any help to the members, let alone provide any guarantee for hard work.

Some coolies did succeed in the gold rush. After completing the contract and paying off their arrears, they returned to their hometowns with a rich harvest, built houses and landed there, and lived a wealthy local life. People These successful people are respected as "Jinshanbo".

Seeing these successful examples, a large number of farmers who also dream of making a fortune embarked on a journey to the "Golden Land". These people are no longer the former stragglers, and in many places even the whole village. Young and Zhuang, organized a group to board the ship to the United States. For certain teams that are qualified to form an "organizational system," the emergence of a dedicated "management" class means that clan power from China has landed in America for the first time.

At the peak of the gold rush, there were more than 50,000 gold prospectors 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 shops and traditional Chinese medicine shops, of course, are also indispensable for a number of more traditional black industries, such as notorious gambling stalls, prostitutes and opium shops.

At that time, the most common Chinese clan group was the public office. The most basic requirement for participants was the same surname and the same clan, so the public office was named the county hall of each clan. Because some surnames are not many in number, there are cases where several surnames join together to form a common office.

Other than that, the largest Chinese group will belong to various places in the United States. Although it sounds like a domestic association, it is being established

In the beginning, the two were completely different in nature.

At that time, the export of coolies was a profitable business, which was completely monopolized by some foreign firms in Hong Kong and Guangzhou. Except for the local brokers at the ports that opened the port, local Chinese merchants were not qualified to intervene.

But with the increase in the number of exported labor, the foreign bank needs some Chinese as intermediaries to be responsible for the management and supervision of coolies in the United States. The other task is to collect bills from the labor demand side and prevent workers from escaping during work. By the way, Do some illegal work to seize the site and protect the company's interests.

However, after some intermediaries or managers gained a foothold in the industry, they abandoned their original foreign company employers and started their own business of recruiting coolies from China.

These managers have transformed from coolie managers into coolie importers. By virtue of their domestic relations and some unspeakable means, they soon monopolized the local Chinese industrial import business.

These coolie importers united and built a series of clubs in San Francisco according to their hometowns and then borrowed from the form of the Chinese Association.

These guild halls will recruit coolie laborers in their home regions, and sign "credit" contracts with these laborers. When coolie arrives in the United States, the first thing to do is to "register" as a member at the club where it belongs, and sign a clear debt agreement, and then the office will assign it to various labor contractors to work.

In addition to collecting repayments from Coolie, the club will also charge corresponding "membership fees." At the same time, the club is responsible for the life safety of Coolie, and provides medical and legal assistance, and promises that if Coolie dies due to an accident, the club will Will be responsible for sending his body home. Because the club is legally the creditor of these coolies, if a coolie wants to buy a ticket to return to the country, he must obtain a debt settlement certificate issued by the club, otherwise the shipping company will not sell the ticket to any coolie.

The club can make a lot of money on every coolie. In addition to the previous credit and membership fees, they will also sell various daily commodities smuggled from China to coolies at high prices and work as laborers. When they want to send money to their home through the clubhouse, they have to charge an expensive "handling fee", and most industries that provide services to workers have "shares" in the clubhouse.

At the same time, the clubhouse also employs a group of professional thugs. In addition to the security of the clubhouse, these people are mainly responsible for monitoring and supervising coolies. If anyone escapes during work, they will be hunted down.

Those merchants who sucked coolie's blood and sweat, in the eyes of Coolie, are all respected Jinshan squires. There is no other reason, because they are doing a monopoly business, except for those local coolies, they refuse to recruit any foreigners. Therefore, more than 90% of the Chinese coolies who came to the United States during that period were farmers from Guangdong and Guangxi.

San Francisco has established more than ten guild halls. After competition and annexation, the six guild halls of Sanyi, Gangzhou, Renhe, Yanghe, Ningyang, and Hehe were finally retained~IndoMTL.com~ These six mansions are basically responsible for the entire coolie business in California, which can almost be regarded as covering the sky with one hand 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 the golden mountains."

Seeing a large number of mud legs rushing to Jinshan, many people returned from Yingyang with their pockets, and those brave and fierce people in the rivers and lakes, how could they not feel upset and greedy.

Hongmen Zhigongtang was the first Jianghu Tangkou to show its name in the Americas. At this time, even though Hongmen was branded as "Anti-Qing and Revival", it had already transformed into a pure Jianghu gang.

Zhi Gongtang set an example for other energetic social groups. Soon a group of "tangkou" of various kinds were established in the Chinese gathering area like bamboo shoots after a rain.

The thugs under the six major companies were either originally gang members, or they were not opponents of these professional gangs. Soon these guild halls lost control of the Chinese community, and Chinatown immediately fell into gang disorder. During the war era, the Americans called this period a "family war."

ps: Thank you for your support.