PIG TAILS AND GOLD DUST

The story of the Cathay of the West which began with the gold rush in 1848, and ended with the San Francisco fire at the turn of the century, this records- in highly readable terms- the early history of a fading figure, the picturesquely pigtailed Chinaman. Here is the cunning Celestial as a miner- until his expulsion from the mines when anti-Chinese sentiment increased; as cheap labor, flexible in all trades; as servants- poorly paid and transitory; as laundrymen. Here was the Chinatown with its tourist trumps of opium dens and lepers; its joss houses, slave market, gambling dives; the violence of which the Chinese were the victims, the tong wars in which they indulged; their ancestral customs, ceremonies, religion... Authentic material on a subject of specialized interest, this is nonetheless ably, amusingly handled.