Forbidden City, Chinatown
Dancer Jessie Tai Sing (of the Tai Sings) on a program cover (ca. 1942). (PC: Forbidden City, U.S.A.: Chinatown Nightclubs, 1936-1970 by Arthur Dong and Lorraine Dong).
While working as a Collections Intern for CHSA the summer of 2019, my main task was to digitize the VCR collection and create a Finding Aid for them. I watched a lot of film, ranging from minute-long news clips in which CHSA programs were mentioned to full-length documentaries such as Curtis Choyâs The Fall of I-Hotel (a true must-watch!). It may sound boring on the surface, but I truly enjoyed what I was doing. I was learning a lot about Chinese American history from diverse perspectives, and contributing to a cause I was passionate about, both as an East Asian Studies major and a Chinese American. Â
There was one documentary I watched that has stuck with me to this day: Forbidden City, U.S.A. At the time, like many people, I was only really familiar with the less âglamorousâ sides of working in Chinatown, like working at laundries or in Chinese restaurants. What this unique film explored, however, was another side of Chinatown: its history as the center of San Francisco nightlife in the 1930s and 1940s. Â
One of the most popular clubs was Forbidden City, known for its premier all-Chinese cast. There were singers and dancers advertising themselves as âThe Chinese Sinatraâ and the âChinese Sally Randâ who performed jazz songs and burlesqueâa stark contrast to Chinese American stereotypes. Of course, part of the allure for the white audience was the fetishization of Asian women, but the performers themselves were very clear about the fact that there was no sexual exploitation against them. I was especially interested in the accounts of female performers like Noel Toy, who was famous for her bubble danceâparticularly accounts of how they wrestled with conflicting cultural upbringings and racism to pursue their passion. I found it very inspiring how they held autonomy over their bodies and owned their sexuality in an industry notorious for taking advantage of vulnerable young women and also lacking Asian representation.
Noel Toy lifts bubbles and business for the Forbidden City, as in this article from Carnival Show magazine (March 1941) (PC: Forbidden City, U.S.A.: Chinatown Nightclubs, 1936-1970 by Arthur Dong and Lorraine Dong).
What drew me to the Forbidden City performers was just thatâtheir bodily autonomy in a world that has denied it to them. For me, and I believe for many young Asian American women, it is difficult to be comfortable with your own body and sexuality without running up against rigid cultural standards about how women can comport themselves or against the response at the other end of the spectrum, the fetishization of Asian women in Western culture and the male gaze. As a young Asian woman, I have never felt totally confident looking at myself in a mirror or posting cute pictures on Instagram. âGuys only like you because youâre Asian,â my brain tells me, or âYouâre not as skinny as the girls in K-dramasâ or, to bring up the pervasiveness of the Model Minority myth, âGood Asian girls arenât supposed to stand out.âÂ
Mary âButchieâ Ong, Jessie Tai Sing, Kim Wong, and Helen Kim are featured in Beauty Parade magazine (November  1943). (PC: Forbidden City, U.S.A.: Chinatown Nightclubs, 1936-1970 by Arthur Dong and Lorraine Dong).
Beyond my own experience, the gross fetishization of Asian women has far more insidious consequences. There are so many published statistics from dating apps in which white males overwhelmingly answer that they âprefer Asian femalesâ over all demographics (a sentence that grosses me out even as I type it). The fetishization of Asian American women is further normalized in film and television, where it often becomes the butt of jokes in everything from the 1987 film Full Metal Jacket's now notorious line from a Vietnamese prostitute, "me so horny, me love you long time,â to Kim Anami's 2021 âKung Fu Vaginaâ music video, rife with cultural appropriation and stereotypical portrayals of Asian women as hyper-sexual âdragon ladies.â These stereotypes remain so pervasive that when I heard about the terrible hate crime against Asian women in Atlanta, I knew that the sense of sexual ownership white men so often claim over Asian women was the obvious motive.Â
As Asian American women, when one culture objectifies us and the other shames us, it is so difficult to love ourselves and take back the power over our bodies. We should be able to express and be ourselves fully no matter what the world tells us to beâjust like the performers of Forbidden City.
Written by CHSA Development Intern Samantha Lam. Sam is a recent graduate from Oberlin College with a B.A. in East Asian Studies, with a focus in Korean Studies and a minor in Computer Science. As a daughter of two Chinese immigrants, Sam took an interest in U.S.-East Asian relations, and hopes to go to graduate school for Library and Information Science and help develop holistic and critical approaches to history education.








