Volleyball

The Immigration Act meant that most of the Chinese in Chinatown were effectively trapped there. They could not leave the country if they ever had a thought of returning to the U.S. after their travels. Furthermore, discrimination and language barrier made the world outside Chinatown a hostile place. While Chinese laundries existed throughout the city and the state, the men and few women who worked in them were not an integral part of the social life of the surrounding community. They may have been fixtures in the community, providing a valuable service to their customers, but like any other impersonal fixture, such as a trolley or sewing machine, their inclusion in a social gathering or event was unlikely. To retain their humanity and a semblance of society, they had to fall on their own resources.

Though their world might not have been an especially welcoming place, it was made all the more difficult to bear for loneliness. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 had started it, and subsequent immigration legislation had made it increasingly difficult for a Chinese immigration to start a family. Part of the intent of the 1882 law was to eliminate the Chinese community in the U.S. entirely. To an extent, the Act and its successors succeeded. The 1890 Census counted 107,488 Chinese in the U.S. By 1940 the total Chinese population in the U.S. had declined to 77,504.

As a result of the Exclusion Act and subsequent anti-immigration legislation, Chinatowns in the U.S. were virtually average, nearly three Chinese male for every Chinese female. A few merchants, diplomats and scholars were able to emigrate with their wives and children, but on the whole, the life of the working Chinese immigrant man was spent mostly in the company of other men.

Recreation for laundry workers was extremely limited. Laundry work usually meant 10 to 18-hour days, 6 days a week. Sunday was their only day off. On Sunday they could do what they liked, but there was not much to do. The usual "American" entertainments were either prohibited to them, or did not make much sense. Usually they "hung out," visited Chinatown or visited with other laundry workers.

Henry Oi was one of those young laundry workers who participated in the original tournaments. At 76 he is now retired from business, but is still very active in the life of community. As a young man, he worked in his father's laundry. He still remembers the hard work, long hours, and how little he earned. He still remembers that on his day off from the laundry, he would hang out with other laundry workers at a local drug store on the corner of Beach and Washington Streets in Boston Chinatown, but this was not very interesting. Life for the young people of Chinatown was mostly "a matter of no time and no money" he says.

Some of them wanted to spend the few free hours they had to themselves doing something which was not breaking the law or getting into trouble. But more than this, they wanted something that would promote friendship. Friendship is essential to society. One thing they found they could do was go to the Chinatown YMCA.

The facilities of the Chinatown Y were quite limited. There, the young men found a table tennis table and a backyard. In this backyard they could play volleyball.

About 1937, people in New York heard about the games and joined in. The visits became an annual event over the Labor Day weekend because of a special Labor Day round trip excursion fare to New York which cost only two dollars. The three groups would socialize in the host city for the day, and then return home. After a while, however, Providence could not maintain a team and so, around 1939, the visits to Providence stopped.

In 1939 or 1940, a team from Newark, New Jersey joined the games. The three cities made up a group of five teams, three from New York and one each from New Jersey and Boston. Two of the New York teams are recalled to have had patriotic names: the Ching Nin Gou Kwok Tuan, or Ching Gou for short; and the Sham Man Chu Yi Ching Nin Tuan, or Sham Ching for short, in recognition of the struggle against the Japanese invasion of China. One of the New York teams was composed of Chinese students (called the "Chinese Students Team"). The Boston team was simply called the Bo Ching, the Boston Team.

Regardless of who won, the main purpose for the games was to develop friendship among Chinese. With the inclusion of the Chinese Students Team, this goal was furthered and expanded. Now, not only were laundry workers getting to know each other, but the tournament was also bringing them together with members of the "intelligentsia."

The purpose that brought the first players together and the first cities together, then, was to promote understanding and friendship. Since Chinese in the U.S. were few in number and their movements generally restricted to travelling to work and to Chinatown, the tournaments helped to relieve their isolation and that of their communities. In those days travel and communication were not as simple or convenient as they are today. Air travel was not accessible to a poor person; a cross country flight took 15 ½ hours and cost $149.50. Not everyone owned a telephone, and few people owned cars. The games broke down barriers of distance between cities and barriers of class between laundry workers and privileged students. At the conclusion of each tournament all the teams and players would go to a restaurant, eating together and mixing freely, regardless of what team they played for.

The 1939 games between Boston, New York and Newark, some say, was the first tournament. Others say that the first true tournament was held in 1944. There does not seem to be a record of who won this first tournament, though Henry Oi says that there were champions in all the tournaments and that trophies were always awarded. One list of tournaments does not indicate a tournament winner until 1957, when the New York Lum Ying were the winners.

By 1961 there were a sufficient number of American-born Chinese, who were old enough, to form the first "jook sing" team to participate in the tournament. This team was the Knights athletic club from Boston. Until that time the teams were comprised predominantly of immigrants. The entry of the Knights into the tournament was greeted enthusiastically. Subsequently, the Washington C.Y.C. and the New York Freemasons formed American-born teams to participate the following year.

The tournament and its participants changed with the times. The participation of Canadian teams was acknowledged by changing the name of the tournament was changed to the " Annual North American Chinese Invitational Volleyball Tournament." As the Chinese laundries declined in number, more players from other parts of Chinatown society began to participate. Restaurants began sponsoring and fielding teams. In some ways, these teams had a more difficult time since restaurant workers worked varying shifts and several restaurants. Nevertheless, they made an effort to participate, often coming to Chinatown early before their shift began to practice and then putting their shift vests and leather shoes to go to work.

A Milestone for 1976 the first time women played in the tournament. Earlier that year, Reggie Wong, a member of the Knights athletic club and tournament chairmen, received a call from Frank Gee of the New York Vikings. Frank said that the Vikings had put together a women's team and wondered if Reggie had any plans to start a women's team in Boston. By the 1976 tournament, "Reggie's Angels," Boston's first women's team, played an exhibition games with Viking's team proving that women should participate too. Volleyball was a sport for all, and women demanded that they have the opportunity to compete. Tradition did not give as chairman of the the tournament, still had to persist in advocating their cause before opposition to women's participation could be put to rest.

Women's participation became official the following year at the Toronto tournament. That year, six women's teams competed for a women's tournament championship. The first women's tournament championship was finally won by the New York Skylarks.

Over the years the number of teams and players have grown, and the tournament has attracted wider interest. From a one-day affair, it expanded to two days in the late 1960s, and by the early 1980s, the number of teams and the complexity of competition required a three-day tournament. By the late 1950s, the tournament spanned the country. In 1959, the Kong Fung team from San Francisco won the tournament championship in New York, and in 1962, the Los Angeles Hung Fung won the championship at the Boston tournament. In 1974, San Francisco joined the list of cities hosting the tournament and three years after that, Toronto hosted its first tournament. Finally, in 1986, Montreal hosted the 42nd tournament, establishing the six-city rotation which exists today.

At the tournaments, old men continue to attend making shrewd comments and becoming excited over a good match or play. The coaches are the businessmen and professionals of the community, and so the young people have role models who are not just guides to a profession but also serve as examples of caring adults.

Volleyball is part of the history of Chinatown. The generations of players pass down not only their skills and culture, but also continue that part of the community's history. More than mere history, it is continuity and the building of ties between the generations.

This year, the tournament is organizing, what is affectionately known as "lo chai" (old wood) teams. In earlier years, these teams were composed of members of the original teams. There are too few of the original lo chai left, and so the tournament is allowing "younger" men, 45-year olds, to play. Each team, however, must take on the name of one of the original teams. In this way, the original players and teams will be honored.

Another way that these tournaments build community is to serve as a common ground of communication and as a way that culture can be exchanged and spread. All culture does not have to be "high culture." Culture is also the way that people conduct their lives, manage, and enjoy themselves. Many spectators drive up to Boston from Washington D.C., and it was pointed out that some of these people were the first ones to set up their deck chairs, umbrellas and coolers so that they could enjoy the games in comfort. While, perhaps a minor innovation, it made people in Boston feel freer to enjoy themselves also.

Finally, volleyball builds the community by bringing young people back into Chinatown from the suburbs. Asian youth, growing up in the suburbs are in some ways as isolated as the laundry workers of an earlier generation. Though youth today may be more integrated into the surrounding culture, they may be cut off from their Chinese heritage and the people who make that heritage come alive.

Playing on a volleyball team is sometimes the first chance these young people have to really learn about Chinatown and its culture, and as important, to meet young people from Chinatown. Thus, the bringing together of laundry worker and Chinese students in the 1930s has modern counterpart in the meeting of young people from the suburbs and the city. The young people meet around a common purpose, and yet, they can also learn about and from their differences in a friendly atmosphere. As Henry Oi said,"friendship is essential for society."

Reference: 55th North American Chinese Invitational Volleyball Tournament Program Book. Boston, 1999