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"Two bittee lookee, flo bittee feelee, six bittee doee" went the chant in the Chinatown crib's of San Francisco's Barbary Coast. In the summer of 1850, the young and lovely Asian woman who is credited with this famous litany arrived by ship, one of thousands who were forcibly taken from their homeland of China. The fate of these slave women were a cell-like cubicles where their owners sent the men willing to pay for their sexual services. Younger than their white sisters, the hard life soon wore them out. When they began to lose their looks, they were resold to Chinese farmers for a hundred dollars or less.
Ah Tay's fate was different. Described as "the most famous of all...(a) almond-eyed, golden courtesan," she soon acquired a working knowledge of pidgin English and began to make friends with the men who suddenly found themselves wealthy in California's gold rush. Several of them pooled their money and gave her enough money to purchase her freedom. Opening her own crib, a dingy shack in China Alley, she thrived. By 1870, she was operating three establishments in San Francisco, one in Sacramento, and one in Columbia, a mining camp. She began importing her own girls from China and selling them into the trade. By age fifty, she was recognized as one of the most prosperous dealers in Chinese prostitutes in California.
Working under the protection of the Hip Sings, one of the most powerful of tongs, she regularly paid tribute to them. The tongs always returned the bodies of their own to the Celestial Kingdom of China, an obligation which could never be defaulted. The Sacramento steamer Yosemite exploded in October, 1865, killing twenty-nine Hip Sings, who were quartered below deck. Because of the large number, the tong was unable to fulfill its obligation, temporarily burying their dead in Rio Vista. Ah Tay could not rest with this broken commitment to her countrymen and donated a full half of the money needed to return them to their homeland. In the early 1890s, she too returned to China after disposing of her various businesses, living out her years in comfort.
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