“There Is No Such Thing” as Chinese Vaudeville

This chapter uses Karen Shimakawa&s;s theory of national abjection to explore the United States&s;s fraught, and at times violent, relationship with Chinese immigrants and Chinese Americans beginning in the eighteenth century when the first known performances of Chineseness (without any Chinese people present) were offered in the United States. I focus on Chinese acts in big time vaudeville at the turn of the twentieth century before moving on to the era of the supper clubs and drunken revelry of the Chop Suey Circuit, which was patronized in great numbers by mostly white audiences beginning in 1938. Case studies: dancer and clown Jadin Wong, The Chinese Hillbillies (Ming, Ling, and Hoo See), and singer and impersonator Lee Tung Foo.