![Look Tin Eli](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b1/Look_Tin_Eli.png)
Look Tin Eli (1870–1919) (Chinese: 陸潤卿, Lù Rùnqīng; also Luk Tin-Sun,
Look Tin Sing
) was a
Chinese-American
Chinese Americans are Americans of Han Chinese ancestry. Chinese Americans constitute a subgroup of East Asian Americans which also constitute a subgroup of Asian Americans. Many Chinese Americans along with their ancestors trace lineage from m ...
businessman, born in
Mendocino, California
Mendocino (Spanish for "of Mendoza") is an unincorporated community and census-designated place (CDP) in Mendocino County, California, United States. Mendocino is located south of Fort Bragg at an elevation of . The population of the CDP was 932 ...
, who achieved much success in
San Francisco's Chinatown
The Chinatown centered on Grant Avenue and Stockton Street in San Francisco, California, () is the oldest Chinatown in North America and one of the largest Chinese enclaves outside Asia. It is also the oldest and largest of the four notable ...
, especially after the
1906 earthquake.
Mendocino beginnings
![Look Tin Eli sigs 1918](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ab/Look_Tin_Eli_sigs_1918.png)
Born May 5, 1870, in the back of the store operated by his father on the south side of Mendocino's Main Street,
[ Look Tin Eli was the firstborn in Mendocino's Look family ( 陸 Lù, also Luk or Loke in Cantonese). The Look family was headed by his Chinese immigrant father from Heung-san (香山), Luk Bing-Tai] (aka Eli Tia Key), and his mother, Su Wang, who had four children.
As a boy, he was sent to China in 1879, prior to the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, to learn the Chinese language and culture.[ Upon his return to San Francisco in 1884, he was denied entry at age 14 back to the United States because he lacked the necessary certificate under the 1882 Act. He challenged the decision at the federal level and won his case at the U.S. Circuit Court of San Francisco.]
This was the celebrated case of Look Tin Sing, which was Look Tin Eli's childhood name. In court, he was represented by two lawyers: Thomas Riordan, a prominent San Francisco attorney retained by the Chinese consulate and perhaps the Chinese Six Companies, and William M. Stewart, a prominent railroad attorney and former attorney general of California. The 1884 ruling by Justice Stephen Field, who declared that children born in U.S. jurisdictions are U.S. citizens regardless of ancestry, was an important decision that preceded and later cited at the landmark 1898 U.S. Supreme Court citizenship case.
After completing his education, he took over the management of what was his father's store, which had been sold in 1881. Reportedly, he and his younger brother, Lee Eli, "capably ran the Mendocino store in the 1890s". As a merchant, he visited China twice, returning to the U.S. in July 1891 and November 1895.
San Francisco career
In the 1890s, Look Tin Eli, with his China-born wife (surname Jeong) and one child, moved to San Francisco
San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...
.
In February 1904, Tin Eli, with his younger brother, Lee Eli, as his assistant, helped establish a San Francisco branch of the Russo-Chinese Bank
The Russo-Chinese Bank (russian: Русско-Китайский банк, french: Banque russo-chinoise, Traditional Chinese: 華俄銀行) was a foreign bank, founded in 1895, that represented joint French and Russian interests in China during ...
at 417 Montgomery Street, the only branch in the United States. He was the "confidential adviser to the bank" and managed the Chinese negotiations and loans, abroad and locally.
After the 1906 San Francisco earthquake
At 05:12 Pacific Standard Time on Wednesday, April 18, 1906, the coast of Northern California was struck by a major earthquake with an estimated moment magnitude of 7.9 and a maximum Mercalli intensity of XI (''Extreme''). High-intensity sha ...
and fire destroyed Chinatown
A Chinatown () is an ethnic enclave of Chinese people located outside Greater China, most often in an urban setting. Areas known as "Chinatown" exist throughout the world, including Europe, North America, South America, Asia, Africa and Austra ...
, including the Russo-Chinese Bank, Look Tin Eli became "the public face of the post-quake rebuilding of Chinatown". As general manager of the Sing Chong bazaar, he articulated a vision of post-quake Chinatown as an "ideal Oriental City". Already a skilled negotiator, he secured substantial loans from his Hong Kong and Canton partners for the rebuilding and persuaded Chinese merchants to hire western architects to rebuild Chinatown in an "Oriental
The Orient is a term for the East in relation to Europe, traditionally comprising anything belonging to the Eastern world. It is the antonym of ''Occident'', the Western World. In English, it is largely a metonym for, and coterminous with, the ...
" style in order to promote tourism and social change. In this way, his grand vision of "veritable fairy palaces filled with the choicest treasures of the Orient" was realized by the design (by T. Paterson Ross) and construction of the pagoda-topped buildings of the Sing Chong and Sing Fat bazaars on the west corners of Grant Ave (then Dupont St) and California St, which have since become icons of San Francisco Chinatown.
In 1907, Tin Eli also helped found and operate, in partnership with cannery magnate Lew Hing, the Canton Bank of San Francisco (金山廣東銀行), the first Chinese-owned bank in the United States. On the corner of Kearny and Clay, it was for a time the only bank to provide the Chinese community with financial resources to rebuild Chinatown. A year later, Canton Bank of San Francisco was the principal bank for more than 100,000 Chinese in the United States and Mexico. The largest individual stockholder was Mendocino's Look Poong-San,[.] who is his brother, also known in the U.S. as Lee Eli, who became a wealthy banker in China.[.]
According to the San Francisco Chronicle, Look Tin Eli was able in 1908 to persuade the chief of police to allow fireworks permit for Chinese New Year festivities, gaining support from the white merchants as well. The reconstruction of the post-quake Chinatown was thus completed in 1908, a year ahead of the rest of the City of San Francisco.
In 1910, the Chinese Chamber of Commerce
Chinese can refer to:
* Something related to China
* Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity
**''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation
** List of ethnic groups in China, people of va ...
sent him, along with Ng Poon Chew
Ng Poon Chew (, March 14, 1866 – March 13, 1931) was an author, publisher, and advocate for Chinese American civil rights. He published the first Chinese-language daily newspaper to be printed outside of China.Franklin Ng,Ng Poon Chew" in ...
from the Chinese Six Companies, to Washington DC to object, after the fact and to no avail, to the relocation of the immigration station from the shed on pier 40 in San Francisco to Angel Island Angel Island may refer to:
*Angel Island (California), historic site of the United States Immigration Station, Angel Island, and part of Angel Island State Park, in San Francisco Bay, California
* Angel Island, Papua New Guinea
* ''Angel Island'' (n ...
.
In October 1914, as president of the Canton Bank, he hosted 300 guests in a grand "red egg feast", expanding the custom traditionally reserved for male babies, to celebrate the one-month birthday of his new granddaughter, with the governor of the Federal Reserve Bank among those bringing congratulations.
In 1915, in response to Pacific Mail Steamship Company
The Pacific Mail Steamship Company was founded April 18, 1848, as a joint stock company under the laws of the State of New York by a group of New York City merchants. Incorporators included William H. Aspinwall, Edwin Bartlett (American consul ...
withdrawing service to the Orient, a group of Chinese-American businessmen organized the China Mail Steamship Company (中國郵船公司), the first Chinese-owned steamship company in the United States, and elected Look Tin Eli as its founding president.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Eli, Look Tin
1919 deaths
American bankers
People from Mendocino, California
American people of Chinese descent
1870 births
19th-century American businesspeople
20th-century American businesspeople
Businesspeople from California