By the 1960s, 65% of all Americans owned a television. In 1970, television’s 2,490 cable networks provided entertainment and information to the nation. Companies embraced this far-reaching delivery system for advertising, and in the 1970s a company called Calgon followed this trend with their “Ancient Chinese Secret” commercial. Leveraging the historical association of Chinese Americans with the laundry industry, Calgon featured two Chinese characters, Mr. and Mrs. Lee, as experts to promote their water softener brand. Due to the wide reach of television, media stereotypes can — as Charles R. Taylor and Barbara B. Stern wrote — “perpetuate prejudice and divisiveness” in broader society. Although the Calgon “Ancient Chinese Secret” commercial demonstrated a socially acceptable occupational role for Chinese Americans as defined by white America, the advertisement revealed the continuation of Chinese discrimination into the 1970s and 1980s. The commercial underscored the enduring impact of 19th-century racism that persisted in shaping Chinese occupational roles, illustrated how discriminatory stereotypes restricted the career advancement of Chinese Americans, and demonstrated how popular media perpetuated these stereotypes, inadvertently reinforcing cultural biases.
Calgon’s “Ancient Chinese Secret” advertisement exhibited what became an acceptable path for Chinese American assimilation: service-related labor. The commercial began with a conversation between a white female consumer and Mr. Lee, a Chinese laundromat owner. The white woman, who appears to be a frequent customer, asked, “How do you get shirts so clean Mr. Lee?” The customer’s question insinuated her admiration of Mr. Lee’s laundry expertise and respect for Mr. Lee’s role in the industry. Her feelings reaffirmed the widespread attitude that Chinese Americans could be accepted by white America, as long as Chinese Americans provided a service for white Americans; these service-forward jobs included laundry and restaurant work. The success of the Chinese in service industries reflected, in part, their willingness to embody the stereotype. Irvin Lum, an official of the San Francisco Federal Savings and Loan Community House, recounts in Success Story of One Minority Group in the U.S. by Cathy J. Schlund-Vials, Kevin Scott Wong, and Jason Oliver Chang, “I know of a man coming here from China…[that] worked in Chinatown for two years, then opened a small restaurant of his own.” Running laundries or restaurants became standard practice for many Chinese Americans, and white laborers accepted it because it conformed to stereotypes that — as Amy Yuematsu discussed in her 1969 manifesto The Emergence of Yellow Power in America — Chinese Americans are “passive, accommodating, and unemotional.” On the one hand, these characteristics made it easier for Chinese Americans to integrate into a society that shunned and belittled them. However, on the other hand, these same stereotypes became an intrinsic stereotype that was difficult to overcome.
In the mid-19th century, as the American West underwent rapid industrialization, many Chinese immigrants entered America for mining, agricultural, and manufacturing jobs. As Chinese immigrants came to America in waves, seeking a way into the labor force, white Americans ultimately forced the Chinese to adopt an “Oriental image” that white Americans would not find threatening. According to Joan Wang in Race, Gender, and Laundry Work, the economic development of the American West “created a surplus of labor and intense competition in the labor market that in turn triggered racial tension.” As many corporations looked to Chinese immigrants as a form of cheap and exploitable labor, white laborers felt that the Chinese threatened their jobs. As anti-Chinese and nativist sentiments grew, American laborers began driving Chinese laborers out of various industries. In the 1880s, labor organizations pressured tobacco, shoe, and woolen manufacturers to ban Chinese employment. Combined with legislation that banned the Chinese from owning land, discriminatory labor organizations effectively forced Chinese laborers out of nearly all industries. However, because of the scarcity of women among those who migrated West, many Chinese laborers found employment in the service industry, taking on jobs that were traditionally perceived as “feminine.” In Lee Chew, Experiences of a Chinese Immigrant, Chew writes how the Chinese man “cannot practice any trade…So he opens a laundry when he quits domestic service.” By 1880, a U.S. census showed that Chinese Americans operated 75% of all laundromats in California. Hostile nativist laborers tolerated the occupational shift of the Chinese Americans because it no longer threatened their jobs. By working in service industries, Chinese Americans distanced themselves from the manufacturing and agricultural job opportunities sought by white Americans. This occupational shift soon embodied the “Oriental Image,” which stereotyped Chinese workers in service industries. Mr. and Mrs. Lee from Calgon’s “Ancient Chinese Secret” commercial upheld this “Oriental Image” by working in the laundry industry, as their occupation didn’t threaten the jobs of white laborers.
The shared restrictive perception held by both white and Chinese Americans had a tangible impact on the professional career of Chinese Americans, by confining their eligible professions within strict boundaries. In The Emergence of Yellow Power in America, when summarizing the perception of Chinese Americans by white Americans, Uyematsu writes, “they (Japanese and Chinese) should not step out of place and compare themselves with whites.” However, during the lead-up to the 1970s, Chinese Americans experienced an identity renewal in the wake of the model minority myth. By 1969 13.3 percent of Chinese students had finished college (4 years or more) compared to 10.7% of white students. These educational strides led to the diversification of Chinese labor into various industries. During this process, enduring stereotypes, like those depicted in the Calgon commercial, continued to foster discrimination in these new fields. According to The Asian American Almanac, U.S. government surveys of the time found that “highly educated Asian Americans earned less than their white counterparts.” Although Chinese and whites received the same education, Chinese Americans still could still not receive equal treatment. Uyematsu attributed these disparities as a result of a “continuation of racial discrimination towards yellows in upper-wage level and high-status positions.” Employers viewed Chinese workers as second class because managerial or leadership positions fell outside the traditional Chinese occupational role in America. In a 2022 blog post, Professor Xue-Ming Bao wrote that, according to Carl Hsu, a founder of an Affirmative Action club in Bell Labs from the 1970s, “white managers had simply assumed that Asian Americans were content to perform technical work and harbored no aspirations whatsoever to rise within the organization.” Previous stereotypes informed employers that Chinese employees belonged in service jobs and were content in the lower sections of the corporate ladder.
The intentionally overemphasized oriental characterization of Mrs. Lee in the Calgon commercial reinforced the inherent otherness in the way white Americans perceived Chinese Americans. Introducing Mrs. Lee in the sixth second of the commercial, Calgon showed her dressed in a traditional Chinese robe. The bright gold of the robe and its hexagonal embroidery sharply contrasted with the white female customer’s mellow blazer and sweater outfit. This exaggeration revealed Calgon’s attempt to delineate between white Americans and Chinese Americans not just through occupation, but also clothing choices. By dressing Mrs. Lee in traditional attire so overtly foreign to the white woman’s, the advertisement underscores the cultural and social divide between the two. This divide strengthened Calgon’s commercial; it built on the stereotype that Chinese Americans are skilled in doing laundry, but the Chinese, as skilled as they are, still depended on Calgon.
The Calgon advertisement did not stand alone in its insistence on separating the Chinese American from traditional white American culture and society. It was symptomatic of a trend and mirrored the popular vogue of presenting the Chinese as foreign. In The Emergence of Yellow Power in America, Uyematsu emphasized that Chinese Americans are “fully committed to a system that subordinates them on the basis of non-whiteness.” Chinese Americans continued to embody the values assigned to them, even though American society marginalized them purely for their inherent non-whiteness. In one example, the popular 1972 T.V. show Kung Fu, reinforced the notion that Chinese physical and cultural differences always separated them from white Americans. One minute and fifty-nine seconds into the clip titled Kung Fu: Caine vs Jerk, from Kung Fu’s pilot episode, a Chinese man enters a saloon, a white man shouts, “Now you with the funny hat, now you know I don’t like any slant eyes in a white man’s saloon.” The directors of Kung Fu used dialogue to emphasize the differences between the Chinese man’s appearance and the white man’s. The Chinese man’s robe, hat, and eyes alienated him from the other men in the saloon, all dressed similarly in cowboy attire. These portrayals of Chinese Americans as “other” extended beyond their physical attributes or the clothing they chose to wear, and included behavioral elements as well. In his 1984 film Sixteen Candles, director John Hughes used an exaggerated characterization of Long Duk Dong, portraying him as weird, alien, and awkward, and acting quite differently from white students in the movie. In one scene, when Long is having dinner with a white family, Hughes depicts Long using a fork and a knife as chopsticks. Although in the context of the movie, Long may be unfamiliar with forks and knives due to his recent immigration to America, Hughes used this exaggeration to accentuate typical unfamiliar sentiments into a caricature that emphasized Long’s otherness. Scenes of stereotyped Chinese American characterizations reinforced the growing trend of “stereotypical” Chinese behavior depicted in Calgon’s “Ancient Chinese Secret” commercial.
The Calgon “Ancient Chinese Secret” commercial provided a glimpse into the Chinese American experience during the 1970s and 1980s. Although prevailing stereotypes like the “model minority” myth supported Chinese American assimilation into certain social and cultural areas, the perpetuation of 19th-century racism into the 1970s and 1980s reflected the continued discrimination Chinese Americans faced. In addition, the media's continued reinforcement of negative stereotypes contributed to restrictive occupational boundaries for Chinese Americans. Calgon’s advertisement ultimately revealed the continued prejudice Chinese Americans faced during that time period.
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