Weird Portland Wednesday: Brothels, Opium Dens and Shanghai'd Sailors

Portland is known in the nation for its hipster and extremely liberal and environmentally-friendly behavior. We think of ourselves as the good guys out to save the world. Even though our reputation is a bit tarnished as of late (those nastily boring riots), Portland is seen as a green city with caring people, We look upon ourselves as being nothing more than a humble Victorian settlement that grew into a respectful, liberal, weird city. How sweet.

Somehow we forget--or perhaps many just never knew--that Portland was once considered the most dangerous port in the world. According to Wikipedia (I know. I know):

Portland developed a reputation early in its history as a hard-edged and gritty port town. Some historians have described the city's early establishment as being a "scion of New England; an ends-of-the-earth home for the exiled spawn of the eastern established elite." In 1889, The Oregonian called Portland "the most filthy city in the Northern States", due to the unsanitary sewers and gutters, and, at the turn of the 20th century, it was considered one of the most dangerous port cities in the world. The city housed a large number of saloons, bordellos, gambling dens, and boardinghouses which were populated with miners after the California Gold Rush, as well as the multitude of sailors passing through the port. By the early 20th century, the city had lost its reputation as a "sober frontier city" and garnered a reputation for being violent and dangerous. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portland,_Oregon

Portland had a large population of Chinese immigrants. Our Chinatown dates back to the 1870s, making it one of the oldest in the country. Chinese immigrants began arriving in Oregon in the 1850s, with many working as miners in the southern and eastern parts of the growing territory. By 1900, Oregon had more than 10,000 Chinese residents, and Portland's Chinatown was flourishing. Unfortunately, so was xenophobia.

"In Oregon," The Oregonian wrote in 2016, "Chinese residents were prohibited from voting, holding public  office, attending public schools, serving on juries, entering professions and becoming naturalized citizens."

Around the late 1800s, terrifying stories circulated of drunken men getting conked on the head at saloons, dropped through trapdoors and dragged through secret tunnels to the river. They woke to find themselves serving as oceangoing slave crew. This was called "Shanghaiing." Underneath Old Town Chinatown is a labyrinthine of these tunnels. 

n 1933, journalist Stewart Holbrook broadcast stories of shanghaiing and bawdy times on the Portland waterfront in a series of romanticized articles in the Sunday Oregonian. While his stories were undocumented, they grew in reputation as authentic. Portland historian, Barney Blalock says a few men probably did get Shanghai'd in Portland back in the day, but that it surely didn't involve the tunnels under Old Town Chinatown. Those were busy being used for other, more profitable purposes.

So here it goes: Blalock wrote, "They were built by Chinese back in the days when Chinatown was the center of gang activity related to the different tongs. The gambling dens, brothels, and opium parlors of Chinatown were connected to separate labyrinths, with steel doors, trapdoors leading to secret stairways, and tunnels for escape into far alleyways. These were security measures designed for dealing with both rival tongs and police raids." And yeah, they were also used to bring through goods to and from the ships, both imported and exported.

Ahhhh so we had no real shanghaiing in our tunnels, but we had brothels and opium parlors and gambling dens and gangs! And the occasional citizen was shanghai'd.  Dang, Portland was busy! 

But the tales.... It’s the stuff of terrifying legend, filled with stories of forced prostitution, murder, ruined lives and an underground catacomb that facilitated it all. While how much of the tales are true is hotly debated, we in Portland grab onto this as part of our history and give guided tours through the Shanghai Tunnels. It's just one more way we keep Portland weird.

And so it goes
peace~~