Kong Sam Kee, The Chinese Washerman

"The Silverado Squatters"

Kong Sam Kee was one of the China-Boys in Calistoga, the Upper Napa Valley, in the 1880s.

Robert Louis Stevenson, a Scottish travel writer and novelist, author of “Treasure Island”(金銀島), once spent an unconventional honeymoon in an abandoned three-story bunkhouse at a derelict mining camp called "Silverado" on the shoulder of Mount Saint Helena near Calistoga in late spring and early summer of 1880. 

He kept a diary, the "Silverado Journal", a meticulous record of his experiences which he later recounted in his travel memoir "The Silverado Squatters". (Also refer to my post “The Silverado Squatters” of Saturday, November 10, 2012)

In their rule at Silverado, there was a melancholy interregnum. Stevenson wrote in his 《The Silverado Squatters》, "….. as I was sick to begin with, our lone position on Mount Saint Helena was no longer tenable, and we had to hurry back to Calistoga and a cottage on the green."

He realized the difficulties of their position. "We had found what an amount of labour it cost to support life in our red canyon; and it was the dearest desire of our hearts to get a China-boy to go along with us when we returned. We could have given him a whole house to himself, self-contained, as they say in the advertisements; and on the money question we were prepared to go far."

Kong Sam Kee, the Calistoga washerman, was entrusted with the affair; and from day to day it languished on, with protestations on Stevenson's part and mellifluous excuses on the part of Kong Sam Kee.

Kong Sam Kee finally walked away from the deal. 

Stevenson wrote, "……. but, alas! he had heard rumours of Silverado. He knows it for a lone place on the mountain-side, with no friendly wash-house nearby, where he might smoke a pipe of opium o' nights with other China-boys, and lose his little earnings at the game of tan; and he first backed out for more money; and then, when that demand was satisfied, refused to come point-blank. He was wedded to his wash- houses; he had no taste for the rural life; and we must go to our mountain servantless. It must have been near half an hour before we reached that conclusion, standing in the midst of Calistoga high street under the stars, and the China-boy and Kong Sam Kee singing their pigeon English in the sweetest voices and with the most musical inflections."

Obviously, Kong Sam Kee had no taste for the "rural life" on Stevenson's terms.

The location of the bunkhouse that Stevenson and his wife "squatted" in.


Yeh Tze