Titanic and The Asian Hate That Plagued Six Chinese Survivors

First of all, I would like to say that there WAS room for Jack on that door in the movie Titanic. Rose was just selfish.

With that off my chest, let's move on to the real story behind that well-known movie scene and the man who inspired it, as well as the five men who came with him to America after the sinking of the Titanic. This is a story of survival, but it is also a story of unwarranted hatred.

On the night of April 14, 1912, the Titanic sank into the murky depths of the Atlantic Ocean, taking with her more than 1,500 passengers.

I won't delve heavily into the story behind how the Titanic sank as that portion of the story is well covered elsewhere. It is fairly common knowledge that she hit an iceberg about 375 miles south of Newfoundland and sank in less than three hours. 

Lifeboats were only equipped to carry about half of her passengers and many of them left at only a portion of their capacity, leaving many behind in a watery grave, either trapped among the ship's carcass, drowning, or freezing to death in the surrounding waters. Only one lifeboat turned back to search for survivors.

There were 706 survivors. Six of those are the subject of this story - six Chinese men who survived the Titanic but were almost lost to history thanks to the hatred they met upon their arrival in New York.

One of these was a Chinese man named Fang Lang. He was found shivering in the frigid waters by rescuers. He had survived by clinging to a wooden door to stay afloat. Sound familiar? It should - Lang was the inspiration for that very controversial scene in the 1997 film Titanic. 

In fact, a deleted scene from the film shows a crewmember returning in a lifeboat to find a Chinese man floating on a door, surrounded by dead bodies. The scene was scrapped and replaced with the one found in the final release of the film. 

In reality, the crew member manning the boat did not want to let him on because he was Asian. He said the space should be saved for what he felt were more worthy survivors if they were found, but other passengers took pity and convinced him to rescue Lang.

The other five men managed to get onto the lifeboats before the ship went down and make it to New York, but that is not where their ordeal ended. The men were all expelled from the United States within a day of their arrival at the immigration processing station at Ellis Island. 

Why? At the time, a law known as the Chinese Exclusion Act was in effect. This law barred the immigration of Chinese people to the United States for ten years. It was later renewed and continued being renewed until 1943.

The six survivors were named Cheong Foo, Ling Hee, Ah Lam, Lee Bing, Chang Chip, and Fang Lang. They were sailors who had boarded the Titanic on a journey to the Caribbean to perform work for their employer. There were two other Chinese men listed with them - Lee Ling and Len Lam - but they did not survive.

The story of these men was uncovered by documentary filmmaker and director Arthur Jones, who created The Six, a film that explores the journey of these men aboard the Titanic and beyond.

Though the men's names were listed on the ship's passenger manifest and the list of survivors, they were only briefly mentioned in coverage of the disaster and then fell into obscurity. Unlike their better-known counterparts who were celebrated and praised in the press, these men were instead victims of anti-Chinese sentiments in the West, according to historians who have researched the people and events surrounding the Titanic.

One example of how these men were viewed can be seen in an article printed by The Brooklyn Daily Eagle. In their report, they refer to the men as "creatures" who scampered onto lifeboats as soon as they realized what was happening and hid beneath the seats to secure passage.

Researchers working on The Six found this to be a false representation of events. Their replica of a Titanic lifeboat proved that there was no way for a person to hide on it without being seen. Instead, it is a clear case of immigrants being scapegoated in the media. 

This sort of villainization is seen in other reports that claimed the Chinese men dressed as women to get priority boarding onto lifeboats. Tim Maltin, a Titanic historian, said that no proof exists that these men stowed away or disguised themself to board a rescue boat.

Though these sorts of tales were common for men who made it off the ship when so many women and children did not, the press was especially unkind to the Chinese men. The truth is that the men all pitched in to help where they could to aid in the rescue of others. Despite his condition after shivering in the icy waters waiting for help, Fang Lang had helped row the boat that rescued him to get everyone on board to safety.

So, what happened to the men after they were turned away by U.S. immigration?

They were sent to Cuba and then made their way back to the UK. There was a shortage of sailors at the time as many British sailors had enlisted in the army to serve in World War I. One of them, Chang Chip, didn't fair well after his experience. He grew increasingly ill and died of pneumonia in 1914. His final resting place is an unmarked grave in a London cemetery.

The others continued to work together in England until 1920. By then, the war had ended and the country had settled into a recession. The same sort of anti-immigrant sentiments that had denied them a place in America were escalating in England at the time. A few of the men married British women and started a family, but the new immigration policies being put into place resulted in them being forced to depart without warning, leaving their families behind.

Ah Lam was deported to Hong Kong. Ling Hee found his way onto a steamboat headed for Calcutta, India. Lee Bing was able to emigrate to Canada. It is unclear what became of Cheong Foo. Fang Lang worked as a sailor traveling between Britain and Hong Kong for years. He eventually became a citizen of the same country that once deported him - America, settling in under another name, Fong Wing Sun.

Decades after the sinking of the Titanic, Fang Lang, AKA Fong Wing Sun, welcomed a new son into the world in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. His name is Tom Fong. For years, Fong knew nothing about his father's history with the Titanic. Fong says his father never talked to him or his mother about it, according to an interview with the BBC.

The first Fong heard about his father's presence aboard the Titanic was twenty years after Lang's passing in 1985 at the age of 90 years old. It was then that a family member shared the information with him. Fong believes that the trauma of the event itself, coupled with the stigma his father faced as a Chinese immigrant is what lead to his keeping his history to himself.

Lang would not have been alone in his thinking if that was his reason. Researchers for The Six found many of the descendants of survivors weren't keen on sharing their family's history in relation to the Titanic or otherwise. Even after a hundred years, the stigma attached to men, and even more so to immigrant men, who survived the Titanic remained present.

Aside from the Titanic history, incidents of racism against Asians have remained heavily present in American culture. Fong relayed incidents of his father fighting back against derogatory names, including one where he punched a man for his insults. It was out of character for his father, who he described as a "nice gentleman" Only when he was being treated poorly for his ethnicity did he seem to lash out, and understandably so.

Unfortunately, not much has changed over the years and Asian hate crimes are once again on the rise with people blaming them for the recent pandemic, regardless of their inability to stop it any more than any other country could have or where they originated. Those of Asian ancestry are just as likely to be mistreated whether they were born in mainland China or Nashville, Tennessee. Like many hate crimes, there is no rhyme or reason to the hatred of someone based merely on their appearance

There was no excuse for the way these men were treated, just as there is no excuse for the way many of Asian descent are treated today. It is good to know that even though it may be well overdue, these six men have finally been recognized for their place as survivors of one of the world's most well-known disasters.