From a Family of Bound Feet

Amid the inscrutable intrigue of old-fashioned tongmen and newfangled business operators in San Francisco's Chinatown, tiny Dolly Gee, 64, was empress of finance. For more than 30 years, she was manager of the Bank of America's pagodalike Chinatown branch. Inheriting the shrewdness of her late father, Chinatown's first banker, Charlie Gee, Dolly built the branch deposits from $2,000,000 to $20 million, dished out hundreds of loans that put a financial base under half of Chinatown's enterprises during years when Chinese could not even get life insurance. A high point in her career came in 1962, when she helped preside over the opening of a new bank building in ceremonies featuring firecrackers and tiger dancers to drive evil spirits away from the dragon-crested doors.

Scotch & P'ai Chiao. Deeply respected in a man's world, gravel-voiced Dolly drank Scotch, gambled heavily in all-night games of p'ai chiao (poker with dominoes) at men's clubs and pubs. Her behavior scandalized the women of Chinatown, but outwardly Dolly did not seem to give a yen that she was shattering the Chinese tradition of stoic, subservient women. Then two weeks ago, Dolly Gee was arrested for embezzling thousands of dollars from her bank. She said she had stolen not for profit but because "I come from a family of bound feet.* Everything my pop said, we had to do."

Charlie Gee (pronounced as in gee whiz) had begun the embezzling in his bank in 1923, after another bank that he had set up in Hong Kong suddenly went broke. Because the news came to San Francisco by steamship, Charlie knew nothing of it for three weeks, continued to send some $80,000 in clients' deposits to the defunct bank--and down the drain.

To prevent his own tiu lien (loss of face), he told his trusting customers that he had known of the Hong Kong failure and had withdrawn their funds in time. Then he set up a phony account in his Chinatown bank, juggled his books, which were kept in Chinese characters, so as to pay back anyone who demanded cash from Hong Kong.

A Costly Decision. In 1927 the Bank of America absorbed old Charlie's Chinatown bank. Dolly, who had worked for her father since her teens, two years later became branch manager--and discovered her father's embezzlements. "We talked all night," recalls Dolly. "The question for me was whether I would betray my father. But I couldn't go down and betray him. And once I made that decision, I just stuck for more than 30 years."

In trying to make up her father's debts, Dolly not only continued his embezzlement practices, but lost thousands more from depositors' accounts in investment schemes that turned sour. Moreover, interest owed on Charlie's original debts kept accruing, and Dolly never did catch up.

Although her father died in 1956, Dolly Gee remained as committed to holding off his tiu lien in death as in life. But finally she could keep her secret within herself no longer. Soon to be retired after her 50th year in banking, she went to see Bank of America President Rudolph Peterson. "President Rudy," she said, "you are going to hear something that you won't like." Replied Peterson: "Whatever it is, Dolly, go ahead." Dolly did--and auditors are still trying to add up the cost. Best present estimate: around $300,000.

* Small feet were considered a mark of feminine beauty in China, and some status-conscious Chinese bound the feet of their little girls, crippling them so they could barely walk, to show that the father was such a good provider that his women were docile and domestic and did not have to work in the fields. As a little girl in China around 1900, Dolly's feet were bound. The practice was outlawed in 1911.

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