included gunfights that mimicked those of local tongs, were staged by professional guides or "lobbygows"—often Irish Americans—with paid actors. Especially in New York, the Chinese community was unique among immigrant communities in so far as its illicit activity was turned into a cultural commodity. Perhaps the most pervasive illicit activity in Chinatowns of the late-19th century was gambling. In 1868, one of the earliest Chinese residents in New York, Wah Kee, opened a fruit and vegetable store on Pell Street with rooms upstairs available for gambling and opium smoking. A few decades later, local tongs, which originated in the California goldfields around 1860, controlled most gambling (fan-tan, faro, lotteries) in New York's Chinatown. One of the most popular games of chance was fan-tan where players guessed the exact coins or cards left under a cup after a pile of cards had been counted off four at a time. Most popular, however, was the lottery. Players purchased randomly assigned sweepstakes numbers from gambling-houses, with drawings held at least once a day in lottery saloons. There were ten such saloons found in San Francisco in 1876, which received protection from corrupt policemen in exchange for weekly payoffs of around five dollars per week. Such gambling-houses were frequented by as many whites as Chinamen, though whites sat at separate tables. Between 1850 and 1875, the most frequent complaint against Chinese residents was their involvement in prostitution. During this time, Hip Yee Tong, a secret society, imported over six-thousand Chinese women to serve as prostitutes. Most of these women came from southeastern China and were either kidnapped, purchased from poor families, or lured to ports like San Francisco with the promise of marriage. Prostitutes fell into three categories, namely, those sold to wealthy Chinese merchants as concubines, those purchased for high-class Chinese brothels catering exclusively to Chinese men, or those purchased for prostitution in lower-class establishments frequented by a mixed clientele. In late-19th century San Francisco, most notably Jackson Street, prostitutes were often housed in rooms 10×10 or 12×12 feet and were often beaten or tortured for not attracting enough business or refusing to work for any reason. In San Francisco, "highbinders" (various Chinese gangs) protected brothel owners, extorted weekly tributes from prostitutes and caused general mayhem in Chinatown. However, many of San Francisco's Chinatown whorehouses were located on property owned by high-ranking European American city officials, who took a percentage of the proceeds