主题：【原创】初识东南亚：越，老，马，新，印尼，菲律宾两周掠影 -- 顾剑

Tom Kim Yung's suicide was the outcome of a tragic Chinatown incident. Tom was in San Francisco on special duty, having arrived from China a few months earlier, and was soon to leave for Washington, D.C. A colonel in the Chinese Army, he had been one of the imperial bodyguards. On the evening of September 13, 1903, he was returning to the Chinese Consulate on Stockton Street after dining with a merchant. Policeman John Kreamer, apparently mistaking him for a wanted man, insulted him as a degenerate. Tom resisted arrest and was punched in the face by Kreamer, falling to the ground. Another policeman, Officer Brodt, and two bypassers came to assist Kreamer, and Tom was temporarily tied to a fence by his queue, then hauled off to jail where he was held on the charge of assaulting a police officer. A local merchant had him released on bail. Tom brooded over his irreparable loss of face and the impunity of the police until September 14, when he gassed himself from the light fixtures in his room at the Consulate. He left behind a note explaining his reasons for taking his life. Accounts of the subsequent investigation reveal it to have been inadequate at best.