Chinese Immigration the the US

Early Chinese Immigration
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Chinese immigration to the United States can be traced back to middle of the 1800s, where the first substantial wave of Chinese immigrants traveled to what they called "Gold Mountain," a reference to the Gold Rush that began at Sutter's Mill, Sacramento, California. These immigrants provided a massive labor source and laid the foundation for the economy of the west, the most notable result of Chinese labor being the Transcontinental Railroad (Wei).

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Early Restriction
At the outset of Chinese Immigration, the was a period of unrestricted migration from 1852-1868, where there was a larger amount of men than women migrating to the US; this ratio is more indicative of cultural factors than american policy. This was followed by a period of family immigration from 1869-1874, a period of female exclusion (stemming from american policy) from 1875-1882, and from 1882 on, a period a general Chinese exclusion (Ling, 261).

Chinese Exclusion Act
The Chinese Exclusion Act is a significant event for many scholars. It is the first time that the United States codified in law that an entire group of people were undesirable for immigration, as well as ending the time of generally unrestricted immigration (Wei). Other scholars argue that the current discourse on illegal Mexican immigration is no different, or even tame in comparison to the discrimination within the Exclusion act (Pascoe 813). The Act signaled the beginning of immigration (Lee 69).

Political cartoon supporting Chinese Exclusion

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Angel Island
Angel Island was the west coast equivalent of Ellis Island, and served a the site where Chinese and other asian immigrants went through invasive health exams, long interrogations, and uncivil detention before being granted permission to the United States (Barde and Bubonis 103-104). Currently, an organization, The Angel Island Association is in charge of the property and manages tourism and the territory as a state park, though little attention is paid to site as a location of historic injustice and discrimination.

http://www.angelisland.org/angelcam/cove.jpg This is a photograph of the island taken late Sunday afternoon by the Angel Island Association

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This an example of a poem written on the walls of Angel Island. The poems are written in Asian languages. For a translation and more poems click here

20th Century Female Population
By 1900, due to the Chinese Exclusion Act, only 8% of the Chinese population in the United States were female. By 1920, the percentage had risen to 13%; however, concrete numbers are hard to find, because many census workers would not count all family members at Chinese households. More women and children came to the United States in the decade preceding the end of the Exclusion Act.

Before 1880, the majority of the women who immigrated to the United States were prostitutes. By 1900, the number of women working as prostitutes had fallen and the 1900 census did not list prostitute as an employment option. Wife and housekeeper had become the majority method of 'employment' for Chinese women immigrants, reflecting the difficulties that all Chinese immigrants had finding jobs in the early twentieth century. Immigrant families with children born in the United States were wealthy families; overall, the number of children born in the country during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century was very low.

http://i54.tinypic.com/dc8s4i.png The above statistics come from David Beesley's article 'From Chinese to Chinese American: Chinese Women & Families in a Sierra Nevada Town,' published in 1988 in California History. The study focused the town Nevada City, 150 miles inland from San Fransisco. By the twentieth century, more Chinese immigrant families had moved to rural areas like Nevada City. This data also shows that the number of women in Chinese communities was still small.

Dress
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Because many of the women who came to the United States after 1880 were the wives or children of wealthy merchants, they could often afford to dress in more traditional styles. Arnold Genthe, a German photographer who worked extensively in Tangrenbu, took pictures of these elaborately dressed women because they conformed to the expectations that his white clients had of Chinese immigrants. The men of Tangrenbu dressed much less traditionally, favoring plain work clothes. Though his photographs rarely feature lower-class women, it can be assumed that they dressed more plainly, like the woman in the picture below.

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Employment
According to Sucheta Mazumdar, all Chinese women who came to the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century worked; however, very few had options for paid employment. Most worked alongside their merchant husbands or kept their houses in unpaid positions. Because they had so much trouble finding paying work outside their homes, Chinese women often felt isolated from American society.

http://i51.tinypic.com/vzbzhi.jpg Basket weavers in San Fransisco, 1925

As more women were allowed into the country and attitudes towards Chinese immigrants changed, women found more opportunities open to them. The 1940 census noted that most Chinese women worked in "Other White Collar Services," a category that included secretarial work. 29.2% of Chinese women worked in the service industry while 27% worked in "Other Blue Collar Services," defined as any labor work that did not include farming.

Yellow Face
Yellowface, like blackface minstrelsey throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, was a popular form of entertainment for American audiences. According to Dr. Krysten Moon, yellowface was "comprised of dialect, makeup, posture, and costuming, all of which helped to mark the Chinese body as inferior and foreign." The below clip from Lon Chaney's 1927 film Mr. Wu demonstrates many of those features of yellowface. Because it is a silent film, there is little emphasis on the dialect, though the script does put emphasis on Orientalist elements; characters are described as 'illusturous' and 'honorable'.

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Charlie Chan
Charlie Chan showed a different side of Chinese-Americans to American audiences. Created in 1923 by Earl Derr Biggers, Chan was a detective with a Hawaii police force. The Chan series began as novels but was quickly spun off into movies. Chan was originally played by Chinese actors, but the movies didn't become a success until Chan was played by a caucasian. Warner Oland, a Swedish actor, was picked because of his 'Asiatic' looks.

Chan provided a positive Asian American figure for American audiences and went outside the usual "inscrutable Chinese" stereotype; however, the fact that the films weren't successful when led by Asian actors shows that American audiences weren't ready for a full integration of Chinese actors into Hollywood.

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For an audio report on the history of Charlie Chan click here.

World War Two
The discrimination against Japanese immigrants after the attack on Pearl Harbor meant that Chinese immigrants were no longer the threat that they had presented just twenty years before. After World War II, Chinese immigrants noted that hostility towards them, while still existent, had decreased. Most significantly, Congress repealed the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1943

The war also opened up new opportunities for employment. Like most women in the United States, Chinese women began to work in factories producing defense equipment. For many women, this was a liberating experience. Not only was this a chance to enter the workforce, it was also a way as though they were a part of American society.

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Chinatowns
Throughout the twentieth century, Chinatowns flourished in urban areas across the United States. These areas originally were created as hostility-free communities and still exist today as enclaves for new immigrants and Chinese-Americans. In 1980, New York City's Chinatown had over 200 restaurants, many of which were operated by new immigrants.

The popularity of these Chinatowns show the effect of Chinese immigrants on American culture. These areas are presented as exotic but accessible. Much like in the late nineteenth century when San Fransisco residents would go on tours of Tangrenbu, many of the Chinatowns in the United States survive on tourism. Guide books for major cities often include sections on the best ways to tour the local Chinatown.

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Currently, the economies of many Chinatowns have been integrated with the American ones, as the photo below from Washington D.C.'s Chinatown demonstrates.

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For an audio interview with residents of five different Chinatowns, click here.

The Effects of the Cold War
The 1949 communist takeover of China put the American-Chinese relationship on edge. The 1955 Congressional Drumright Report alleged that Chinese immigrants were communist spies. This report put more pressure on INS authorities to investigate the backgrounds of new immigrants. They also tried cases against people who had come into the country as "paper sons" more than twenty years before.

Despite the new hostilities they faced, the makeup of Chinese immigrants was changing. The percentage of Chinese immigrants working as professionals in 1960 increased by 836.6% from 1930 to 1970. The number working in personal services, such as maids or laundry, dropped by 84.9% over the same period of time. There was an almost equal drop (87.4%) in agricultural work. The number of professionals coming from China can be attributed to the Chinese government's emigration policies. It was much easier for urban professionals to acquire passports than rural laborers.

Due to the effects of the Cultural Revolution, more Chinese immigrants came to the United States in order to receive a higher education. Some of those who came here wrote memoirs about their time during the Cultural Revolution and printed them in English, showing an American demand for stories about life in Mao's China.

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Rae Yang, a Red Guard who spent five years on a pig farm in the Great Northern Wilderness, immigrated to the United States in 1981. After joining the Red Guards at 16, she had been unable to finish school and saw the United States as her best chance for an education. She went to the University of Massachusetts and now teaches at Dickinson College.