The Chinese in California, 1850-1925
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Contributions of Chinese Immigrants:
Community, Agriculture, Industry, Labor
Despite the hostile reception that many Chinese immigrants received from Americans, they established thriving communities in urban centers throughout the country, the largest and most notable being San Francisco's Chinatown. The collection's Special Presentation includes five sections on this famous community. Search on Chinatown for over 1500 items reflecting the community's architectural, commercial, political, and social landscape.
- How would you describe the architecture of Chinatown?
- What kinds of events and activities are captured in images of Chinatown?
- What do images of Chinatown reveal about its residents' sense of community?
- What kinds of businesses thrived in Chinatown?
- What do you think Chinatown meant to its residents? What purposes did it serve?
The restaurants, theaters, and novelty of San Francisco's Chinatown eventually attracted tourism that boosted the city's economy. Search on Chinatown text for accounts of the community written by non-Chinese visitors. Writers for Harper's Weekly report on "The Chinaman's New Year," "Sketches in 'China-town,'" and "John Chinaman in San Francisco." G.B. Densmore offers his views of the community in his 122 page The Chinese in California, while William Bode provides a sketchbook as well as text in Lights and Shadows of Chinatown. Bode begins with a negative account of how San Francisco has been reshaped by "pagan Mongolians" but concludes with a different perspective on the industrious Chinese who have added vibrancy to city life:
"...[H]ow unlike the east side of New York, the tenement districts of London or Paris. The traveler here can go where he listeth, and at whatever hour he pleaseth. His is not disturbed by beggars nor by drunken brawls; nor is he liable to the dangers which bestrew his path among Christians in either of the places mentioned. He is free from molestation, ridicule and banter; and, from all that we have seen, he will find on the whole a personally clean, sober, sagacious and industrious people. 'No! Let this section be as wicked and as malodorous as the reports make it to be; let the vicious be as thick and the taste for the meretricious and artificial be as apparently uppermost; the lovers of goodness are many; the supporters and seekers for what is pure and right are the substantial bulk of these people.'"
Bode could well have been referring to George B. Morris's account of Chinatown when he mentioned the "wicked and . . . malodorous . . . reports." In The Chinaman as he is, Morris devotes a chapterto Chinatown, writing:
"John Chinaman is the dirtiest neighbor anyone can have they have their filthy habits from childhood up the moment you cross the borders of Chinatown you experience a peculiar strange smell a sort of combination of opium mixed with tobacco fish and vegetables but unlike anything else you cannot get used to it and a great many people get sick at the first smell of it . . . inflicting a severe headache . . . Many of the buildings in Chinatown are made of brick of American architecture whenever the Chinese get into a building they commence to remodel it and change the appearance of the front putting up queer signs and painting the balconies and front fanciful colors and hanging out curious Chinese lanterns in a few months after they have occupied it the place looks as if it were a hundred years old the walls become blackened up filthy dirty and discolored this applies to the lower class however it must be understood from the start that there are grades of society the same as among other nations . . ."
The Chinaman as he is, pages 22-24
- What attitudes towards Chinese immigrants are reflected in the collection's images of Chinatown, especially the postcards, and their captions?
- What stereotypes of Chinatown circulated through U.S. popular culture in periodicals, postcards, texts, and song sheets?
- Why do you think these stereotypes thrived?
- What aspects of Chinatown were most troubling to Bode and Morris and why?
- What praise did they have for Chinatown and its residents?
- What role do you think Chinatown played in the growth of anti-Chinese sentiment in the second half of the nineteenth century?
- Do you think that Americans' discomfort with cultural differences resulted in racial animosity or that racial animosity resulted in intolerance for cultural differences?
Aside from Chinatown, the depth of anti-Chinese sentiment pervading California overshadowed other contributions of Chinese immigrants. Public opinion was so hostile that few were willing to recognize the successes of Chinese businessmen, the contributions of laborers in fishing and agriculture, or the development of a silk industry in California.
Search on agriculture for photographs of Chinese workers in the fields and groves of California and for images of small scale fishing enterprises. Search on silkworms for photographs of Chinese workers gathering mulberry leaves and feeding silkworms in the early operations of California's growing silk industry. Search on business for more than 300 items reflecting a variety of other commercial ventures, from restaurants, theaters, and clothing merchants to a chemical company and dental surgeon.
- How did Chinese laborers help to promote the California economy?
- What contributions did they make to the development of new industries in the state?
"Across the Continent: The snow sheds on the Central Pacific
Railroad, in the Sierra Nevada Mountains"
Perhaps the most famous contribution of Chinese immigrants was the construction of the first transcontinental railroad. Chinese immigrants comprised 90% of the 10,000 laborers who laid tracks eastward from Sacramento across the Sierra Nevada and Rocky Mountains to connect with the Union Pacific crews laying tracks across the Great Plains. Railroad entrepreneurs even began a campaign to recruit workers in China. Search on railroad for sketches, photographs, and narratives about these laborers and their historic contribution to the United States.
- What inferences can you draw from these images about the difficulty in constructing the Central Pacific Railroad?
- According to these images, what activities and challenges were involved?