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Wave of Chinese immigrants
A series of floods and crop failures in southern China lead to poverty and threat of famine among peasant farmers. Over 20,000 Chinese enter California. -
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Economic Hardships in China
The economic hardships is due to the growing British dominance over China after Britain defeated China in the Opium War -
Beginning of the gold rush
Gold was discovered in California in 1848, eventually attracting thousands of Chinese miners and contract laborers. -
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Gold Rush
Strike of gold in California draws Chinese immigrants to West Coast to mine gold. Chinese immigrants arrived as servants during the California Gold Rush. The majority comes later as cheap labor to work the railroads and n other industries. -
Beginning of taxes for the Chinese
California imposes Foreign Miner's Tax and enforces it mainly against Chinese miners, who were often forced to pay more than once. -
Development of many Chinatowns, the more famous : Chinatown of Seattle
The Chinatown-International District of Seattle, in Washington, is an ethnic enclave neighborhood and is the center of Seattle's Asian American community. -
Completion of first transcontinental railroad.
Transcontinental railroad is completed. Chinese laborers build most of the western section.
First Japanese settlers arrive in Gold Hill, California.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IejzVUZz9kg -
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Yellow Peril
Yellow Peril was a color metaphor for race, namely the theory that Asian peoples are a mortal danger to the rest of the world. In the 1870s, working-class whites in California demanded that the U.S government stop the immigration of "filthy yellow hordes" from China who were supposedly responsible for the economic depression by taking away jobs from white Amerians. -
Chinese Exclusion Act
The Chinese Exclusion Act was a United States federal law signed by President Chester A. Arthur. Chinese Exclusion Act suspends immigration of Chinese laborers for 10 years. Excludes Chinese from citizenship by naturalization and halts Chinese immigration for 60 years.They were forbidden to bring their family in the USA, to marry to white people, and got their own lands. -
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Angel Island, Immigrant journeys of Chinese-Ameicans
From 1910-1940, Angel Island (located in San Francisco Bay, California) established as a detention center for those Asian non-laboring classes desiring entry in the United States.
The U.S. Supreme Court extends the 1870 Naturalization Act to other Asians, making them aliens ineligible for citizenship. Chinese immagration end when the Administration Building burned to the ground in August 1940 -
Exemple of the confinement of a Chinese-American : Don Lee
In 1939 when Don Lee was 11, he found himself on Angel Island, eating foreign food and being interrogated by immigration officials. -
Pearl Harbor's attack
The attack on Pearl Harbor was a surprise military strike conducted by the Imperial Japanese Navy against the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on the morning of December 7, 1941. The attack led to the United States' entry into World War II. After declaring war on Japan, 2000 Japanese community leaders along Pacific Coast states and Hawaii are rounded up and interned in Department of Justice camps. -
Relocation Camps
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signs Executive Order 9066, putting 120,000 Japanese (primarily U.S. citizens) in 10 concentration camps during WW II -
Roman novel "Snow Falling'' written by David Guterson
San Piedro, a small island in the Pacific Northwest, is home to salmon fishermen and strawberry farmers. It is also home to many Japanese-Americans. Snow Falling on Cedars opens in Judge Lew Fielding's courtroom as the trial of one of these Japanese-Americans, Kabuo Miyamoto, who is on trial for killing fellow fisherman Carl Heine, Jr., commences. -
Roman novel ''Shanghai Girls'' written by Lise See
Shanghai Girls is divided into three parts: Fate, Fortune, and Destiny. Here See treats Chinese immigration from a personal view through Pearl's narration. In On Gold Mountain she objectively placed 100 years of her Chinese family history in the context of the daunting challenges Chinese immigrants faced in coming to America in search of Gold Mountain. America's mistreatment of Chinese immigrants is stressed in both memoir and novel -
Exemple of a Chinese New Year Celebration
Festivities for the Lunar New Year Celebration (here in honor of the Year of the Rabbit) :
Chinese New Year is the most important and longest of all Chinese festivals, celebrated in Chinese communities worldwide. Chinese New Year activities include:
*Making offerings to household deities.
*Wearing new clothes, particularly in red.
*Hosting a large banquet for family and friends.
*Taking part in lion and dragon dances
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMFAwJNUzeI
