Chinatowns

Refugee Havens

Fueled by the southern Chinese diaspora, the rise of Chinatowns from Southeast Asia to North America followed the transnational migration of labor. Rampant anti-Chinese sentiment in the United States led to the first national origin immigration policy: the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. In response, the Chinese sought refuge in these early ethnic enclaves. Barred from most occupations in the larger society and from living in many urban neighborhoods, the first wave of Chinese sojourners were forced to settle in less desirable areas and on the periphery of towns.

To minimize competition with Whites, Chinese developed enclave services like laundries and restaurants, originally for co-ethnics. Larger urban Chinatowns were highly organized according to traditional associations, including tsu, or clans, which provided mutual assistance and recognition of common ancestry. Facing a hostile environment, Chinese people needed some semblance of extended family.

In the American West, small rural and frontier Chinatowns developed, providing safe havens for Chinese miners and workers, who were viewed as competition to local labor. The anti-Chinese movement was centered in California, where, by 1870, over 80% of the 60,000 Chinese resided. A committee of the California state legislature sponsored hearings on Chinese immigration in San Francisco and published its findings in 1877 in a pamphlet, “An Address to People of the U.S. Upon the Evils of Chinese Immigration.” Its section on Chinese social habits claimed that Chinese were “so loathsome that even the atmosphere becomes pregnant with the effluvia of their abodes, and that entire streets in which they have settled … are held in disrepute.” Because of depictions in 19th-century pulp fiction of opium dens and hordes of unassimilable “Mongolians” contributing to sinister vice activities, Chinatown became a mysterious iconic presence in the American imagination.

Tourist Districts

By the turn of the 20th century, the “heart” of Chinese America, San Francisco's Chinatown, gradually promoted itself as an exotic tourist district with unique foods, shops, and entertainment. In the 1890s, there were six Chinese theaters in San Francisco's Chinatown. Anxious to transform the public's attention and spending power beyond services in a red-light district to a quick trip into the “Orient,” Chinese business leaders sought new ways to entice customers. Creating unique Americanized adaptations of Chinese culture, Chinatown merchants catered to the American palate with fare like “chop suey,” “chow mein,” and fortune cookies.

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