Early Chinese Immigrants Research Articles

Changing Triangular Relationships: A Historical Analysis of Labour Relations at a Chinese Mine in Papua New Guinea

This paper contributes to the literature on the expansion of Chinese multinational corporations (CMCs) in Papua New Guinea (PNG) by comparing the operation of a Chinese mine to that of the German New Guinea Company. I start by looking at the two economic positions (helper and merchant) performed by early Chinese immigrants to New Guinea during the colonial era and the host hostility they encountered. 1 Then, a case study of a Chinese mining company in postcolonial PNG illustrates how local employees learned to negotiate with Chinese management through unionization instead of striking. In the meantime, Chinese personnel became subject to PNG industrial regulations based on Australian standards rather than operating as a modernizing agent to educate local workers. 2 These findings suggest that, despite specific new Chinese communities becoming investors, they must dedicate resources towards comprehending local customs and legislation, given the enhanced agency of local actors.

Transliteration of Indonesian Geographical Names into Chinese

In this paper, a comparative analysis of the phonetics between Indonesian and Chinese in the geographical name conversion process is carried out to investigate the way of Chinese transliterating for Indonesian geographical names, in order to standardize Chinese proper translation for Indonesian geographical names. The author found that in general, people will translate geographical names by transliterating for specific parts of the name, and paraphrasing for generic names. Processing of vowels and consonants has different characteristics in the transliteration process, which generally according to Chinese pronunciation habits. And some geographical names are translated directly into Chinese dialects. This contains a wealth of immigrant cultural information and dialect information, which can infer the general distribution of early Chinese immigrants in Indonesian settlements, guide significance for the study of Chinese society and culture. In addition, Chinese transliterated names for Indonesian geographical names in different historical periods are subject to change.

The Little Nyonya and Singapore’s national self: reflections on aesthetics, ethnicity and postcolonial state formation

ABSTRACTSingapore’s postcolonial state formation process has combined the appeal/distress of a multiracial society with the nationalistic pride of economic development. In recent years, the city-state has witnessed a revival of Peranakan culture and history, referring to the descendants of early Chinese immigrants who integrated into Indigenous societies before becoming prized mediators for British colonisers in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. We question how these references are strategically deployed as part of the process of postcolonial state formation and how their aesthetic representations support public discussions and debates about what defines contemporary (Chinese) Singaporean identity. By examining Peranakan representations in the television series The Little Nyonya from a Deleuzian perspective, it will be argued that Peranakan history and culture are mobilised to de-territorialise previous meanings of national ethnic markers, specifically Chineseness, and to re-territorialise a local sense of Indigeneity. In reaction to concerns over Mainlander identity, representations of Peranakan culture and history in The Little Nyonya support the indigenisation of a specific Chinese identity that is accessible to all Singaporeans, offering an aesthetic framework in which the ongoing process of negotiating between Singapore’s national self and other unfolds.

Emergent Chinese Diasporic Identity and Culture: Chinese Grave Markers and Mortuary Rituals in Newfoundland

Abstract This article investigates the grave markers and associated mortuary rituals of Newfoundland’s Chinese immigrants, especially those who came before 1949, in order to understand them in the religious context of Newfoundland. The goals of this article are, firstly, to demonstrate emergent creolized diasporic identity and culture by presenting how early Chinese immigrants used Christianity to gradually gain social acceptance and, secondly, to challenge the popular idea that conversion by Chinese immigrants was only strategic.

The Legal Education of the First Chinese American Admitted to the New York Bar in the Twentieth Century and his Crusade to End Discrimination Against Ethnic Chinese in America

AbstractThis article attempts to reveal how a typical first generation Chinese American activist set out to go to law school to learn the skill set to help fight against racial prejudice directed at the Chinese in the early twentieth century. It examines how Hua Chuen Mei, a first-generation Chinese American lawyer was educated and trained in America; it primarily traces his undergraduate and law school education at Columbia and New York University Law School from 1910–1914 to show how he overcame the odds and excelled academically to complete his undergraduate and law degree programs with flying colors. It revisits his extracurricular activities to understand what motivated early Chinese immigrants like him to seek legal education, and what issues were uppermost in the mind of a typical Chinese American law student in that era.

Overseas Chinese: The Early and the New, and the Difference Between Them (海外華人的過去發展與當前轉變)

This special issue contains six essays discussing the lives of both early Chinese overseas migrants in the 19th century and those who have moved more recently during the past three decades. At heart is the thorny issue: what is the difference between early and new overseas Chinese? While earlier Chinese immigrants were mainly Han people from the Southeast China, who are the new Chinese immigrants and where do they come from? While early Chinese immigrants tended to be less skilled and educated, what are the socio-economic features of new Chinese immigrants? How do the early and new Chinese immigrants perceive each other if both live in the same locality? How do the people of the host countries perceive the new Chinese immigrants and the coming of Chinese investments? Each of these topics is partially addressed in this issue. More research on the rise of China and new Chinese immigrants will be the focus of future work in the field of overseas Chinese studies. (This article is in English).

Transformation of a New Chinese Immigrant Community in the United States: A Case Study in Flushing, New York (美國新華人移民社區的轉型—以紐約法拉盛為探討中心)

Early Chinese immigrants in America centered on the Chinatown, which had fixed blocks and scope of activities. The distinguishing features of its ethnic culture and economy were formed by the ethnic Chinese immigrants who dwelt there. The Chinatown has become identified with the early Chinese immigrants and become one of the most unique residential areas for any ethnic group. Ever since the 1965 amendments to the American Immigration and Nationality Act, however, new Chinese arrivals no longer inhabit Chinatowns after they reach the United States. Without stationary blocks and scopes of activities, new Chinese immigrant communities have become enclaves accommodating multiple ethnic groups instead of one particular ethnicity. These communities are closely connected to a variety of ethnic features and have a tremendously different appearance from that of Chinatown. This transformation is still in progress and has been widely-considered by many scholars researching overseas ethnic Chinese immigrants. Flushing, in New York, is the largest Chinese immigrant community in the twenty-first century. This essay takes it as a case study to look into the evolution of Chinese immigrant communities in the United States. 早期美國華人移民以唐人街為中心，它有固定的街區，一定的活動範圍。老移民住在這個範圍內，形成它鮮明的族裔文化和經濟特色，贏得了早期華人移民的認同，成為美國最具特色的族裔聚居區之一。自1965年新移民法修改後，新移民移入美國，不再以唐人街為居住區域，新華人移民社區無固定的街區，無固定的活動範圍，無單一的族裔聚集區，甚或是多族裔聚集的區域，靠著族裔特色融匯在一起，與過去的唐人街特色迥異，這種改變正在持續中，也是現今研究海外華人的學者關注的課題。本文欲藉由21世紀全球最大的華人移民社區—紐約的法拉盛（Flushing） 為例，探討美國華人移民社區的演變。 (This article is in English).

Persistence of Traditional Lifeways by Early Chinese Immigrants: Faunal Evidence from the High Lung Laundry (CA-SBA-2752H) Santa Barbara, California

Analysis of 41,000 faunal specimens from a family-run nineteenth-century Chinese laundry in Santa Barbara, California, reveals the tenacity with which these early Asian immigrants retained their traditional lifeways. Over three decades, the meat portion of the laundrymen’s diet consisted largely of Sus scrofa (swine) (85%) with lesser quantities of beef, fish, and barnyard fowl. Invertebrate seafood, cat, and turtle added to the distinctly Chinese menu. These findings are much like those from numerous other coeval immigrant sites in California and other western states. While dietary pattern is a strong indicator of ethnic identity, it is only one way to assess cultural integration. Nevertheless, the protracted retention of this traditional diet suggests limited assimilation into the social context of Santa Barbara while at the same time the immigrant laundrymen performed an important economic function within the community.

Disrupting the National Frame: A Postcolonial, Diasporic (Re)Reading of SKY Lee's Disappearing Moon Café and Denise Chong's The Concubine's Children

SINCE ITS EMERGENCE IN THE 1980s AND 1890s, Canadian Studies has gained recognition as a field of inquiry that could mount a wide-ranging and radical critique of mainstream Canadian history, society, and culture. Originally inspired by rights-based movements of 1960s and 1970s, Canadian Studies grew out of community level activism against race and class oppression (Lai 1). Its principal modality has been to construct a collective self, or Canadian identity, through which to challenge representation of Asians as perpetual outsiders or aliens and to rewrite existing Canadian history to acknowledge such racist policies as Chinese Exclusion Act, Japanese Canadian Internment, and Komagata Maru Incident (Chao 18). In this way, field has historically unfolded within a nationalist framework, locating nation-state as primary interlocutor of Asian/alien body in Canada and taking up a kind of (Lai 5). Nonetheless, as field increasingly becomes drawn into academy, critics have noted some possible limitations of this framework. One such limitation is that focus on domestic identity politics, and promotion of citizenship and national belonging as political goals, runs risk of reinforcing a reductive pluralism which cannot shake up systemic historical conditions and ... ideologies of normativity that have produced racialized subjects and minoritized cultures (Kamboureli 64). In exploring ways to expand on Canadian national frame, Lily Cho has posited that Canadian Studies could be situated more clearly within a postcolonial, paradigm. Such a paradigm, she contends, could generate insights into how construction of Asian-ness in Canada is deeply connected to Asian-ness elsewhere (188). Indeed, Cho points out that there is a need to think about formation of Canadian through imperialism and and to see Canadian history within a wider, global context of capital and labour migration (188). Focusing specifically on Chinese Canadian communities, Cho illustrates how a diasporic can highlight links between Chinese migration and British imperialism (186). That is, a perspective can consider how early Chinese immigrants to Canada came from South China, where Opium Wars had disrupted local economy [and] provid[ed] much of push for emigration (Stanley 56). Furthermore, it can stress how many of these immigrants were indentured workers, imported via coolie trade which burgeoned in British Hong Kong after Atlantic slave trade went into decline (Peter Li 20). Importantly, then, a postcolonial, paradigm can productively complicate history of Canadians by acknowledging that this history is not only shaped in Canadian context; rather, it is part of a larger history of imperialism, colonialism, and capitalism. If Cho's arguments gesture to benefits of a global, historical, and comparative framework, Larissa Lai's book, Slanting I, Imagining We, emphasizes perils of relying too heavily on a fixed notion of Canadian identity. Lai argues that tactic of strategic essentialism has become seriously problematic due to pressures of state incorporation currently informing Canadian Studies (6). Underlying these pressures is an investment in liberal multiculturalism that reinforces static notions of racial and national difference and works to recirculate logic of colonialism in newly embodied forms (23). This logic becomes all more insidious in a post-9/11 Canada, where narratives of citizenship, nationalism, and security have become intertwined in ways that reproduce Orientalist images of Others as unassimilable and anti-democratic foreigners. As Lai points out, 2010 Maclean's article entitled Too Asian suggests that the trope of 'yellow peril' has been reinvigorated in national imaginary (Lai 17). …

Barriers to Social Integration for Chinese Immigrants in Canada, Then and Now: A Comparison

Abstract The history of Chinese immigration to Canada can be traced back to more than 150 years. Despite different historical contexts, early Chinese immigrants before/during World War II and recent Chinese immigrants after World War II, especially those since 1960s, have both encountered barriers in the process of social integration in the host country. Using the social exclusion theory, this paper challenges the traditional one-way approach to social integration — which focuses on the immigrants’ personal efforts in adapting to a new social environment — and instead, advocates a two-way approach to analyze Chinese immigrants’ social integration into the host country in the early and more recent times. By making comparisons between them in different social contexts, it is found that the difficulties in social integration are attributable to both the individual and structural barriers rather than personal insufficiency alone. Moreover, despite different manifestations at different times, the nature of and reasons for social exclusion remain the same. The underlying reason for domination-subordination relationship between the excluder and the excluded in different times is attributable to the self interests of the excluders.

Call to Action: Cardiovascular Disease in Asian Americans

In 2009, President Obama signed an Executive Order calling for strategies to improve the health of Asian Americans and to seek data on the health disparities in Asian American subgroups.1 Data on Asian American subgroups are scarce and many health disparities remain unknown. The purpose of this Advisory is to highlight the gaps in existing research on cardiovascular disease (CVD) among Asian Americans, and to serve as a call to action on behalf of the American Heart Association to address these areas of need. Asian Americans are the fastest growing racial/ethnic group in the United States, representing 25% of all foreign-born people in the United States.2 They are projected to reach nearly 34 million by 2050.3 Several major Federal surveys (eg, the American Community Survey, the National Health Interview Survey, and the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance Survey) only recently started to classify Asian Americans into 7 subgroups: Asian Indian, Chinese, Filipino, Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese, and Other Asian. The first six of these subgroups together constitute >90% of Asian Americans in the United States.4 Although some data are available on Asian subgroups from these major federal surveys, in general, these data are not available for public use because of the privacy concerns resulting from the small sample sizes within subgroups. This situation limits their utility for health-related research. Because health surveys and questionnaires almost universally combine persons of Asian ancestry into a single group, the heterogeneity within this classification is masked. Socioeconomic and cultural factors have been found to be associated with CVD and its risk factors, which is why it is important to understand these differences among Asian subgroups. The Table shows the number of persons in each group based on the most recent US Census data available (American Community Survey, 2008), with the recognition that …

Resonant Presence: Legal Narratives and Literary Space in the Poetry of Early Chinese Immigrants

Resonant Presence: Legal Narratives and Literary Space in the Poetry of Early Chinese Immigrants

Surviving the City: The Chinese Immigrant Experience in New York City, 1890–1970. By Xinyang Wang. [Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2001. 157 pp. $17.95. ISBN 0-7425-0891-9.

The author, Xinyang Wang, is a social historian who reassesses the history of early Chinese immigrants in New York City, departing from the ethnic-heritage and racism analyses of immigrants' adaptation to America. Instead, he pursues an actor-oriented approach, showing how economic forces played an important part in the decision-making activities of the immigrants, such as the selection of neighbourhoods for settlement, participation in the labour movement, return to China, and intensification of intra-group solidarity.

Asian Pioneers in the Eastern United States: Chinese Cutlery Workers in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, in the 1870s

Asian Pioneers in the Eastern United States: Chinese Cutlery Workers in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, in the 1870s Edward J. M. Rhoads* (bio) Figures Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. American Manufacturer (Pittsburgh), 23 November 1876, p. 7; courtesy of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh. Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 2. Ah Chuck. Courtesy of the Beaver Falls Historical Society Museum; used with permission. Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 3. Lee Ten Poy. Courtesy of the Beaver Falls Historical Society Museum; used with permission. Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 4. Chew On. Courtesy of the Beaver Falls Historical Society Museum; used with permission. Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 5. Unidentified woman, probably Chew On’s wife. Courtesy of the Resource and Research Center for Beaver County and Local History; used with permission. By 1869 Chinese had been living and working in the United States in large numbers for twenty years, during which time their population had risen to nearly 60,000. Until then, they were almost all confined to the Pacific coast and the Rocky Mountains. With the completion of the transcontinental railroad in May of that year, however, they were able for the first time to venture east relatively easily, where coincidentally their labor was in sudden demand. For in both the rapidly industrializing North and the post-Civil War South, factory workers and newly emancipated slaves were exhibiting far too much independence to suit their respective bosses. The Chinese, it was thought, might provide a feasible solution to their problems. Thus, almost as soon as the Central Pacific and the Union Pacific were connected, sizable groups of Chinese began showing up in different parts of the eastern United States, to join the relative handful in Atlantic seaports who had come decades earlier with the China trade. In January 1870, 250 Chinese from California arrived in Robertson county, Texas, to help build the Houston and Texas Central Railroad. Five months later, 75 Chinese, also from California, detrained at North Adams, Massachusetts, to commence work in Calvin T. Sampson’s shoe factory. Others soon followed. In the south, 900 Chinese went to work on the Alabama and Chattanooga Railroad, and another 150 on the Millaudon sugar plantation near New Orleans, while in the [End Page 119] North, 300 Chinese came to the Passaic Steam Laundry in Belleville, New Jersey, and an equal number to the Beaver Falls Cutlery Company in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania. 1 Very little is known about these pioneering Asians east of the Rockies, as scholarly attention has focused on their far more numerous fellow countrymen in the West. Furthermore, the handful of accounts that have been written about the Chinese in the East have dwelt not so much on the Chinese themselves as on the controversies, both pro and con, that their coming invariably engendered among the local population. The Chinese thus tend to come off in these studies not as the subjects but as the passive objects of history, not as acting but as acted upon. Nevertheless, these controversies serve a useful purpose, for they elicited practically all the information that is now available on these early Chinese immigrants, who left few records of their own. This article attempts to overcome the inherent biases of the sources (mostly newspaper reports) and reconstruct the life and work of one of these first Asian American groups in the eastern United States, the Chinese at the Beaver Falls Cutlery Company in the 1870s. It will also compare their experiences with those of other Chinese elsewhere in the East at the time. The Coming of the Chinese Beaver Falls is a small industrial town in southwestern Pennsylvania, twenty-eight miles northwest of Pittsburgh. It is situated on the Beaver River, three miles above its confluence with the Ohio, and served by a major east-west rail line, then the Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne and Chicago Railroad. Aside from its superior location, it is also well endowed with natural resources, including water, coal, and gas. As a result, it quickly developed in the early 1870s into a regional manufacturing center, known particularly for its production of hardware for...

Ethnie Resources, Opportunity Structure and Coping Strategies : Chinese Businesses in Canada

Ethnic Resources, Opportunity Structures and Coping Strategies: Chinese Businesses in Canada Kwok-Bun CHAN The « transilient migrant » is the economic phenomenon of today and the typical migrant of the next era. A transilient migrant is resource-rich, well-endowed and skilled; as a facilitator of international trade, he or she crosses geographic and economic boundaries at will. Increasingly, they have become the prime movers of powerful economic forces. They who bestraddle both the East and the West, leading a « two-legged existence », with one leg in their country of origin and the other in a country of voluntary adoption, operate as cultural brokers, trade mediators and facilitators between the two worlds. The early Chinese immigrants tended to specialise in ethnic consumer products and later, in services like laundries and restaurants. In today's Canada, with the government courting business immigrants, the path trodden by earlier immigrants has become largely anachronistic. The 1988-1989 data on investor-immigrants in British Columbia shows that these Chinese immigrants — primarily from Hong Kong — topped the list in every category of economic contribution. A similar pattern is noted in Ontario, another popular destination for Chinese immigrants. They are now making inroads into the manufacturing and export sectors. In fact it is the Chinese immigrants who have revitalised Toronto's garment industry.

Oriental Immigration: The Experience of the Chinese, Japanese, and Filipino Populations in the United States

The first large-scale Oriental immigration into the United States occurred between 1850 and 1860 with the active recruitment of Chinese laborers for the development of the trans-Mississippi frontier. Although nearly half of the early Chinese immigrants did not stay a total of 408493 persons born in China were admitted into the mainland United States as visitors students immigrants and returning aliens between 1850 and 1960. The majority of the immigrants prior to 1940 were males and tended to reside near Western ports of entry. The reaction initially was favorable to the Chinese who provided badly needed manpower. However opposition to their presence and continued immigration soon developed in the Western states in response to the economic competition of the Chinese with white workers for wage levels and jobs and the distrust of the different cultural ways of the Chinese. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 by the United States Congress was the culmination of nearly three decades of anti- Chinese agitation at local state and federal levels. The Act did not stop immigration but did upgrade the socioeconomic status of new immigrants by refusing entrance of unskilled laborers. The Act was renewed after the stipulated 10 year period expired in 1892 and was made a permanent enactment in 1904. It was followed by the Immigration Act of 1924 which stopped large-scale Oriental immigration. In comparison with their cousins residing on the United States mainland early Oriental immigrants to Hawaii had little de jure and de facto opposition to their entry and modes of employment. The lack of opposition reflected both the pattern of racial equality established by early trading contacts between Polynesians and Caucasians and high rates of intermarriage which resulted in the presence of a considerable group of people with mixed racial ancestry. (excerpt)