Unit 2: Chinese Exclusion

Laundrymen and Movies

The Story of Anna May Wong 

Historian Henry Yu describes what the 1920s were like for Chinese Americans. He focuses on a single year, 1923:

If you live on the West Coast of the United States and you happen to have come from somewhere in Asia, you live a restricted existence. As an “Asiatic,” a “Mongolian,” an “Oriental,” you are “ineligible for citizenship,” unable to become a naturalized American, and if you are in California, you are forbidden by law from owning land. If you happen to have been born in the

United States, you are legally a citizen, but you face widespread discrimination in work, housing, and the law. If you are Chinese, chances are you are male, since exclusionary laws have kept Chinese women out of the country since 1882, and thus fewer than one out of eight people with Chinese ancestry are female. You would find it difficult to live outside of a Chinatown—almost no one except other Chinese would rent or sell to you. . . . Being considered an Oriental, you find your prospects for prosperity and your choice of employment and housing curtailed by a long history of anti-Asian agitation by labor groups and nativist organizations. . . . The US Congress is just about to pass a series of new immigration laws that will virtually cut off all immigration from Asia. . . . If you are of Asian ancestry in the United States in 1923, you are seen as “alien”— very few people see you as “American.” Even among those who tolerate you and your existence, there is an overwhelming sense that you are an unknown, a mystery, perhaps even inscrutable.

In your notebooks respond to the following questions:

1. What do Yu’s remarks reveal about what it means to be “shoved to the sidelines of American life”?

2. What questions do you have about the Chinese experience in America prior to 1923?

By the 1920s, change was coming. Bill Moyers explains, “Some men were able to bring their wives to America. And their children—raised in America—would want very different lives.” A few of those children were willing to defy tradition. Among them was a laundryman’s daughter who decided to become a movie star. Her name was Anna May Wong and she refused to be “shoved to the sidelines of American life.” Although she faced discrimination, Karen Leong says that “it’s a mistake to see Anna May Wong’s career as a tragedy or her life as a tragedy.” In Part 1 of a three-part memoir published by Pictures magazine in August 1926, Anna May Wong described her childhood in Los Angeles. She focused on an incident that took place when she was just six years old. As she and her sister walked home from school, writes Wong:

A group of little boys, our schoolmates, started following us. They came nearer and nearer, singing some sort of a chant. Finally they were at our heels. “Chink, Chink, Chinaman,” they were shouting. “Chink, Chink, Chinaman.” They surrounded us. Some of them pulled our hair, which we wore in long braids down our backs. They shoved us off the sidewalk, pushing us this way and that, and all the time keeping up their chant: “Chink, Chink, Chinaman. Chink, Chink, Chinaman.” When finally they had tired of tormenting us, we fled for home, and once in our mother’s arms we burst into bitter tears. I don’t suppose either of us ever cried so hard in our lives, before or since.

When the name-calling continued, the girls were taken out of the public school and placed in the Chinese Mission School. Wong writes, “Though our teachers were American, all our schoolmates were Chinese. We were among our own people. We were not tormented any longer.” The magazine published a second installment of Wong’s memoirs the following month but went out of business before the last installment was published.

In your notebooks respond to the following questions:

1. Why do you think Wong describes herself as “Chinese” rather than “American”?

2. Why do you think she devoted much of the first installment of her memoirs to an event that took place when she was six years old?

3. What is she trying to tell her fans about herself and other Chinese Americans through this story? What stories might you tell about your childhood?

After Anna May Wong’s death, Frances Chung wrote a poem in her memory. She entitled it

“American actress (1907-1961).”

Anna May Wong

L.A. laundry child

phoenix woman

sea green silk gown

ivory cigarette holder

solitary player

on a fast train

through China

speaking Chinese

with American accent 

In your notebooks respond to the following questions:

1. What does the poet suggest lies behind the stereotypes associated with Anna May Wong?

2.  How does she view Anna May Wong—as American, Chinese, or Chinese American?

Questions that may arise from today:

1. Why were these stereotypes created?

2. Why were Chinese living in America not allowed to get citizenship? 

3. Why were there so many Chinese immigrants in California? 

4. Why were Chinese immigrants living in California not allowed to own land? 

5. How did Chinese, like other immigrant groups come to live together in communities of their own? 

CQ: What are the origins of Chinese Stereotypes in America?

QW: Should Anna May Wong’s Career be viewed as a tragedy or as a heroic overcoming of Chinese stereotypes?

Activity 2: Chinese Phrase Book

Explain to students that this phrasebook is an artifact of a first historical example of Chinese life in America, from the Chinese point of view. It may be best to jigsaw this text and allow pairs of students to reflect on different portions of the phrasebook to reflect on what the choice of phrases may tell them about life for Chinese Americans at this time.

Students will study Phrase book to come up with ideas of what was happening to Chinese Immigrants in the United States during the 1870s.

The 1875 English-Chinese Phrase Book was designed to help newcomers from China adjust to life in the United States. Have students take turns reading a sentence from the Phrase Book until the entire reading has been completed. In small groups, have students notice the topics of the various conversations. What do you notice about the language used in the book? What insights does the Phrase Book offer into the concerns of Chinese immigrants and their relationships with their neighbors?

1. What do you notice about the language used in the book?

2. What insights does the Phrase Book offer into the concerns of Chinese immigrants and their relationships with their neighbors?

Chinese Phrase Book Analysis

After reading the selected pages from a English-Chinese phrase book published in 1875, answer the following questions:

• 1. What do you notice about the language in this book?

  2. What concerns may Chinese immigrants have in 1875? 

  3. What relationship do Chinese immigrants have with their neighbors at this time?

See the attached PDF below for several excerpts from the phrase book.  

Homework:

Create a mini phrase book that would help immigrants communicate with neighbors in Brooklyn. Provide an explanation of why you chose the phrases that you wrote.

Activity 3: Push and Pull Factors – Video and discussion

Lesson 3: Anti-Chinese Sentiments – Chinese Exclusion Act

CQ: How did the Chinese Exclusion Act affect Chinese-Americans in the early 20th century?

QW: Quiz on early Chinese immigration?

Review quiz

Vocabulary:

Preposterous – outrageous, absurd

Socialism – a theory that supports that idea of shared production and exchange

Perpetuate – continue, to be responsible for

Video:

Clip of Kearny’s Campaign against the Chinese

Mini-Lesson: James Faulkner (American Journalist)

Champaign County Herald newspaper correspondent’s report from California, published December 3, 1879.    Here, correspondent James Faulkner unabashedly derides the Chinese presence in California, warning the nation of the dangers that Chinese immigrants will incur.   Students need to read this article carefully, teasing out fact from opinion and listing statements and ideas displaying racial prejudice. Faulkner often argues that the Chinese are inferior using neutral observations or no evidence at all.  We can learn a lot about Chinese culture and Western prejudice in this piece.

            How did Anglo-Americans perceive Chinese immigrants in the 1870’s?

Activity: Ladies and Gentlemen of the Jury…

Students will read six documents reflecting on the issue of Chinese immigration. Students will take notes and determine what arguments are being used in favor of or against Chinese Exclusion.

Using the information in the documents students will write statements defending or bringing up “charges” against them.

Lesson 3a:

CQ: What lead to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882?

QW: What does Irish immigration have to do with Chinese immigration?

Activity:

30 minutes to prepare statements

You will be reading and presenting these statements on Wednesday.

Homework: Chinese Response to Kearny

Lesson 4: Anti-Chinese Sentiments Gallery Walk

CQ: What was the aftermath of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882?

QW: What do you predict happened after the Chinese Exclusion Act to the Chinese workers who were already living in the US?

Reading: Chinese Exclusion Act 1882

Gallery Walk  - http://immigrants.harpweek.com/Default.htm

Essay Assignment

Homework:

Lesson 5: Chinese and Americanization at the Turn of the Century

Immigration - Activity: Identity and Immigration: The Case of Hong Sling

http://uclawce.ats.ucla.edu/global-2