Moca: Museum Of Chinese In America

Richard Rodriguez article, “The Chinese in All of Us (1944)”, argues that many different cultures have contributed to making up the American culture. Rodriguez backs up this claim by sharing

The Chinese Experience records the history of the Chinese in the United States. The three-part documentary shows how the first arrivals from China, their descendants, and recent immigrants have “become American.” It is a story about identity and belonging that is relative to all Americans. The documentary is divided into three programs, each with a focus on a particular time in history. Program 1 describes the first arrivals from China, beginning in the early 1800’s and ending in 1882, the year Congress passed the first Chinese exclusion act. Program 2, which details the years of exclusion and the way they shaped and distorted Chinese American

Two Alsatian immigrants, Henry Miller and Charles Lux, Pioneered the West’s mix of agriculture and industrialism. They began as meat wholesalers. They quickly expanded their business to encompass cattle land, and land reclamation projects such as dams and irrigation systems. They became one of America’s industrial behemoths. These “industrial cowboys” grazed a herd of 100,000 cattle on 1.25 million acres of company land in California, Oregon, and Nevada and employed more than 1,200 migrant laborers on their corporate ranches. |

Ready and apt to learn all the different kinds of work required in railroad building, they soon became as efficient as the white laborers.” (A History of the Chinese in America, 44) Over the six-year course of building the transcontinental railroad, the Central Pacific Railroad Company hired just about 15,000 Chinese workers to build the railroad.

Right after the American Revolution there was some post war debt that effected most of the population in the United States, especially poor artisans and subsistence farmers . It was really rough at first for families to make it and not lose their houses, business, and farms to foreclosure. Financier Robert Morris took global perspective and opened a new trade route to the orient. The Empress of China sailed to Canton, China’s foreign commerce, and made a profit of $20,000 on the items they sold to China. After the return of Empress of China

But the consequences and the challnages that would occur would be the Native American Indians whom had to be kicked out of their own home and land. Economically the United States boomed tremendously mostly from the Pacific Railway Act of 1862 which provided federal subsidies in land and loans for the construction of transcontinental railroads across the united states. It all started with the Central Pacific Company building from West to East employing thousands of Chinese immigrants. In the opposite direction, the Union Pacific Company began laying tracks from Iowa employing mostly Irish immigrants.

In the historical reading When America First Met China by Eric Jay Dolin, one could say that the context of this historical reading goes into great depth when explaining the trade networks between China and the rest of the continent, particularly in the Americas right after the American Revolution ended in 1783, in comparison to many other sources that did not go into great depth.

The transcontinental railroad was built by two major companies, the Central Pacific and the Union Pacific. The Central Pacific company worked eastbound. They faced the treacherous terrain of the Rocky Mountains, landslides, and winter snowdrifts. Central Pacific would hire Chinese immigrants. These Chinese immigrants, “... made up 85 percent of the Central Pacific workforce.” (Holt McDougal,

     The focus of our group project is on Chinese Americans. We studied various aspects of their lives and the preservation of their culture in America. The Chinese American population is continually growing. In fact, in 1990, they were the largest group of Asians in the United States (Min 58). But living in America and adjusting to a new way of life is not easy. Many Chinese Americans have faced and continue to face much conflict between their Chinese and American identities. But many times, as they adapt to this new life, they are also able to preserve their Chinese culture and identity through various ways. We studied these things through the viewing of a movie called Joy Luck Club,

It is often said that America's railroads were built on the backs of its Chinese immigrants. "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" (The Chinese in California, n.d. Library of Congress). Chinese immigrants were willing to undertake the hard labor, simply because they could not find work elsewhere. While Caucasian immigrants were able to profit in the Pacific Northwest through agricultural and entrepreneurial endeavors, because of the racism Chinese immigrants faced, they had few other options to find work other than on the railroads.

In conclusion most people know that Chinatown in New York are mainly immigrants but not many seem to care since they are just people working and trying to not cause trouble. Tourist may get a taste of the kind of culture and may want to travel to China someday to get the full experience. The Chinese immigrants has faced hard ships along the way but it has paid off now, that the upcoming Chinese are on a smoother path. The new and current generation keep on improving by bring new ideas as well as

After coming to America because of The Gold Rush, Chinese immigrants first worked mining gold, but then worked on building railroads. They tended to mine for small pieces, where impatient miners had abandoned (“Chinese Immigrants during the Gold Rush”). When the Chinese

Gold, a railway the length of a continent, progress, and new beginnings; this was the image of California and the West Coast during the late 1800’s and early 1900’s: the Gilded Age. Consequently, Americans flocked to the West Coast to claim a piece of the prize for their own. But it was not only Americans who heard the story of the wealth of the West. Chinese began to arrive in the 1850’s, but discrimination and racism came too. America was not what the Chinese had been promised or had expected. Poverty, danger, and injustice awaited the Chinese in America. The racism and discrimination inflicted upon the Asians by the Americans was provoked by the behavior exhibited, and jobs performed by Asians in America, and engendered laws limiting

Before the Chinese began to immigrate to America, China had previously lived in isolation from the rest of the world for a while after Zheng He’s voyages in the 15th century allowed the Chinese to receive confirmation that they were much more advanced than any other group at that time. However, China still participated in the Manila Galleon Trade with Mexico until the 1800s in which Chinese goods such as silk, ivory and porcelain were exchanged for silver. In the late 1700s the first ship from the United States with the name Empress of China sailed for China with intentions to start a trade relationship between the two countries. The trip proved to be successful and led to investors being encouraged to

Museums provide a way for people to look closer to something that we usually see in television or books. It is an institution that tells the story of man the world and how humanity has survived in its environment over the years (http://www.maltwood.uvic.ca/cam/activities/past_conferences/1999conf/CAM%2799-EmmanuelArinze.GuyanaFinal.pdf). One of the museums that has the signification cultural importance is the Chinese-American Museum where located in downtown Los Angeles as a part of the El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historic Monument. The building was built by Philippe Garnier, a French settler and prominent businessman, in 1890 named Garnier building. In 1930s, this building became the Chinese American Museum (http://camla.org/the-building/).In addition, the Chinese-American Museum is closed to the original Chinatown, and people can learn from its design as a historic building which contains many Chinese cultural flavors. The Museum has three floors, and each floor has a different theme. For example. the theme of first floor is called the “Journeys”, second floor is called the “Origins”, and the third floor is called the “Roots”. The Chinese-American Museum served as an education role for people especially for the Chinese American.