Chinese in America: A Legacy of Survival

The Chinese first arrived in America in the mid 19th century in search of gold. They were then recruited to work on the Central Pacific leg of the First Transcontinental Railroad after the Gold Rush wound down in the 1860s. Although the working conditions were excruciating, dangerous, and the mortality rate was high, compared to the white European workers, the Chinese teams turned out to be exceedingly efficient. At the peak of the construction work, more than 11,000 Chinese laborers were involved in building the railroad. Charles Crocker, the manager of the Central Pacific Railroad and the man responsible for hiring Chinese laborers, drove his workers to the point of exhaustion. As a result of the Chinese's back-breaking labor, Crocker was able to set records for laying track and managed to finish the project seven years ahead of the government's deadline. Despite higher wages and better working conditions, the white European workers' share of the workforce was never more than 10 percent of the Chinese workers' labor.

During the series of economic crises that occurred in the United States in the 1870s, the anti-Chinese movement arose as a result of many Americans losing their jobs. The famous slogan "The Chinese must go!" of the Workingman's Party along with aims against Chinese immigrant labor for the Central Pacific Railroad found support among white people in America. This eventually led to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882; the era's most racist legislation. Since the Gold Rush, many Chinese had made their living running laundries, an experience that is detailed in John Jung's novel Chinese Laundries: Tickets to Survival on Gold Mountain. Gold Mountain was the name given to California, where 77% of the Chinese immigrants in America resided.

Because the Chinese did not speak English and faced racial discrimination, the Chinese were kept out of the American job market. The laundry business became ideal work for the Chinese at the time because the nature and conditions of the industry. Running a hand laundry did not require investing a significant amount of economic capital, which most of the Chinese were lacking. It also did not require proficient English skills. All they needed to run their own laundry business were washing sinks, ironing boards, and shelves for putting the clean clothes. Owning their own business also freed the Chinese from working under white bosses, meaning that they would be able to keep the money that they worked for. The majority of Chinese laborers who worked in America at the time were "coolies," or indentured servants, working under conditions resembling slavery.

Although hand laundry owners were their own bosses, owning their own business was far from the ideal American Dream for the Chinese. It was because doing laundry was considered to be women's work by the white Americans that the Chinese were able to infiltrate the market. The laundry business quickly became synonymous with Chinese immigrants, as it became the stereotypical occupation of the entire ethnic group. Because the Chinese were outcasts of American society due to their skin color and English linguistic limitations, a social life was nonexistent. Their schedules consisted of eating, sleeping, working, and little else. The work was strenuous, and the hours long. Many Chinese laundry workers were working up to 16 hours a day. In an excerpt from Jung's book, he states:

Laundry work was mentally, psychologically and physically demanding. One laundryman once told me that he washed his laundry with tears and that if he had known that laundry work was a lifetime of hardship and suffering, he would not have come to the Gold Mountain. However, despite all these difficulties with racial discrimination, hostility, violence and legal exclusion, they survived and prospered. Nowadays, many of their children are successful members of their communities, making valuable contributions to society. The laundrymen left a legacy of hard work, endurance, tolerance and an indomitable spirit to excel in life and work. This legacy is now commonly accepted by all Chinese immigrants and their descendants as a significant part of their enduring heritage, one they can cherish and promote. As a Chinese saying goes, 'to be able to taste the bitter of the bitter, then you will be a step higher than the others.'

Although today the Chinese hand laundry is physically extinct from American society due to advances in technology, its legacy continues to live on in our current generation of Chinese Americans. While Chinese Americans today are experiencing comparable backlash from a range of ethnic groups in American society due to competition for college acceptances, jobs, and representation, we must commit to memory the struggles that our forebears faced in their journey in the United States. We must, in Chinese fashion, embrace the taste of the bitter, in order to find ourselves a step higher in the end.