Come on! Friends, young people, we move to the south together. There are abundant water sources and vast plains, so let’s go, friends and young people!

Let’s go! Men, we have to reclaim the land together, cut down the trees, and plant crops. Let us arrange our land.

Let’s go! Ladies, keep pace with the men with a reaping hook and hoe and arrange them for the purpose of planting sweet potatoes.

The first movers

Chinese immigration to the United States began in the mid 1800s. The primary destination was the American West, where Chinese workers were integral towards meeting the high demand for labor as the region sought to develop. Chinese immigrants worked in mines and as farmers, and most notably were crucial in their work building the railroads that eventually connected the West to the rest of the country.

Ethnic tensions built during and especially after this period, as Chinese immigrants worked for lower wages (out of necessity) and therefore pushed other ethnic groups out of different occupations. Negative stereotypes also began to develop against the Chinese in which they were portrayed as opium-smoking vagabond gamblers — but it just doesn’t add up that they could work long hours for low wages and at the same time fuel such habits.

Violence and intimidation tactics became commonplace against western Chinese populations. Discriminatory laws were also passed against Chinese to appease angry white settlers. This combination of factors pushed the Chinese out of the western territories to the more developed eastern United States. The greatest landing point for these Chinese-Americans was New York City.

Chinese new york

The first real Chinatown was formed in Five Points, a neighborhood in downtown Manhattan that was always a bustling slum throughout New York’s history. This would be the anchor for Chinese immigrants for the next century as they came in greater and greater numbers due to economic declines in China. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which lasted all the way until 1943, was able to stall the flow of immigrants, but it would not contain them.

During exclusion period (the only non-wartime instance of the United States banning a specific nationality from immigrating) Chinese immigrants still hoping to come who were not already settled in the West would be forced to find ways to circumvent the law. The smuggling operations that were formed in response would serve as a precedent for the truly massive schemes that would become prevalent in the second half of the 20th century.