Until now, you've only heard one side of the story, but Chinese American history extends far beyond the railroads. Here's the true story of America, from the Chinese American perspective. A Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection If you've learned about the history of Chinese people in America, it was probably about their work on the railroads in the 1800s. But more likely, you may not have learned about it at all. This may make it feel like Chinese immigration is a newer part of this country, but some scholars believe the first immigrant arrived from China 499 CE--one thousand years before Columbus did! When immigration picked up in the mid-1800s, efforts to ban immigrants from China began swiftly. But hope, strength, and community allowed the Chinese population in America to flourish. From the gold rush and railroads to entrepreneurs, animators, and movie stars, this is the true story of the Chinese American experience. "Deftly written and informative; a call for vigilance and equality." — Kirkus Reviews Dr. Sarah-SoonLing Blackburn is an educator, speaker and professional learning facilitator. She was born in Bangkok, Thailand into a mixed-race Malaysian Chinese and white American family. A classic “third culture kid,” she grew up moving between various East and Southeast Asian countries and the Washington DC area. Sarah moved to the Deep South in 2009, and she has now lived there longer than anywhere else. Her experiences first as a classroom teacher and then as a teacher educator inform her beliefs about the role that education can and must play in the realization of social justice. She owes very much to her ancestors. Sarah spent most of her years in the classroom teaching third and fourth grade. As a professional trainer, Sarah’s areas of focus have included workplace cultures, leadership skills, and diversity, equity and inclusion. Sarah has an M.A. in Social Justice and Education from University College London’s Institute of Education. Her doctoral research at Johns Hopkins University explored strategies for retaining rural educators, and her Ed.D. specialization was Instructional Design in Online Teaching and Learning. She is based out of Oxford, Mississippi. Chapter 1 Becoming Chinese American What would make you leave your home and undertake a long, uncomfortable, and often dangerous journey across the ocean to an unfamiliar land? In the middle of the 1800s, the first major waves of Chinese people started arriving in a place called California. China and California were not only separated by thousands of miles of ocean, they were separated by differences in language, religion, and history. China was an ancient civilization, while the United States was a very young nation. In fact, California only became a state in 1850. Before the 1850s, the few Chinese people in America, like Afong Moy, were often making the much longer journey to the big cities of America’s East Coast. With Californian statehood, however, the United States seemed just a little bit easier to reach than it had before, even though it was still terribly far away. The Chinese people who immigrated to this new country were leaving behind their homes, their families, and everything else that had been familiar to them before. Most left home with the hope that they would one day return, but there was no guarantee that they ever would. Making the decision to leave must have been an emotionally difficult one. The journey from China to the United States was also physically difficult. It required spending a month or more on a ship crossing the vast Pacific Ocean, and the voyage was uncomfortable. Most Chinese people who set off for America were not wealthy, and they had to borrow money from friends, family, or money lenders to help pay for their passage. Even with borrowed money, these passengers could only afford to travel in steerage, or the lowest class of travel. Traveling in steerage meant sharing sleeping quarters with the other steerage passengers, often including sharing bunk beds covered with thin, straw mattresses. The food on the journey was basic and unappetizing, and the sanitation was awful. Imagine the smells of all the people crammed in together for such a long time with no showers, no modern toilets, and no proper health care. Many people died on the journey. On one ship that made the journey from Hong Kong to San Francisco during that time period, one out of every five people aboard did not survive the voyage. Now that you can imagine just how difficult the journey to the United States was for early Chinese Americans, ask yourself this question again: What would make you leave your home and undertake a long, uncomfortable, and often dangerous journey across the ocean to an unfamiliar land? The lure of what might await on the other end would have to seem worth the pain of leaving family, the discomfort of the voyage, and the risk of losing your life. The lure that finally pushed more Chinese people