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Between
1860 and 1880, the majority of the approximately one hundred
thousand Chinese arriving at the port of San Francisco
came from Guangdong Province. In its capital, Guangzhou
(Canton), trade between China and Western nations flourished
in the late eighteenth and nearly nineteenth centuries.
This commercial atmosphere brought news of American current
events, such as the California gold rush, which stimulated
the imaginations of adventurous Cantonese. But nineteenth-century
Chinese came to the United States for many reasons. Floods,
typhoons, droughts, and general poverty were endemic in
the Pearl River delta of which Guangzhou was the center.
Besides insufficient protection from natural catastrophe,
further insecurity stemmed from the loose and faltering
central government in Peking, twelve hundred mi les north
of Guangdong, as well as numerous local bandits roaming
the hills, local ethnic disputes, local official corruption,
heavy taxes, meager earnings, and unparalleled population
density.
The emigrants made their way to Hong Kong and from there
to San Francisco, a journey averaging about two months.
The earliest groups were sponsored as indentured servants
by Chinese companies in San Francisco. This later was
replaced by a credit-ticket system, wherein a Hong Kong
brokerage firm advanced the forty-dollar passage fee,
and a connecting firm in the United States found work
for the immigrant and collected the voyage debt from his
eventual earnings.
A number of those original Chinese immigrants found their
way to Utah first as construction workers on the Central
Pacific Railroad from Sacramento, California, to Promontory,
Utah, in the late 1860s. More than twelve thousand Chinese
were employed in the building of the Central Pacific.
They not only laid track with consistent precision but
also became legendary through their blasting of tunnels
and ridges with nitroglycerin, sometimes while lowered
in baskets over cliffs, such as those fourteen hundred
feet above the American River Canyon. Their Chinese food
was more conducive to good health than the meat and starch
diet of American workers, and their tea drinking helped
protect them from diseases transmitted through polluted
water.
Promontory became the gateway for most Chinese coming
into Utah in frontier times. Between 1870 and 1880 the
majority of Chinese in the state lived in Box Elder County,
and were almost all employed as section hands on the railroad.
Corinne, the once-booming railroad center, had a Chinese
community of up to three hundred people in its heyday.
As the railroad center for Utah, Ogden witnessed the development
of a Chinatown, with census figures rising from 33 Chinese
in 1880 to 106 in 1890. The Chinatown was characterized
by "many rows of low wooden structures . . . built
along Twenty-fifth Street from the Broom Hotel to the
railroad station, four city blocks west of Washington
Boulevard, and many of these establishments were operated
by the Chinese."
Wong Leung Ka was one of the first Chinese merchants in
Ogden. He arrived around 1880 but did not come with the
influx of railroad workers. However, like many other Chinese
of that period, he came to this country without wife or
family. Unlike settlers from northern Europe, most Chinese
most intended to return to their homeland. Wong Leung
Ka resided in Ogden for forty-six years. During those
years, he returned to his family in China twice; each
visit lasted less than a year because he traveled with
a business visa that did not allow him to remain away
longer.
Wong Leung Ka had a shop in Ogden that carried groceries,
canned goods, and Chinese imported items. Above the store,
in the upper level of the building, were sleeping rooms.
Wong Leung Ka was known for his compassion and generosity.
When times were hard and men were unemployed, Chinese
in the area sought Leung Ka's store as a place of refuge.
Sleeping rooms and meals were provided. When and if employment
was found, the men would pay back what they could.
Since 1900 the largest Chinese population in Utah has
been in Salt Lake City. The 1890 census counted 271 Chinese
in Salt Lake City. Plum Alley ran north and south, dividing
the city block between Main and State streets, the cross
streets being 100 and 200 South streets. Within and around
Plum Alley the Chinese developed a microcommunity with
grocery and merchandise stores, laundries, and restaurants.
Another Utah Chinatown existed in Park City. According
to the 1890 census, 131 Chinese resided there. The first
railroads into Park City were constructed in part by Chinese
labor. A landmark in old Park City was the "China
Bridge" that stretched across Chinatown from Rossie
Hill, the residential section of Park City. The bridge
was built so that the residents of Rossie Hill would not
have to pass through Chinatown. The Chinese in Park City
continued to be victims of sporadic, racially inspired
difficulties into the first decade of the 1900s. During
1902 and 1903 the miners union campaigned to boycott Chinese
restaurants and laundries, to end employment of Chinese,
and to prohibit the selling and buying of Chinese goods.
In Carbon County during the 1880s, the Chinese worked
in Pleasant Valley as coal miners. According to one observer,
"the mine entry that was driven by them . . . is
as beautiful a piece of work as one could wish to see
in a coal mine. Evidently no powder was used for blasting.
Entry was driven exclusively with pick work. The sides
are perfectly straight to a certain height and the roof
is semi-arched. Due to the method of working this entry
will stand indefinitely." However, the Chinese in
Pleasant Valley also met with prejudice and were forced
through violence to abandon their jobs.
Despite the anti-Chinese sentiment found especially in
Utah's mining camps, some Chinese did prosper as business
men. In the Uinta Basin during the 1890s and the early
part of the twentieth century, few personalities stand
out with such prominence as Wong Sing. He had a humble
beginning as a laundryman at Fort Duchesne in 1889, but
during the 1920s he owned and operated a merchandise store
which boasted an inventory of between sixty and seventy
thousand dollars. Besides general merchandise, the store
handled furniture, ready-to-wear clothing, meat, and groceries;
and Wong Sing also acted as general agent for machinery
companies and other firms. Wong Sing spoke the Ute language
and displayed a knowledgeable interest and respect for
Indian culture. When he died in an auto accident in 1934,
sixty Ute men assembled at the office of the Indian agency
to mourn his passing.
The decades between 1900 and 1930 were the years of growing
Chinese activity around Plum Alley in Salt Lake City.
In Ogden, Chinese businesses dotted Twenty-fifth Street
and spread to north Grant and Lincoln avenues. As was
the case in most Chinese communities, there were few families.
In Ogden, four or five families provided the rare presence
of women and children. However, during the Depression
years a declining population took its toll of laundries,
stores, and restaurants, and by 1940 the number of Chinese
in the two major cities reached a low of fewer than five
hundred people.
During World War II most of the eligible men served with
the armed forces. Of the twelve in overseas units, one
failed to return. Lt. Arthur Chinn from Salt Lake City
was shot down in France while flying a mission in a P-51.
Kingsley Wong, a Third Army infantryman, received several
Purple Hearts and other medals, including the Silver Star
for gallantry in action in Germany. Many returning American-Chinese
veterans capitalized on their hard-earned opportunity
to attend college under the G.I. Bill, receiving an education
that would probably have been an impossibility had this
financial aid not been available.
A new wave of Chinese immigrants began to settle in the
United States in the aftermath of World War II. This pattern
of immigration was ushered in by changes in immigration
laws: the repeal in 1943 of the Chinese Exclusion Act;
the McCarran-Walter Act of 1952, which approved immigration
from Asia; and the Immigration Act of 1965, which abolished
the national-origins quotas. The influx of refugees from
Vietnam after 1975 contributed to the expansion of the
Chinese community as well, because many of them were of
Chinese extraction. Additional numbers were supplied by
students from Taiwan, Hong Kong, and, more recently, from
the People's Republic of China; some of these have stayed
on to become citizens. Active in all facets of society
and economy, Chinese Americans make a valuable contribution
to the state of Utah.
Steadily growing since the mid-1960s, the Chinese American
population now tallies 5,322 people (1990 census), a number
that represents a tremendous increase over the 1970 total
of 1,281.
Don C. Conley
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