Maria Seise was the first Chinese woman to immigrate to California, arriving in Hawaii (then the Sandwich Islands) in 1837 and San Francisco in 1848. [1]
As a young girl, she ran away from her home in Canton to Macao to avoid being sold into slavery by her parents, a common practice amongst impoverished families in China to escape destitution.[ citation needed ] In Macao she worked for a Portuguese family, eventually adopting the Roman Catholic faith and marrying Portuguese sailor. After her husband disappeared on a voyage, she worked for an American family and moved to Hawaii in 1837. She returned to China six years later where she found employment under the Charles V. Gillespie household. In 1848 aboard the Eagle, Seise arrived in San Francisco with the Gillespies. She was reported to be a close companion to Mrs. Gillespie and learned English fluently enough to be confirmed into her church. [2] Maria Seise stayed with the Gillespies and settled on a large tract of land near Chinatown. [3] [4]
The Macanese people are an East Asian ethnic group that originated in Macau in the 16th century, consisting of people of predominantly mixed Cantonese and Portuguese as well as Malay, Japanese, English, Sinhalese, and Indian ancestry.
The Chinatown centered on Grant Avenue and Stockton Street in San Francisco, California, is the oldest Chinatown in North America and the largest Chinese enclave outside Asia. It is also the oldest and largest of the four notable Chinese enclaves within San Francisco. Since its establishment in 1848, it has been highly important and influential in the history and culture of ethnic Chinese immigrants in North America. Chinatown is an enclave that continues to retain its own customs, languages, places of worship, social clubs, and identity. There are two hospitals, several parks and squares, numerous churches, a post office, and other infrastructure. Recent immigrants, many of whom are elderly, opt to live in Chinatown because of the availability of affordable housing and their familiarity with the culture. San Francisco's Chinatown is also renowned as a major tourist attraction, drawing more visitors annually than the Golden Gate Bridge.
Jade Snow Wong was an American ceramic artist and author of two memoirs. She was given the English name of Constance, also being known as Connie Wong Ong.
Melissa Ng Mei-hang is a retired American Hong Kong television actress born in China. She had been under contract to the television station TVB since 1996 after coming second in the Miss Chinese International Pageant, retiring from acting in 2007. Ng speaks fluent English with an American accent, Cantonese, and Mandarin. She currently resides in Hong Kong.
Donaldina Cameron was a pioneer in the fight against slavery as a Presbyterian missionary in San Francisco's Chinatown, who helped more than 2,000 Chinese immigrant girls and women escape from forced prostitution and indentured servitude. She was known as "Fahn Quai," or the “White Devil” of Chinatown, as well as the "Angry Angel of Chinatown."
The history of Chinese Americans or the history of ethnic Chinese in the United States includes three major waves of Chinese immigration to the United States, beginning in the 19th century. Chinese immigrants in the 19th century worked as laborers, particularly on transcontinental railroads such as the Central Pacific Railroad. They also worked as laborers in mining, and suffered racial discrimination at every level of society. Industrial employers were eager for this new and cheap labor, whites were stirred to anger by the "yellow peril." Despite provisions for equal treatment of Chinese immigrants in the 1868 Burlingame Treaty, political and labor organizations rallied against immigrants of what they regarded as a degraded race and "cheap Chinese labor."
Judy Yung was professor emerita in American Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She specialized in oral history, women's history, and Asian American history. She passed away on December 14, 2020 in San Francisco, where she had returned in retirement.
This is an alphabetical index of topics related to Asian Americans.
The Page Act of 1875 was the first restrictive federal immigration law in the United States, which effectively prohibited the entry of Chinese women, marking the end of open borders. The 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act would go on to ban immigration by Chinese men as well.
Pam Chun is a writer and marketing consultant, most notable as the author of the book The Money Dragon.
Ah Toy (亞彩 Taishanese: /a˧ tʰɔi˥/, Standard Cantonese: Aa3 Coi2, 1829–1928) was a Cantonese-born American prostitute and madam in San Francisco, California, during the California Gold Rush, and purportedly the first Chinese prostitute in San Francisco. Arriving from Hong Kong in 1849, she quickly became the best-known Asian woman in the Old West. She reportedly was a tall, attractive woman with bound feet.
Mui tsai, which means "little sister" in Cantonese, describes young Chinese women who worked as domestic servants in China, or in brothels or affluent Chinese households in traditional Chinese society. The young women were typically from poor families, and sold at a young age, under the condition that they be freed through marriage when older. These arrangements were generally looked upon as charitable and a form of adoption, as the young women would be provided for better as mui tsai than they would if they remained with their family. According to some scholars, many of these girls ended up as either concubines or prostitutes, while others write that their status was higher than a concubine's.
Ruthanne Lum McCunn is an American novelist and editor of Chinese and Scottish descent.
Tye Leung Schulze became the first Chinese American woman to vote in the United States when she cast a ballot in San Francisco on May 19, 1912. She also became the first Chinese American woman to pass the civil service exams and to occupy a government job. The San Francisco Call stated that she was "the first Chinese woman in the history of the world to exercise the electoral franchise." Schulze was also the first Chinese woman hired to work at Angel Island. She is a designated Women's History Month Honoree by the National Women's History Project.
Esther Eng, born Ng Kam-ha, was a Cantonese–American film director and the first female director to direct Chinese-language films in the United States. Eng made four feature films in America, and five in Hong Kong. She was recognized as a female pioneer who crossed the boundaries of race, language, culture and gender.
As of 2012, 21.4% of the population in San Francisco was of Chinese descent, and at least 150,000 Chinese American residents. The Chinese are the largest Asian American subgroup in San Francisco. San Francisco has the highest percentage of residents of Chinese descent of any major U.S. city, and the second largest Chinese American population, after New York City. The San Francisco Area is 7.9% Chinese American, with many residents in Oakland and Santa Clara County. San Francisco's Chinese community has ancestry mainly from Guangdong province, China and Hong Kong, although there is a sizable population of ethnic Chinese with ancestry from other parts of mainland China and Taiwan as well.
Januario Antonio de Carvalho (1830–1900) was a prominent member of the Portuguese community in Hong Kong during the late 19th century. He arrived in Hong Kong from Macao in 1842, and later became the Chief Cashier of the Colonial Treasurer of Hong Kong. On October 7, 1878 he was nominated by the Governor General of Hong Kong John Pope Hennessy to be Colonial Treasurer. He would have been the first Portuguese member of the Council, but his nomination was met with indignation from the British Home Office, which viewed Carvalho as an "alien" because of his Portuguese descent and thus unsuited for the position. After his rejection, Hennessy appointed Carvalho a Justice of the Peace. Carvalho later petitioned for, and was granted, status as a naturalized British subject on December 28, 1883.
Kong Tai Heong was a trained obstetrician who was the first Chinese woman to practice medicine in Hawaii. Also certified as a midwife, she delivered babies for the Hawaiian, Portuguese and Chinese populations in Honolulu, practicing for over fifty years. In 1946, she was credited by Robert Ripley as having delivered more babies than any other private practitioner in the United States.
Samantha Knox Condit was an American teacher and Presbyterian missionary, working in the Chinese community of San Francisco, California and surroundings.
Charlotte Ah Tye Chang was an American social worker and community activist in the San Francisco area. As a California-born Chinese-American woman, her citizenship status became complicated after she married a Chinese-born lawyer, Hong Yen Chang, in 1897. Late in life, she protested the demolition of the Kong Chow Temple in San Francisco's Chinatown.