The Chinatown centered on Grant Avenue and Stockton Street in San Francisco, California, is the oldest Chinatown in North America and one of the largest Chinese enclaves 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 important and influential in the history and culture of ethnic Chinese immigrants in North America. Chinatown is an enclave that has retained 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.
Protestant Christianity entered China in the early 19th century, taking root in a significant way during the Qing dynasty. Some historians consider the Taiping Rebellion to have been influenced by Protestant teachings. Since the mid-20th century, there has been an increase in the number of Christian practitioners in China. According to a survey published in 2010 there are approximately 40 million Protestants in China. As of 2019, Fenggang Yang, a sociologist of religion at Purdue University, estimated that there are around 100 million Protestant Christians in China. Other estimates place the number of Protestant Christians at around 40-60 million
Donaldina Cameron was a New Zealand-born American Presbyterian missionary who was a pioneer in the fight against slavery in San Francisco's Chinatown, who helped more than 2,000 Chinese immigrant girls and women escape from forced prostitution or indentured servitude. She was known as "Fahn Quai" or the "White Devil" of Chinatown, as well as the "Angry Angel of Chinatown" and "Lo Mo".
Otis Gibson was a Methodist pastor, best known for his missionary work to the Chinese in Foochow, China and in San Francisco, California.
Katherine Olivia "Kate" Sessions was an American botanist, horticulturalist, and landscape architect closely associated with San Diego, California, and known as the "Mother of Balboa Park."
Divie Bethune McCartee (1820–1900) was an American Protestant Christian medical missionary, educator and U.S. diplomat in China and Japan, first appointed by the American Presbyterian Mission in 1843.
The Church of England Zenana Missionary Society, also known as the Church of England Zenana Mission, was a British Anglican missionary society established to spread Christianity in India. It would later expand its Christian missionary work into Japan and Qing Dynasty China. In 1957 it was absorbed into the Church Missionary Society (CMS).
The Women's Missionary Society of the Pacific Coast of the Methodist Episcopal Church was founded on October 29, 1870 by Methodist Rev. Otis T. Gibson, with eleven women he recruited in August 1870, for the purpose of working among the slave girls in Chinatown, San Francisco, California. By the end of 1870, Rev. Gibson had erected the building of the "Chinese Mission Institute". In October 1871, the first woman, Jin Ho, was rescued from the bay where she had attempted suicide. She began work in a Christian family and in two years married a Christian Chinese. In 1873 a school was opened with Miss L. S. Templeton as teacher. The school mainly taught English and other necessary skills to Chinese and Japanese women and girls who had been rescued from slavery or prostitution in San Francisco Chinatown.
Alice Fong Yu was an American schoolteacher and community organizer. The first Chinese American to teach at a public school, she was a founding member and first president of the Square and Circle Club (方圓社), and was a prominent leader in the San Francisco Chinatown community.
Elizabeth Chamberlain Gibson was the wife of the Methodist missionary Otis Gibson.
Henry J. Crocker was a prominent San Franciscan businessman, one of the Committee of Fifty formed after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake; he was also a noted philatelist.
Liang May Seen was the first woman of Chinese descent to live in Minnesota. She overcame an impoverished childhood in China and teenage years spent in a San Francisco brothel to become a respected leader in the Chinese immigrant community in Minneapolis.
Rose Livingston, known as the Angel of Chinatown, was a suffragist who worked to free prostitutes and victims of sexual slavery. With financial and social support from Harriet Burton Laidlaw and other noted suffragettes, as well as the Rose Livingston Prudential Committee, she worked in New York City's Chinatown and in other cities to rescue girls from forced prostitution, and helped pass the Mann Act to make interstate sex trafficking a federal crime.
Daniel Gee Ching Wu, an Episcopal priest and missionary, became a leader among Chinese Americans, especially in the San Francisco Bay Area.
The zenana missions were outreach programmes established in British India with the aim of converting women to Christianity. From the mid 19th century, they sent female missionaries into the homes of Indian women, including the private areas of houses - known as zenana - that male visitors were not allowed to see. Gradually these missions expanded from purely evangelical work to providing medical and education services. Hospitals and schools established by these missions are still active, making the zenana missions an important part of the history of Christianity in India.
Sexuality, including same-sex sexuality, and other non-normative forms of sexuality have been central to the history of Chinatown, San Francisco. San Francisco's Chinatown, founded in 1848, is the first and largest in the United States. San Francisco was shaped by early Chinese immigrants, who came from the Guangdong province of southern China. These immigrants gathered in the Bay Area in order to join in the California Gold Rush and to build railroads in the American west. San Francisco's Chinatown made room for these early Chinese immigrants to live, and the area turned into a "bachelor society", where female prostitution was pervasive because of the Chinese Exclusion Act. As a racialized immigration region, Chinatown was viewed as an immoral place with the characteristics of "vice", "sluttery" and "sexual deviance" for a long time. These traits were incompatible with the mainstream culture and dominant norms of American society. From the mid-19th century, the state problematized Chinese female prostitution with the subject of sexual transmission, and the government began to go against industrial prostitution in Chinatown, as well as Chinese immigration. As the sex industry grew throughout the Bay Area, the government had to stop the anti-prostitution and anti-immigration law in the beginning of the 20th century. Just like the Castro district and other areas, Chinatown developed its own sexual industries and provided a variety of sexual entertainment to both immigrants and white visitors.
Samantha Knox Condit was an American teacher and Presbyterian missionary, working in the Chinese community of San Francisco, California and surroundings.
Belle Harris Bennett, led the struggle for and won laity rights for women in the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. She was the founding president of the Woman's Missionary Council of the Southern Methodist Church. Much of her work including fundraising and organizational efforts to provide higher education for a new professional class of social workers and community organizers in the Southern Methodist Church in the U.S. and abroad. Her carefully collaborative support for African Americans and immigrants was considered radical at that time by Southerners. She was a suffragist and supporter of temperance as well.
Kan En Vong, also known as Grace Kan or Grace Sweet, was a Chinese kindergarten educator.
William Speer (1822–1904) was an American pioneer Presbyterian missionary and author. He was missionary to the Chinese in Canton (1847–1850), where he helped establish the first Presbytery in Canton, and to the Chinese in California (1852–1857), where he founded the first Chinese Protestant church outside of China and became a strong advocate for the Chinese in California. Later (1865–1876) he served in Pennsylvania as the Secretary of the Presbyterian Board of Education.
