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Books and images are also throughout the site under various topics.

Chinese in California Agriculture.

This Bittersweet Soil:
The Chinese in California Agriculture, 1860-1910Chinese in California Agriculture.

Sucheng Chan
From the preface: "When I was a child growing up in Shanghai, my favorite treat was Del Monte canned peaches. I was told that cling peaches grew in a faraway place called California. 'How wonderful,' I thought, 'if someday I could go to California and eat peaches to my heart's content!'" Twenty years later she settled in California where she learned that Chinese, Japanese, East Indians and Filipino immigrants had been important in California's agricultural labor forces. At the time of publication, Chan was Professor of History and Director of Asian American Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara. This story of California contributes to the understanding of continuous multi-ethnic and multinational migration.
University of California Press, 1986

Doctor Mom Chung.

Doctor Mom Chung of the Fair-Haired Bastards:
The Life of a Wartime Celebrity
Doctor Mom Chung.

Judy Tzu-Chun Wu
During World War II, Mom Chung's was "the place to be" in San Francisco. Soldiers, movie stars, and politicians gathered at her home to socialize, to show their dedication to the Allied cause, and to express their affection for Dr. Margaret Chung (1889-1959).

The first known American-born Chinese female physician, Chung established one of the first Western medical clinics in San Francisco's Chinatown in the 1920s. She also became a prominent celebrity and behind-the-scenes political broker.

Genthe's Photographs of Old San Francisco's Chinatown.

Genthe's Photographs of San Francisco's Old Chinatown

Arnold Genthe
Many artists arrived in San Francisco in the 1800s. Genthe was among them, and while he was technically not an artist — he was a German doctor of philosophy — he took hundreds of shots of the city, particularly Chinatown in the 1890s. Because many records were destroyed in the 1906 earthquake, Genthe's images imcreased in importance as a record of the hard-working Chinese residents of the city.

(Note: This particular link is to a reproduction that may not be up to standard, but which is culturally important so has been reprinted.)

Picturing Chinatown.

Picturing Chinatown: Art and Orientalism in San FranciscoPicturing Chinatown.

Anthony W. Lee
Library Journal proclaims this "well written, well researched, beautifully produced." Like Judy Yung, Anthony Lee writes of Chinatown from an insider's view, not — as often done — from the view of Westerner's who view Chinatown as filled with curio shops and crowded alleyways housing Opium dens, tongs, and card rooms. Lee has analyzed about 150 photos and paintings from the 1850s to the 1950s, including well-known photographs taken by Arnold Genthe and Dorothea Lange, as well as images from the San Francisco Police book of mug shots. This book is considered an academic study.

Cloud Mountain.

Cloud MountainShips, Shipping, Migration, World Seaports.

Aimee E. Liu

A fictional account of a true story based on family and friends with details about historical and political China — which one reader found too dense and others found inspirational. It starts in San Francisco in 1906 (at the time of the earthquake). Notes from reviewers: "A love story of an American girl and an educated Chinese boy at a time when women hardly spoke to a Chinese person, much less married one. Her husband is a part of Sun Yet-sen's battle to topple the Manchu Dynasty. Within the novel is the history of China from the Opium War in 1840 to the Communist's War of Liberation in 1949."

Unbound Feet.

Unbound Feet:
A Social History of Chinese Women in San Francisco
Chinese Women in San Francisco.

Judy Yung
The author is a second-generation San Franciscan and, at the time of the book's authorship, was Assistant Professor of American Studies at the University of California at Berkeley. The uses the crippling custom of footbinding as a metaphor for "unbinding" by Chinese women in America from their arrival in the 1800s to the end of World War II.

San Francisco's Chinatown (Images of America)San Francisco's Chinatown.

Judy Yung with the Chinese Historical Society of America
San Francisco s Chinatown is the oldest, largest, and most famous Chinese enclave outside of Asia. Since it began in the 1850s, Chinatown has also been a residential neighborhood, business community, and cultural center for generations of Chinese Americans. This collection of vintage photographs, taken from public archives and private collections, shows the realities of daily life, including a community s struggle for survival against racial hostility, exclusion laws, earthquakes, and urban renewal. The images of ordinary people working, shopping, and socializing in Chinatown, combined with historic landmarks, and cultural and political events, are organized into three historical periods, providing a panoramic view of community transformation from the gold rush to the present day.

San Francisco's ChinatownSan Francisco's Chinatown.

Charles Caldwell Dobie; Illustrated by E.H. Suydam, 1936
The work was begun as a series of word pictures through illustrations to give a view of Chinatown. However, the scope was sufficiently vast that the author found himself going in the direction of history and interpretation. In his Foreword he notes: ". . . San Francisco's Chinatown always has been the most significant expression of this alien people dwelling in our midsts." (Note that this was written in 1936, and the Chinese — after all of their major contributions to the development of America — were still referred to, at least by this author, as "aliens." His sources include the Templeton Crocker collection of books on the Chinese in California at the California Historical Society in San Francsico. He writes of the shrimpers at Hunter's Point, shops, poultry, the "Six Companies" and "Four Families' Society, Tong Balconies, alleys and shrines, temples, lanterns and gardens.

The ournal of a Chinese Miner, California, 1852. Wong Ming Chung.

The Journal of Wong Ming-Chung:
A Chinese Miner, California, 1852

Laurence Yep
In 1852, during the height of the California Gold Rush, ten-year-old Wong Ming-Chung makes the dangerous trip to America to join his uncle on his hunt for a fortune. The true treasure for Ming-Chung, though, is America itself. In the midst of the lawless, often hostile environment, he is able to forge an international community of friends.

San Francisco's ChinatownSan Francisco's Chinatown.

Charles Caldwell Dobie; Illustrated by E.H. Suydam, 1936
The work was begun as a series of word pictures through illustrations to give a view of Chinatown. However, the scope was sufficiently vast that the author found himself going in the direction of history and interpretation. In his Foreword he notes: ". . . San Francisco's Chinatown always has been the most significant expression of this alien people dwelling in our midsts." (Note that this was written in 1936, and the Chinese — after all of their major contributions to the development of America — were still referred to, at least by this author, as "aliens." His sources include the Templeton Crocker collection of books on the Chinese in California at the California Historical Society in San Francsico. He writes of the shrimpers at Hunter's Point, shops, poultry, the "Six Companies" and "Four Families' Society, Tong Balconies, alleys and shrines, temples, lanterns and gardens.

Bury My Bones in America.

Bury My Bones in America: The Saga of a Chinese Family in California, 1852-1996 Bury My Bones in America.

From San Francisco to the Sierra Gold Mines
Lani Ah Tye Farkas
Beginning with Yee Ah Tye, the book details his travails and triumphs during the California Gold Rush and sheds light on the struggles of an early Chinese immigrant and his family determined to embrace their adopted country despite racial prejudice and harsh exclusionary laws. The book is richly illustrated with more than 100 photographs, woodcuts, drawings, and maps that trace the Chinese through the years and document the remarkable experiences of the Ah Tye family.

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Maritime Nations, Ships, Sea Captains, Merchants, Merchandise, Ship Passengers and VIPs sailing into San Francisco during the 1800s.

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Sources: As noted on entries and through research centers including National Archives, San Bruno, California; San Francisco Main Library History Collection; Maritime Library, San Francisco, California, various Maritime Museums around the world.

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