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The Chinese in San Francisco
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Chinatown, San Francisco, California. 1884 |
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| Chinese Market in Dupont Street Chinatown, San Francisco |
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This Bittersweet Soil: The Chinese in California Agriculture, 1860-1910 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 |
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Doctor Mom Chung of the Fair-Haired Bastards: 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. |
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Old Chinatown: A Book of Pictures by Arnold GentheArnold 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 by Alibris Books. |
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Picturing ChinatownAnthony 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. |
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Cloud Mountain
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." |
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Unbound Feet: Social History of Chinese Women 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. |
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San Francisco's Chinatown (Images of America) Chinatown, San Francisco: Portsmouth Square, List of Streets and Alleys in Chinatown, San Francisco |
| No Image Available | San Francisco's Chinatown
Charles Caldwell Dobie; Illustrated by E.H. Suydam 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. |
