My first question to everybody is did anyone else notice the shout out to CUNY on page 31? =D Okay, now to get serious.
The reading this week gave an overview of the history of Chinese immigration to the United States as well as the effects of this history on the traditions and way of life of the immigrants. The chapter also contained personal accounts of a few people’s lives in China, journeys to, and lives in the United States.
The thing that I found most interesting about the reading was the personal accounts. The stories were sad, and a few of them reflected similar hardships as the Mexican immigrants in Guadalupe of New York. They lived in fear of being discovered, and many were separated from their families. They had to undergo backbreaking labor for long hours to be able to afford living, and some like Liu Zhu’en (Pg.17-18) could not receive proper medical treatment because of the undocumented status and fear of being turned in. Language was a huge barrier that could either open many doors if it as overcome, or it could trap people “in this Chinese environment . . . like being in jail” (Pg.43). It seems that the language barrier that limited possible earnings and mobility along with the tremendous amount of money many immigrants owed to snakeheads once they got into the United States severely limited the extent of the immigrants’ American dreams.
Guest said that most of the Fouzhounese that now inhabit Chinatown have come in the last 20 years in six different simultaneous waves of immigration. Some of the people he described in each wave of immigration sounded quite different from the earlier Chinese immigrants in their level of financial endowment. Each wave of immigration was differently effected by the laws of time. Some could reunite with their families and gain legal recognition by law, and others could not. The laws have changed more than once in the last 20 years.
I found it curious that Chen Quiang (Pg.28-29) was so looking forward to paying off her debts and eventually being able to own her own restaurant as opposed to bigger dreams. I would have thought that Chinese immigrants would have larger dreams and be more equipped to fulfill them in our current society than they used to. However, Chen Quiang’s statement that a lot of Chinese immigrants now also have dreams of opening their own restaurants as opposed to going to school and having some kind of grand career makes me wonder if that’s really the case.
