First Wave Chinese Immigrants

Part 1
1) What do the Chinese agricultural worker and the agricultural workers of today have in common? (Think in terms of contributions, need for labor, and treatment of laborers).

2) What do Asian owned businesses of today such as: nail shops, convenient stores, gas stations, and dry cleaning businesses all have in common with the laundrymen of the past? (Think about how/why would they enter into these types of businesses? Is it a skillset brought over from the homeland? A "trend"/niche that a couple people learned and trained their fellow countryment to do?)

Part 2
In the Choy, Takaki and Kwong texts, the role of associations within the Chinatowns were discussed. Membership depended on surname, village, district, and sometimes through initiation. Kwong's text provided a deeper examination of the internal conflicts that these associations face amongst members, as well as with the Chinatown community whereas Choy allowed for examination of specific associations within San Francisco's Chinatown.

1) Choose one association (could be by name and/or type) and discuss the following:

a) Function
b) "Membership"
c) One benefit and one disadvantage of belonging to that association 

Part 1

1. The historic Chinese-American agricultural worker, like the modern (often-Hispanic) agricultural workers of today, were treated as temporary physical-force workers, who were hired (and fired) on demand and at rates lower than that of a white worker. Specific laws were created to prevent the Chinese from owning land and they faced dangers of deportation; similarly, many non-citizen/non-resident migrant agricultural workers of today have their careers and stay in this country compromised as well. Effectively, both groups are seen as cheap expendable labor, almost taken for granted, then dismissed as easily. Tataki would argue that many exclusion laws were created to maintain the white-economic-classism that kept the working class poor and the rich rich; it seems a similar situation with the present heir-to-riches-president Trump trying to convince the poorest and least educated Americans that building a wall would keep their jobs safe.

2. Asian-owned businesses such as nail-salons of today are often started by first generation immigrants as a way to make a living in a country where they do not have the right LinkedIn profiles (so to speak) to properly connect with the existing workforce-complex. They realize a need that a physical labor force can help solve (and know others in the same boat in needs of such jobs), and understand that starting such a business is within their financial means. And then they run it, working hard, to solve a niche problem whose demand is high and margins are low enough to not be completely overtaken by larger forces. 

Part 2

Kwong’s text enlightened me of a darker history of the Taiwanese KMT party in NYC. The Taiwanese revisionist of Chinese history (which I would only learn from second hand from my mother) had always painted Taiwan as being the country of underdog intellectuals who were driven out of China when the masses of mindless farmers took power. Things became clear with their motives generalized in a bigger picture as trying to paint a nationalist ideal, as a front to unify people.

a) The function of the CCBA was arguably to provide for a legalized racketing group for early Chinese immigrants of a certain financial and social status, usually merchants of venerable age. They owned property all over Chinatown and basically collected taxes from everyone, though they only supported the causes of merchants. Eventually, from the funding they received from Taiwan, they became a front for the Taiwanese KMT party. Their website, while showing the Taiwanese flag, also offers two language options, with the Chinese language option being traditional Chinese (“fan ti Zhong wen”), which they actually label “correct-standard Chinese” or “zhen ti Zhong wen”. 

b) Membership was basically mandatory for all Chinese in Chinatown, though actual benefits only apply to (wealthier) merchants and never in favor of labor. 

c) For example, when the Chinese laundromat businesses were attacked violently by white laundromats, the CCBA would not help them. In numbers, there were thousands of Chinese laundromat businesses in NYC, which got together to form the Chinese Hand Laundry Association. Seeing this challenge in power, the CCBA would try to disrupt them. The benefit to being a part of this association really only amounts to anything useful if one is a wealthy merchant (and corruption of ruling members also meant pocketing membership dues); the disadvantage is in its inherent hypocrisy and nepotism, and its reliance on an old and dying school of Chinese nationalism that would become invalidated when the people’s republic of China was recognized as the sole Chinese power in the United Nations in lieu of ROC/Taiwan.