1media/1306838960_anti-chinese-rioting.jpg2017-11-13T18:55:39-08:00RUISEN CHEN94c2222bf5bc8116abf32e6f329609ee4b518ae62612911image_header2017-11-16T13:18:03-08:00RUISEN CHEN94c2222bf5bc8116abf32e6f329609ee4b518ae6In the 1870s, Chinese immigrant workers were viciously crowded out by the American workers, because the employers prefer the highly productive Chinese workers, who asked for relatively lower salaries to those native workers, who strived hard for higher wages. Many American workers lost their jobs after the arrival of Chinese workers. Due to the anger of American workers, the Chinese exclusion act was enacted and Chinese immigrants were looked down upon by many Americans. Therefore, the American stereotype of Chinese developed--Chinese were characterized as a group of ugly, servile and treacherous people who took away the American workers' work opportunities.However, just as Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie contends in her TED talk that " the consequence of the single story robs people of dignity, " the Americans' single story of Chinese immigrants brought injustice to the Chinese. What the Americans back then did not see was how the Chinese immigrants worked day after day, trying hard to incorporate into the local communities in the U.S.. Most Chinese came to America, the land of opportunities, out of the same purposes as many Americans' ancestors did in the past--all of them wanted to have a better life, but the single story only emphasizes how the Chinese were different from Americans rather than how they were similar. According to Foucault, true history is made in the way that the facts "are grouped together in distinct figures, composed together in accordance with multiple relations, maintained or blurred in accordance with specific regularities." (129) I hold that the history of America is not not complete without the exclusion of Chinese immigrants in the nineteenth century, and it is time for the world to see how the early Chinese immigrants suffered from social injustice after their arrival in the U.S..
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1media/moca-1.jpg2017-11-13T09:09:56-08:00RUISEN CHEN94c2222bf5bc8116abf32e6f329609ee4b518ae6IntroductionRUISEN CHEN14My reflection on "Within a single step: stories in the making of America" exhibition in the Museum of Chinese in Americaimage_header2017-11-15T18:49:46-08:00RUISEN CHEN94c2222bf5bc8116abf32e6f329609ee4b518ae6
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12017-11-13T11:50:10-08:00the exclusion of Chinese immigrants5A poster of an anti-Chinese gathering. In the 1800s, the Chinese were singled out for taxation, barred from public schools and hospitals, and prohibited from serving on juries or testifying in court.media/images-1.jpgplain2017-11-16T12:56:04-08:00
12017-11-13T11:32:07-08:00Chinese in the Westerners' eyes4The Americans considered the Chinese immigrants took away countless job opportunities in industries like clothing, box-making and so on. In this caricature, the Chinese man is demonized with an ugly bucktooth.media/WechatIMG44.jpegplain2017-11-17T16:52:06-08:00
12017-11-13T11:35:37-08:00Chinese in the Westerners' eyes 22A dwarfed Chinese waitermedia/WechatIMG45.jpegplain2017-11-15T17:36:27-08:00