The Chinese Immigrant Experience in America. Unit designed by Liz Wong, PS124, Manhattan.

• Intended Audience: 5^th grade
• Established Goals:
  • Standard 1: #3 Study about the major social, political, economic, cultural, and religious developments in NYS & U. S. history involves learning about the history of the U. S. and NY
  • Standard 1: #4 Explore different experiences, beliefs, motives, and traditions of people living in their neighborhoods, communities

Understandings

1. Ethnic communities/neighborhoods are formed for a variety of reasons (anti-immigrant sentiments; emotional support; longing for the familiar such as eating familiar foods, celebrating traditions & holidays, speaking the same language, etc.)
2. The character, lifestyle, and experiences of an ethnic community is shaped by economic opportunities and laws passed by the government.
3. Immigrants find ways of meeting their needs (opium addiction to address loneliness, paper sons to gain citizenship status, San Francisco earthquake led to citizenship documents being destroyed allowing Chinese to claim they are citizens, family/kinship associations that provided support for new immigrants such as assisting in communication between Chinese in America and their families in China)

Essential Questions

1. What were the experiences of Chinese-Americans throughout their history in the U. S.?
2. What acts/laws affected the Chinese in America, and how did this lead to the formation of a Chinatown?
3. What have been the contributions of Chinese-Americans to the U. S.?

Knowledge

• 1882 - The U. S. passes the Chinese Exclusion Act, suspending the immigration of Chinese laborers to the U. S. and denies Chinese the right to become American citizens. It is the first U. S. restriction on immigration based on race & nationality, and stops large scale Chinese immigration for 60 years.
• 1898 - In "Wong Kim Ark v. U. S.", the U. S. Supreme Court concedes that a child of Chinese descent born in the U. S. is an American citizen.
• 1943 - Repeal of Exclusion Laws. Quota of 105 Chinese per year set.
• 1965/68 - Racial quotas system for immigration is abolished. Beginning of a new influx of Chinese immigrants and expansion of New York's Chinatown.
• Students will know what a primary document is and how historians use primary documents to construct stories of history
• Students will investigate some of the ways that immigrants joined together in social groups to help make their lives in a new culture easier.

Vocabulary

ghetto, bachelor, society, exclusion, quota, influx, nationality, citizenship

Skills

1. Students will be able to name several different kinds of primary documents (i.e., photographs, legal texts, diaries, etc.)
2. Students will learn how to ask critical questions of a variety of primary documents (visual and textual documents) and consider different opinions and perspectives presented in primary documents
3. Students will learn to draw conclusions from studying primary documents and nonfiction texts.
4. Students will determine the cause and effect of acts passed by the government barring and limiting Chinese immigration.

Stage 2: Assessment Evidence

Performance Task

1. Create a museum exhibit of photos, paintings, etchings by collecting them from various books and websites. Write your own captions for each illustration telling what it depicts of the history of Chinese immigration.
2. Drama activity: Create a dialogue between two Chinese immigrants who are living in NY's Chinatown in 1890. What would they discuss about their lives in America compared to their lives in China? Act out dialogue.
3. Write a letter home from the perspective of a Chinese immigrant telling your family about your experiences in the "Gold Mountain". What hardships and successes have you experienced? Explain why the Chinese moved from the west to the eastern part of the U. S.

Other Evidence (quizzes, observation tools, journals, etc.)

• Students write a journal from the perspective of a Chinese immigrant in the 1880s. Describe a typical day (your work, what you do in your free time, who you spend time with, etc.)

Learning Activities

• Looking at a photo circa 1890. Describe what you see: who is in the photograph, what objects are in the photograph. Based on what you see, make a guess about what life was like for New Yorkers in 1890. Look at several different photographs of Lower Manhattan, especially Chinatown, and describe each of them. Then, using the information from these several photographs, draw a conclusion of who lived in Chinatown in 1890. Can you tell what kinds of jobs Chinatown's residents held? Were they men, women, children? Families or individuals?
• Using the internet, find images of Manhattan's Chinatown today. (Or, if you happen to live in New York City, take your students on a tour of Chinatown and have them take photos of the place themselves.) Then, place these contemporary photos side by side with the photos from the 1890s. Compare and contrast what Chinatown looked like in 1890 and what it looks like now. How did the buildings change? How did the streets change? Can you tell lives in Chinatown today? Men, women, children? Families? Individuals? Can you tell what kinds of jobs residents of today's Chinatown hold?
• Look at the photo of a man smoking an opium pipe and read its caption. Look at photos and read journals regarding Chinese interracial marriages. Describe the Chinese-American experience from these primary sources. Tell how Chinese immigrants in America felt about living here. Describe how they coped and how they met their needs of combating loneliness.
• Describe how they fought back against unfair laws towards the Chinese through court cases. (Wong Kim Ark v. Supreme Court, Fong Yue-Ting v. U. S.)
• Read Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 (may have to be rewritten into kid-friendly language). Determine the cause of this act. Determine its effect on the Chinese
• Construct a timeline of the events/acts that are crucial to the Chinese-American immigrant experience.
• Write a play/skit about a single event/act and how the Chinese and the Americans may have reacted to it.

Shared Reading

• We Are Americans: Voices of the Immigrant Experience pp. 120 - 121 (quote from Chinese immigrant expressing the importance of Chinatown), 125 (bachelor society), 95 - 96 (anti-Chinese immigrant sentiment leads to Exclusion Act of 1882),107 -108 (paper sons, 1906 San Francisco earthquake), 148 - 149 (1943 quota came about because China was an ally of the U. S.)
• Coming to America: The Chinese-American Experience pp. 40 - 41 (Chinese-American Women & "bachelor societies"), p. 54 "End of Exclusion" (1943 quota)
• The Peoples of North America: The Chinese Americans by William Daley, Chelsea House Publishers: 1987. pp. 13 - 15 (formation of Chinatown, reasons women stayed in China), pp. 57 - 67 ("Life in America" - 1888 Scott Act, Paper Sons, Familiar Associations, Christina Missionaries, Breaking the Grip of Prejudice); Photos: p. 32 (Panning for Gold), p. 36 (Chinese mining), p. 38 (violence directed towards Chinese laborers), p. 39 (Building the Railroad)

Videos and Web Resources

• CNN video: Richard Lui's "Paper Sons" aired May 17, 200
• Video of Angel Island from Angel Island website (www.aiisf.org)
• Museum of the Chinese in the Americas (http://www.moca-nyc.org/MoCA/content.asp.

Resources Needed

1. We Are Americans by Dorothy & Thomas Hoobler
2. Coming to America: The Chinese-American Experience by Dana Ying-Hui Wu and Jeffrey Dao-Sheng Tung
3. Chinatown Historical Map & Guide A New York Chinatown History Project Production (http://www.moca-nyc.org/MoCA/content.asp?cid=12 )
4. Timeline: 400 Years of History of Chinese in the Americas (http://www.moca-nyc.org/MoCA/content.asp?cid=12 )
5. Videos: CNN & Angel Island
6. Coolies by Yin and Chris Soenpiet (picture book about Chinese building the railroad)
7. Dragon's Gate by Laurence Yep (novel about Chinese building the railroad)
8. In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson by Bette Bao Lord (explores the idea of citizenship, Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier, the Chinese immigrant experience)
9. Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation: http://www.aiisf.org/
10. Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 (http://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=true&doc=47 )
11. Chinese American Portraits (Personal Histories 1828 - 1988) by Ruthanne Lum McCunn
12. The Peoples of North America: The Chinese Americans by William Daley