Background
It is important for the historical background accounts of the two identified cultures to be taught and demonstrated through meaningful experiences. In order to support the foundational knowledge needed is to identify with these two cultures, their struggles, and their transitions.
The first waves of Chinese immigrants came to the U.S. after hearing of the “Golden Mountain” or “Gum Saan” when California’s Gold Rush began in 1848. Civil war and famine back home in southern China, where most of the first immigrants were from, propelled them on as well, so that they could work in the U.S. and send money to families back home. In steamships, they arrived in San Francisco’s harbor, where the first Chinatown was founded (Retrieved from http://www.goldenventuremovie.com/Chinese).
The first Chinese immigrants arrived in Chicago in the 1870s, long after the other Chinese had settled in California, Oregon and Washington. It began with the completion of the transcontinental railroad which recruited Chinese as almost 80% of its work force. When the last railroad track was laid in 1869 and work came to an end. Chinese population began to disperse to the mid-western and eastern states from the Pacific Coast where they originally concentrated. But the anti-Chinese sentiment along the Pacific Coast was the most potent factor that sparred the Chinese immigrants advancing eastward. The prejudice against the Chinese intensified in the 1861's when economic conditions in America took a turn for the worse. The depression forced many laborers out of work. And because Chinese were a small, but visible minority, they became easy target for persecution and humiliation.
There were many anti-Chinese riots in San Francisco and Los Angeles. The legal system was also discriminated against them: A law passed in 1863 inadvertently encouraged acts of violence against the Chinese by forbidding them to testify against white men in court.
It was under such circumstances that some ambitious and restless young men began to venture away to other places. Some of them arrived in Chicago. Though the first official report of Chinese in Chicago could be traced in 1870 census report, little was known about these settlers except they were residing in Morgan county of Southern Illinois. The Chinatown neighborhood in Chicago, Illinois, is on the South Side, centered on Cermak and Wentworth Avenues, and is an example of an American Chinatown, or ethnic-Chinese neighborhood. By the 2000 Census, Chicago Primary Metropolitan Statistical Areas has 68,021 Chinese. The combined 60616 and 60608 zip codes in Chicago, as of the 2010 Census, were home to 22,380 people of Chinese descent. Chicago is the second oldest settlement of Chinese in America after the Chinese fled persecution in California (Harry, 2008).
Mexican immigrants also endured some challenges coming to America just as the Chinese did. For almost a half-century after the annexation of Texas in 1845. There was a significant migration in the other direction: Mexican citizens who left the newly annexed U.S. territories and resettled in Mexican territory. Around the 1890s, new industries in the U.S. Southwest especially mining and agriculture attracted Mexican migrant laborers. The Mexican Revolution (1910-1920) then increased the flow: war refugees and political exiles fled to the United States to escape the violence. Mexicans also left rural areas in search of stability and employment. As a result, Mexican migration to the United States rose sharply. The number of legal migrants grew from around 20,000 migrants per year during the 1910s to about 50,000 – 100,000 migrants per year during the 1920s (Steinhauer, 2015).
The first Mexicans who came to Chicago, mostly entertainers and itinerants, came before the turn of the 20th century. In the mid to late 1910s Chicago had its first significant wave of Mexican immigrants. Originally the immigrants were mostly men working in semiskilled and unskilled jobs who originated from Texas and from Guanajuato, Jalisco, and Michoacan. In the 1920s migration increased (Kerr, 2014). Mexican Americans are populated in the Chicago Metropolitan area. Mexican neighborhoods include Pilsen in the Lower West Side and Little Village (this is also where the Mexican Museum of Art is located) in South Lawndale. As of the 2010 Census, 578,100 residents of the City of Chicago, had full or partial Mexican origins. If one were to measure only Mexican born immigrants, Chicago (with 677,000) is second only to Los Angeles (with 1,751,000) on the list of cities with the largest Mexican born populations (measured in 2012).
Both the Chinese and Mexican cultures share some commonalities of enduring changes, and challenges within their native countries which prompted them to leave to migrate to America for more opportunities and a better way of life, and from there some of them found their way into Chicago. They share similarities in their histories of immigration, just as they do with some of their traditions and customs. The research that has been conducted to identify some of the Chinese and Mexican traditions and customs as comparisons and contrast will help students understand these two cultures in relation to each other and themselves, as a means of people having a set of values and morals that they live by that is taught as a child, past down, and is a practice of their family views of how to live.
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