Upcoming Chinese Exclusion Act Documentary

[eseum]

"The Chinese Exclusion Act" premieres on PBS, May 29th at 8 p.m. Eastern Time. The documentary was created by Ric Burns and Li-Shin Yu. The film documents the law's development and implementation and connection with other parts of American History at the time.

[True Blue]

Saw this powerful documentary on PBS tonight. Learned just how badly Americans treated the Chinese for many, many years. They don't teach this shameful story in U.S. History classes. They should. Here are some clips related to the documentary. Find it on PBS and watch it.

 

 

 

Edited May 30, 2018 by True Blue (see edit history)

[True Blue]

Sorry Eseum, I didn't see your post and started my own thread. Mods can you merge my posts to this thread?

 

I learned a lot from watching this documentary. How about you?

[Dennis143]

I was watching local PBS last night re. the Exclusion Act. At

 

Sorry Eseum, I didn't see your post and started my own thread. Mods can you merge my posts to this thread?

 

I learned a lot from watching this documentary. How about you?

I learned that at one time in the past, California's workforce was made up 25% Chinese. White workers were threatened by the hard-working and industrious Chinese. Lots of racisim in US history. Oregon prolaimed itself as a white's only state. Sadly, racism still seems to be inbred in many Americans.

[Allon]

The Chinese in America, Iris Chang.

[True Blue]

This was a follow up documentary shown on PBS tonight. I found it on youtube.

 

[True Blue]

I'm going to watch these next

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBoPzC67RMk

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dgXTK1A1qY

 

[True Blue]

The Chinese in America, Iris Chang.

Thanks Allon,

 

I'll check it out from the library. I see she also a book about the Rape of Nanking (Nanjing). That is a story that is not well known in the United States. American know a lot about the Holocaust, but this was as bad, if not worse. I learned a lot about it when we visited the Memorial when we were in Nanjing.

 

For those who haven't been tp Nanjing, here is the Trip Advisor information where you can see some photographs, read some reviews and get an idea of what is there. The Memorial is very well done and is well worth the trip.

https://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g294220-d1799087-Reviews-The_Memorial_of_the_Nanjing_Massacre-Nanjing_Jiangsu.html

Edited May 30, 2018 by True Blue (see edit history)

[Randy W]

A review from the NY Times

 

Review: A New Film Investigates the Time America Banned an Entire Race

 

 

Tracing the story of Chinese immigration from 1840 (when the United States census showed a total of four Chinese among a population of 17 million) to the present, it provides a well-documented but not well-known alternate history — a corrective to the national myth of the melting pot.

 

. . .

 

Throughout the film, the contemporary parallels smack you in the face. Chinese laborers, imported to build the western side of the transcontinental railroad, are seen as a threat when the railroad is finished and the post-Civil War depression of the 1870s drives up white unemployment. A presidential candidate (Rutherford B. Hayes) exploiting anti-immigrant sentiment loses the popular vote but wins the electoral vote. Principled opposition to a citizenship ban (mostly from Republicans) is finally outweighed by the need to court Southern lawmakers readmitted to Congress after Reconstruction.

It’s a complicated and lengthy history to pack into two hours, and it takes some focus on the viewer’s part to keep the thread. Ms. Yu and Mr. Burns don’t deviate from the style that Mr. Burns and his brother Ken have helped codify — slow pans and zooms over myriad archival photos and objects, and interviews with an engaging group of scholars that includes Mae Ngai of Columbia, Erika Lee of the University of Minnesota, K. Scott Wong of Williams College and the ubiquitous California historian Kevin Starr.

(You could reasonably ask why a non-Asian-American filmmaker like Mr. Burns should be the driving force in such a prominent telling of an Asian-American story. The answer, beyond the quality of the work, lies in the inevitable advantage that established figures like him and, in the case of “Becoming American,” Bill Moyers have in raising money. “The Chinese Exclusion Act” is a production of Mr. Burns’s Steeplechase Films and the Center for Asian-American Media.)

The film isn’t only concerned with politics and legislation. There is plenty of social history, of life in Chinatowns and the profound dislocations forced on Chinese-American families, as well as an account of the horrific wave of violence (including mass lynchings) and ethnic purges that struck around 300 cities and towns in the western United States in the years after 1882.

A section on the Page Act of 1875, a forerunner to the Exclusion Act, reveals how a ban on immigration by Asian prostitutes — which led to grueling, humiliating interviews — effectively barred Chinese women from America while greatly contributing to the sexual stereotyping of all Asian women.

 

[True Blue]

The documentary says there were just 4 (FOUR) Chinese persons in America as counted in the 1840 U.S. Census. I wonder what there lives were like? How they got here? What they did? Where they lived? Now that would be a really interesting story......

[Greg.D.]

A movie re the Nanking Massacre based on Iris Chang's book is available on Amazon Prime. I.e. If you are one of the over 100,000,000 people who have Amazon Prime you can see it for free.

 

There is also a new series featuring an American who has access called "China's Challenges" - its pretty good and not trying to be too western-oriented in perspective. (Also "Story of China" - pretty good). And, as I mentioned in another thread, the documentary ."Abacus" is there, too.

[eseum]

I did not get to see the documentary yet, but will pick it up later. I was fairly up on the history of the Act from reading several books. I also read a number of Supreme Court decisions involving Chinese and discrimination against them. I circulated the court cases to my fellow employees during Asian American and Pacific Islander Month.

 

I read the book by Iris Chang before my wife actually entered the U.S. I decided back then that I needed to understand what other Chinese people had faced, just in case. So far she has not met with any overt racism.

 

Those looking to read something that ties us into where we are at in the world today, may want to read THE SILK ROADS: A NEW HISTORY OF THE WORLD, by Peter Frankopan. I am about 2/3 through it and it is a pretty good read.

[Allon]

I know the family of Iris Chang and we correspond off and on. I go to Cupertino to see them every once in a while when I do some book research at Hoover Institute. Her mother Ying Ying is retired from being a professor of biochemistry at Harvard and Champagne-Urbana, along with her husband in physics. He still has the highest score of anyone in Taiwan on the SAT scores. They are quite an interesting couple to talk to. Knowing them tells me a lot about how Iris grew up, and of course, the Chinese in America.

 

I could tell some very poignant stories of their family and how they are now but for those of us who know Chinese families who made it through the tumultuous times from the period in the late 1800's to now, it is almost the norm -- famines, starvation, repression, and in Nanking during its Rape, incredible brutality. But there is a lot of love, although they probably would not use that word.

 

By the admission of the Japanese army themselves "over 300,000" men, women, and children were slaughtered in The Rape. The estimate from academia goes higher to over 470,000. The number of total Chinese killed by Japanese in WWII is about 19 million. So compared to the Jewish Holocaust at about 6.5 million the numbers are very small. The total killed does not match the over 20 million Russians who were killed by the Germans often in brutal conditions as well. But the extent of the brutality is equal if not more with Nanking*. And it extended to the outlying countries of Korea, Malaysia, Philippines, East Indies, and more.

 

Iris Chang was a pillar of the Chinese community when The Rape of Nanking (they call it "The Rape") was published in 1997. Iris was 28 at the time, and 36 when she drove to the woods just south of Los Gatos, and put a .45 cap and ball round into her head. But what a life she had. When she killed herself, she was not the brilliant woman who captivated the hearts and minds of those who know or knew of her, including me. I still remember the highlights of her life so well, and mourn her loss. We need her in times like these.

 

I have thought of having a bibliography here of Chinese writers but I never could get the ball rolling. If anyone is interested, let me know.

 

 

 

* I use the old spelling of Nanking rather than the aspirated and softened version changed by the Mao committee on language to Nanjing when I write of those times