Lee Chew Leaves for America
I grew up in China. I worked on my father’s farm. When I was 16 years old, a man who once lived in our town came back from America. He built a palace with money he earned in America. Then he held a big party for everyone in the village. He became rich in America and came back to China to share his money.
I decided to go to America, too. I wanted to get rich like the man in my town. When I left for America, my father gave me his blessing. My mother cried. My grandfather laid his hand on my head. He told me to always be good so that my ancestors would be proud of me.
Source adapted for second-grade students by Elise Fillpot, 2010:
The Biography of a Chinaman: Lee Chew
Published in The Independent, LV
February 19, 1903.
Pages 417- 23.
http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/social_history/16chinaman.cfm
In the great rush for gold in California, people came from all over the world. People from China came. At the beginning of 1849, only 54 people from China were in California. By 1876, 22 years later, 116,000 Chinese people lived in California.
At that time, Chinese people could move to California more easily than people on the east side of the United States could move to California. There were no cars or railroads or planes. People on the east side of the U.S. had to ride in wagons to reach California. People from China could ride in a ship to cross the ocean. The ships were faster than the wagons.
This account is in:
The Story of California From the Earliest Days to the Present,
by Henry K. Norton. 7th ed. Chicago, A.C. McClurg & Co., 1924. Chapter XXIV, pp. 283-296.On the site: http://www.sfmuseum.org/hist6/chinhate.html