Translating Western Modernity: The First Chinese Hospital in America

Since hospitals are often at the center of health care services, their foundation and evolution provides valuable insights into local political, economic, and cultural contexts. Based on Western and Chinese sources, this essay employs a transnational approach to explain the establishment of the Tung Wah or Oriental Dispensary in San Francisco. This article describes the institution's aims, financing, and combined operation of Western and Chinese medical staffs in an environment of racial discrimination and political power struggles, as well as deep social and cultural divisions during the early twentieth-century plague epidemic.