"In the Traditions of China and in the Freedom of America": The Making of San Francisco's Chinese New Year Festivals

This article contends that Chinese American leaders, provoked by the anti-Communist hysteria of the 1950s, exoticized ethnic celebrations in 1953, believing that if they fulfilled an American orientalist imagination, they could distinguish themselves from "Red" Chinese and improve San Francisco Chinatown's business. By rooting ethnic cultural preservation in the Cold War rhetoric of "freedom" and "democracy," these leaders actively chose certain "Chinese" and "American" cultural attributes to construct a Chinese American identity that presented no threat to United States Cold War politics. In addition, the article argues that Miss Chinatown beauty queens became a means for these leaders to demonstrate Chinese American loyalty, attract mainstream consumers, and change popular perceptions from that of an inscrutable, scheming, communistic Chinese to a docile, exotic, feminized minority.