Chinese Chicago: Race, Transnational Migration, and Community since 1870 by Huping Ling (review)

Scholarship on Asian American experiences east of California is burgeoning, and Huping Ling’s Chinese Chicago: Race, Transnational Migration, and Community since 1870 is a tremendous contribution to the literature. Ling argues that the Chinese experience in the Windy City has always featured global dimensions despite transnationalism marked as a contemporary trend among post-1965 immigrants. Through extensive archival work with Chinese- and English-language sources, Ling rigorously demonstrates how Chicago Chinese settlement differed from that of the West Coast and New York City. She narrates the ways in which the location of Chicago held more promise and opportunities for immigrants as the fastest growing American metropolis at the turn of the twentieth century. Chicago’s political and economic significance as a center of Midwestern finance, agribusiness, and culture coupled with the city’s multiethnic composition influenced how Chinese navigated the complex social terrain.

Ling organizes the book chapters temporally and thematically starting in the 1870s and ending in the 2010s. She situates Chinese Chicago community building within the contexts of translocal and transnational migration, entrepreneurship, family structures, neighborhood organizations, and foreign commodity exchange. Whereas Chinese settlement in California was largely the result of the 1840s gold rush, Chicago’s Chinese population evolved in the 1870s after the 1869 completion of the transcontinental railroad, which eased immigrants’ mobility across the United States. Moreover, anti-Chinese sentiment, rampant white and nonwhite violence, and limited work opportunities on the West Coast propelled Chinese movement eastward.

Chinese settlement to Chicago was modest in the late 1870s but accelerated in succeeding years thanks to the booster spirit of the Moy brothers: Moy Dong Chow, Moy Dong Hoy, and Moy Dong Yee. According to Ling, the Moy brothers “cleverly and deliberately cultivated broad personal connections with influential figures in the larger society and maintained firm control over the Chinese immigrant community through their wealth and accommodations” (41) thus setting the foundation for how the Chinese—especially community leaders—formed interpersonal relationships within and outside of Chinatown borders.

Chicago Chinese residents opened laundries, restaurants, cigar shops, and markets in Chinatown and in predominantly black and white neighborhoods throughout the city. As merchants and consumers, Chicago’s booming Chinese population was an integral constituency fueling the urban economy. Though the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act denied migrants entry into America, causing a sharp decline in the country’s overall Chinese population, the number of Chinese living in Chicago actually doubled between 1892 and 1902. Ling attributes this surge to two factors: first, family reunification and, second, the Columbian Exposition in 1893, which attracted Chinese from other parts of the United States hoping to capitalize on the demand for restaurant and laundry services (49).

Their participation in the World’s Fair also extended into the exposition itself. Though the Chinese Qing government boycotted the fair in protest of the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, local Chinese Chicagoans formed the Wah Mee Corporation to fund a “Chinese Village” promoting Chinese culture through exotic representations (76). The voyeuristic exhibit was among the first exposures Americans had to Chinese culture, and it inspired Chinese community leaders to mold U.S. Chinatowns as tourist destinations. Their participation, however, would not have been possible without the financial support of transnational capital provided by influential Chinese import–export entrepreneurs and investors with ties between Chicago and China.

While a hefty portion of the book is devoted to the Chinese experience prior to 1965, Ling also lays out more recent issues and trends within the community. The book’s second half shifts the narrative tone from historical to sociological. Chapter 7, in particular, details the geographical differences between pre- and post-1965 Chinese Americans and fissures based on generation, dialect, education, skill set, and class. Among the most interesting parts of Chinese Chicago concerns the multinodal emergence of Chinese enclaves since the mid-1970s. The original Chinatown, founded in the 1880s, was located on prime real estate of...