Chinese Americans in the Heartland: Migration, Work, and Community

Field: Social Sciences (Social Sciences)

Huping Ling's Chinese Americans in the Heartland: Migration, Work, and Community extends the analysis of Chinese American communities beyond the usual coverage of coastal experiences with insightful investigations into the history of Chinatowns in St. Louis, Missouri, and Chicago, Illinois. The work is well-researched and grounded in traditional sources such as census reports, archival records, memoirs, archeological studies, and court documents. An additional distinctive element is the author's ability to extend the chronology of analysis closer to the present than many works on similar topics. Ling makes use of interviews and information gleaned from surveys to examine how Chinese American communities in the Midwest have adapted to trends in the recent past.Much of the analysis of Chicago's Chinatown focuses on the influence of the powerful Moy family and how transnational kinship and economic networks contributed to a unique experience in the region. Ling examines traditional roles filled by Chinese workers in Chicago, including as laundry workers, grocers, and restaurant owners. This last category is particularly interesting as Chicago developed affordable chop suey shops and numerous Chinese fine dining restaurants noted for elegance and modernity.A particularly enlightening chapter concerns family life among Chinese American residents in Chicago. Ling analyzes how restrictions prohibiting most Chinese women from entering the United States necessitated unique marriage arrangements including the development of transnational "split marriages" with Chinese men having a wife back in southern China and a second wife or concubine in America. An additional difference that Ling examines is a considerable number of interracial marriages not common to Chinese American communities in the western United States.An interesting aside is an examination of "the Chicago School" led by sociologist Robert Ezra Park at the University of Chicago. A concise overview of the origins, methods, and significance of Park's Chicago School, this chapter situates the current monograph in the century-long intellectual tradition of the study of the experience of Asian American communities.Much of Chinese Americans in the Heartland deals with the Chinese community in St. Louis, treading new ground by analyzing the Chinese American experience in lesser studied regions. Ling traces the origin of a Chinese presence in St. Louis to 1857 when a man named Alla Lee established a small tea shop in the city. Over a decade later, several hundred internal migrants from San Francisco and New York relocated to St. Louis in search of work. This anecdote about the growth of the Chinese community in St. Louis being more from internal migration connects to an important theme throughout the book. While Chinatowns on the West Coast tended to have migrants come directly from China, communities in the Midwest often attracted internal migrants who had experienced life on America's coasts. According to the author, this trend continues today, giving the experience for Chinese communities in the Midwest distinct differences to comparable coastal communities.The author establishes how life in Midwestern Chinatowns, though often reported to be rife with vice and unsanitary conditions, belied these racist stereotypes and was orderly, productive, and civic oriented. Ling analyzes social structures that developed in the Chinese community in St. Louis that aided in ministering to the needs of community members, notably the development of networks of Christian churches and related community events that facilitated "Chinese immigrant women's transition from rural China to urban America" (p. 111).Ling devotes a chapter to community governance in St. Louis, focusing on the On Leong Chinese Merchants and Laborers Association, often referred to as the On Leong Tong. Cutting through myth and exoticization on the oft-repeated criminal role of Chinese tongs, Ling investigates how the On Leong Tong aided Chinese residents in America left largely unprotected by a weakened Chinese government focusing on issues back home. Organizations like the On Leong Tong, in Ling's words, "emerged . . . to meet the social, economic, and legal needs of Chinese immigrants" (p. 141).Throughout these detailed investigations of Chinese American communities in the Midwest, the author notes what makes their experiences different from larger Chinatowns on each coast. According to Ling, the attraction to the Midwest was due to a more affordable cost of living and because these communities found greater acceptance and socio-economic integration into mainstream society. In addition to this greater acceptance, Ling clearly establishes the ingenuity, resilience, and adaptability of Chinese American communities in the Midwest that helped sustain these groups as they preserved key cultural traditions. This well-researched, clearly argued book is an important contribution to the understanding of Chinese American communities beyond the traditional geographic and chronological modes of study.