From George Washington's desire (in the heat of the
Revolutionary War) for a proper set of Chinese porcelains for
afternoon tea, to the lives of Chinese-Irish couples in the 1830s,
to the commercial success of Chang and Eng (the "Siamese Twins"),
to rising fears of "heathen Chinee," "New York before Chinatown"
offers a provocative look at the role Chinese people, things, and
ideas played in the fashioning of American culture and
politics.
Piecing together various historical fragments and anecdotes from
the years before Chinatown emerged in the late 1870s, historian
John Kuo Wei Tchen redraws Manhattan's historical landscape and
broadens our understanding of the role of port cultures in the
making of American identities. Tchen tells his story in three
parts. In the first, he explores America's fascination with Asia as
a source of luxury items, cultural taste, and lucrative trade. In
the second, he explains how Chinese, European-Americans in
Yellowface, and various caricatures became objects of curiosity in
the expansive commercial marketplace. In the third part, Tchen
focuses on how Americans' attitude toward the Chinese changed from
fascination to demonization, leading to the passage of the Chinese
Exclusion Acts beginning in 1882.
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