Xiaoqian Zhu
I sat in the classroom, cupping my cheeks and watching my American history teacher Mrs… Mrs. something. Lecturing on about early period of immigration in this country. This would be my very first history class as an exchange student in Monroe, Louisiana.
“Then came the Irish. Between 1820 and 1860, they counted as one-third of all the immigrants in the United States. Many of them are also Catholic.” Mrs. something showed us the green river flowing through downtown Chicago on Saint Patrick’s Day. “German was another group that came during this time, and there would be the first backlash towards the increasing number of immigrants for the first time in US history.”
I felt a new door had opened in my world. The knowledge had completely changed how I came to view America—a country of immigrants. Before I had learned about it, I thought everyone in America was the same, sharing their heritage and ancestors alike.
“After the Civil War, however, America begins a period of industrialization and urbanization,” Mrs. something went on, “and this brought new cheap labor into the country. While immigrants from Southern, Eastern, and Central Europe—including 4 million Italians and 2 million Jews—arrived and worked in factories, immigrants from China also flooded in, and later they’d become the major force which built the transcontinental railroad.”
“China!” I was more than excited to hear my country being brought up in class. But it did feel awkward, even a bit humiliating, because of the “cheap labor” thing. It is a bit misleading, I thought. What if American kids think that Chinese people are nothing but just cheap labor? The teacher quickly mentioned something called “The Chinese Exclusion Act”, but my mind went into a blur, afraid of the fall of any pair of unsympathetic, strangely curious eye on me.
No one did. The moment passed as quietly as that piece of history.
Xiaoqian Zhu is a bilingual storyteller. She started writing nonfiction and poetry in English in her 20s.