The Chinese community maintains many traditional practices and values despite pressure to assimilate into American society. These practices include cultural festivals and language schools.
During the early days of immigration, Chinese Americans formed social groups such as clan or family associations and district (home county) associations that served to protect them from white-collar discrimination.
Origins
During the early years of the United States, Chinese came to America as merchants, seamen and students. Some remained and settled permanently. Today, Chinese are one of the largest ethnic groups in America and have kept distinct linguistic and regional traditions.
Despite being recruited as low-wage laborers, Chinese made significant contributions to their new societies. They pioneered farming techniques that produced superior varieties of rice, apples, oranges and other fruits. They built cities and ports in tropical Southeast Asia. They ran restaurants and laundry businesses (which led to the Supreme Court case Yick Wo v Hopkins in 1854).
Overseas, the Chinese have been instrumental in building railways, mining gold in California during the 1850s and establishing Chinatown in San Francisco. In addition, many Chinese immigrants developed successful business in borax and mercury mines, as seamen on American ships and in leather goods, silk and food manufacturing. Despite racial discrimination and exclusion, they created self-reliant communities known to whites as Chinatowns.
Ethnicity
China officially recognizes 56 state-recognized ethnic minority nationalities, which are collectively known as the Chinese people (Chinese:
Ethnic minorities are an integral part of the Chinese community, both at home and abroad. However, the Chinese government is working hard to assimilate them into the national culture by imposing policies of Sinicization on their communities. These include economic development programs to alleviate poverty and standardization policies to homogenize the cultural identity of ethnic minority groups. This is most apparent in China’s Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia and Tibet autonomous regions, where the government has worked to control resources and politics through a majority Han nationality corporation. This is also reflected in the election of Pan Yue to head of the National Ethnic Affairs Commission, who advocates “ethnic fusion” by dissolving the differences between the 56 ethnic groups.
Religion
Religious beliefs and practices play an important role in Chinese culture. Despite the official atheism of the Communist Party, China’s constitution allows for religious belief. However, in recent years, state repression of both house churches and state-sanctioned religious organizations has intensified.
Many Chinese people identify as Buddhists, Taoists or Christians. However, they also practice a range of folk religions and spiritual activities. Some of these traditions are based on lineage or temple societies that connect people across their family lines and communities.
Divination is common in China. For example, ancient Chinese paid mystics to divine the future by writing questions on an ox or turtle bone and applying heat until it cracked. The direction the crack went indicated a response from one’s ancestors.
It is difficult to determine the share of Chinese who are religious — or even define “religion” as they see it — because of the wide array of spiritual and folk practices that are prevalent in China. However, estimates of the number of Chinese who practice Buddhism, Taoism and other forms of folk religion are around 80% of the population.
Language
Throughout China’s long history, political conflicts and wars wreaked havoc with the country’s social structures. They also created linguistic upheaval as speakers fled one region for another, bringing with them their own dialects. These different spoken languages gradually converged into the myriad varieties that exist today.
The written language remained relatively stable, though, crystallizing into the prestige form known as Classical Chinese, the basis of much classical literature and the traditional standard that most people are familiar with when speaking Standard Mandarin. This phenomenon is called diglossia.
The existence of many linguistic faces in China is a testament to the cultural and regional nuances that make up the fabric of its rich heritage. For example, Gan Chinese, spoken in Jiangxi Province and parts of Hunan, Hubei and Fujian provinces is a distinct variation that differs from Standard Mandarin. It is closely related to Hakka, which is spoken in many overseas Chinese communities. These dialects are all considered Sinitic and part of the Sino-Tibetan language family.