The Chinese community has a wide range of professional, cultural and social organizations. Founded in the 1800s, these organizations act as quasi-governmental bodies, adjudicating disputes, certifying documents and guarding treaty rights.
Like many men of his day, Wong Leung Ka came to Ogden without a wife or family. He ran a store that offered food and sleeping rooms to those who sought it out.
History
The history of the Chinese community in Indiana reveals how a people bound geographically, culturally and linguistically have maintained their identity and prospered through multiple waves of immigration. Following defeat by Western powers in the Opium Wars and devastating natural catastrophes, including famine and peasant uprisings, Chinese began to leave their homeland in droves in search of opportunity.
They found it in cities like Indianapolis. A handful of Chinese arrived in the late 1820s, followed by more in the 1840s. Because of restrictive immigration laws, the early immigrants were mainly men.
Chinatown became a second home for Chinese, a place where they could shop for familiar food, worship in their temples and catch up with family back in China via newspapers and telegrams. It also served as a gathering place for cultural activities, such as Tong organizations and gunfight shows that mimicked those staged by western cowboys. These shows were a form of entertainment that helped to sanitize the image of the Chinese.
Culture
Despite the stereotype of the Chinese as one homogeneous people, the fact is that this group can vary significantly in its beliefs, daily practices and food from region to region. This is due to the existence of many dialects and languages within China. Even within Mainland China, the differences can be subtle to non-Chinese individuals.
China is a collectivist society, meaning that its people are deeply involved in family and social relationships. This can be seen in the strong adherence to Confucian values such as courtesy, selflessness and respect of others.
Another aspect of Chinese culture is its sensitivity to the concept of face, which refers to a person’s reputation, influence and honour. This means that people act very carefully with a strong consideration of how their actions may impact their peers. This is also why Chinese people are often more conservative in their public behaviours. For example, avoiding the consumption of foods that are believed to be detrimental to one’s health.
Religion
Unlike Western religions, which place a high premium on doctrine, Confucian and Chinese Buddhist beliefs and practices are often more subtle. This makes them less recognizable to outsiders as “religion” and more difficult to measure in surveys.
Some of the difficulties in measuring religion among China’s population stem from state sensitivities about some faiths. The government views Islam and Christianity — which have approximately seventeen million and fifty to sixty million adherents, respectively — as outside influences with little ‘indigenization’.
But the Chinese government endorses folk religion, which encompasses local deities and spirits that are not tied to any one religion. It sees a geopolitical advantage in such popular religion as the worship of the seafaring deity Mazu, which links southeastern Chinese communities with Taiwan, where the god is also popular. The Chinese government encourages such folk religion in part as a way to reinforce its own legitimacy. It takes a page from modern authoritarian playbooks that posit the need for an endorsement of traditional values to compensate for problems at home.
Education
The education system is the cornerstone of Chinese culture. It is designed to produce scholars and scientists as well as skilled workers. This system has succeeded in achieving nearly universal primary-school enrollment, although higher education has been more limited. The national curriculum emphasizes scientific subjects. Since the late 1950s, the number of China’s university students has increased rapidly, and admission is based on competitive nationwide examinations. In recent years, a number of scholars have been sent to the United States for advanced studies.
Families in China are willing to sacrifice their own financial resources to give children a high-quality education. Moreover, the educational system is designed to promote cultural identity and pride in China through a strict diet of moral training and lessons about love for the motherland and the Communist Party. Students in China are required to study nine years of compulsory education, which includes six years of primary school and three years each of lower secondary school and upper secondary school.