History Minutes: Chinese New Year

            Chinatown, 1890s // OrHi 8356

Chinese New Year starts at sunset on the day of the second moon after winter solstice.  Families clean house to sweep away bad luck and share sayings, called spring couplets, such as “May all who come and go from here have good fortune.”  A feast of six to twelve courses groans on the tables of homes in Chinatown, where two dancing lions kick off the celebration.  These practices reinforce the solidarity of Oregon’s Chinese community.  They also trigger reminders of the struggles Chinese people endured locally and nationally.

Chinese immigrants settled here early in the 1850s and established laundries, restaurants, and shops, mined for gold, and worked on the railroad.  In 1882, the U.S. Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act denying citizenship to current residents and forbidding entry to others.  Despite these discriminatory laws and practices, Oregon’s Chinese community and their cultural practices endured.  By the 1890s, some 5000 of Portland’s 46,000 residents were Chinese and many lived in the bustling streets of Portland’s Chinatown.

Oregon’s Chinese also influenced the settlement and growth of eastern Oregon towns and Chinese labor was critical to the salmon canning industry along the Columbia River.  In 1943, the Chinese Exclusion Act was repealed.  Today, cultural associations, newspapers, and religious organizations flourish throughout Oregon reflecting the rich history of some of Oregon’s earliest non-Native settlers.