The Little-Known History of Chinese Restaurants

The Little-Known History of Chinese Restaurants

For Asian Pacific American Heritage month, I wanted to share a portion of my culture’s history. We need to be able to support each other to lift up our voices and share how our struggles are rooted in white supremacy culture.

When my family immigrated to the U.S., almost all of my uncles’ and aunts’ first jobs were in the restaurant industry. In fact, as a kid growing up in New York City’s Chinatown, all of my friends’ parents also worked in restaurants. I never thought about why because it just made sense to me. It’s not like there were a lot of jobs available when you didn’t know English.

Now that I’m older, I’ve started to question more about my surroundings. A particular question stood out: why are there so many Chinese restaurants? In 2007, the Chinese Restaurant News magazine estimated that there were nearly 41,000 Chinese restaurants in the United States — three times the number of McDonald’s.

I dug only for a little while before finding that the reason why there are so many Chinese restaurants is rooted in America’s racist history. In the mid-19th century, anti-Chinese sentiment, referred to as the “Yellow Peril,” was fervent. It was a racist ideology where the Chinese is identified as a Yellow Peril, a “core imagery of apes, lesser men, primitives, children, madmen, and beings who possessed special powers” to be feared.

Little did I realize that the reason why there are so many Chinese restaurants is rooted in America’s racist history.

In 1882, this fear was codified into law with the passing of the Chinese Exclusion Act, which explicitly barred laborers from immigrating into the U.S., or becoming U.S. citizens. At the time, most Chinese people in the U.S. were considered laborers, working in mines, on railroads or as cooks or waiters in restaurants. With this Act, only merchants—such as business owners—were allowed to immigrate. In order to overcome the Act and be classified as merchants, Chinese immigrants would pool their money so that one person could be classified as a restaurant owner. The group then rotated status every year in order to bring their families to the U.S. Between 1910 and 1920, the number of Chinese restaurants in New York City nearly quadrupled, and then more than doubled again over the next 10 years.

As I look back and reflect on my people’s history in the United States for Asian Pacific American Heritage month, I see that Chinese restaurants represent more than the delicious food that I was raised on. It is a complex industry created out of necessity to support the Chinese community in the face of America’s racist policies. I hope that by knowing this, more people would come to acknowledge the difficulties and racial inequities each culture had to endure, and continue to support and share our struggles through more efforts to come.

Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
Email

Latest Articles

Supporting and Growing Overlooked Entrepreneurs with Urban Innovation Fund

In 2012, Julie Lein and Clara Brenner started Tumml, an urban ventures accelerator with a mission to empower entrepreneurs to solve urban problems. Through their experience with Tumml, Julie and Clara saw how investors can overlook certain types of entrepreneurs, mostly women and people of color. Building on their experience, Lein and Brenner founded Urban Innovation Fund (UIF) as first-time …

1863 Ventures Seeks to Close the ‘Friends and Family’ Financing Gap for New Majority Entrepreneurs

Melissa Bradley understands how barriers to capital for entrepreneurs of color hurt our economy and our communities. “There is clearly a cost if we do not invest in diversity,” said Bradley, founder of 1863 Ventures. “We miss out on great returns when we are not inclusive in our investment theses. There are opportunity costs for all of us.” She cites …

A Vision for Systemic Change in the Twin Cities: An Interview with Marcus Pope

JK:We’re celebrating your new role as President of Youthprise! Can you tell us a bit about Youthprise? MP: I’ll start by sharing Youthprise’s mission, which is to increase equity with and for Minnesota’s Indigenous, low income, and racially diverse youth. We take the “with and for” very seriously; half of our board members are young people between the ages of …

The Legacy of Wealth Inequities in the Brown and Flynn Families: A Hypothetical Exploration

The first post in a two-part series explores the potential of capital to undo the historical legacy of inequities. Race is a complex issue that continues to drive many of the socioeconomic outcomes in the US. For example, if you are a person of color born in the United States, your zip code is more of a predictor of your …

Get Updates

We want to stay in touch with you! Sign up for our email list to receive updates on the progress we’re making with our network of partners, as well as helpful resources and blog posts.

Name