Resilience & Resistance on the 140th anniversary of the CHINESE EXCLUSION ACT
by Eddie Wong. Posted May 4, 2022
I’ve been busy over the past few months working with old and new friends in San Francisco Chinatown to develop plans to commemorate the 140th anniversary of the CHINESE EXCLUSION ACT, which was signed by President Chester Arthur on May 6, 1882. All of the people in the Commemoration Committee are extremely busy with their work in art and culture organizations, civil rights groups, and other community work, but we all set aside time to work on memorializing this date because of a deep love for our ancestors whose hard work, sacrifice and devotion to the future generations enabled us to be here today. To us, history is not just a set of facts in dusty tomes. It’s a living and breathing entity because we are tied to it by blood. Their sacrifices will not be in vain. The legacy of hate from the CHINESE EXCLUSION ACT should not be swept aside or forgotten. Foremost in my mind was the desire to lift up themes of resilience and resistance.

May 3 Commemoration Committee press conference. L-R: Felicia Lowe, Mabel Teng, Stephan Xie, Ed Tepporn, Jenny Leung, Summer Mei Ling Lee, Esther Leong, and Sandra Lew Fewer. Photo by Eddie Wong.
Resilience is used often these days because we have had to employ it just to survive four years of Trump and a devastating pandemic. Willing ourselves to “bounce back” from the depths of anxiety and fear has been a touchstone for humankind. And for our Chinese American ancestors in the U.S., it certainly took resilience to regroup after the “driving out” from towns, rural communities, and grub-stake mines. We suffered, but we survived. We are suffering today as anti-Asian hate continues unabated. Being resilient means that we refuse to live in fear and must confront the deep-seated causes of racial hate and xenophobia in our society.
Resistance is not recognized sufficiently in popular accounts of Chinese American history. At every step of the way, Chinese communities took legal action to assert their rights to work and form communities. They didn’t always win, but they fought back through the courts. And often times, they armed themselves just like everyone else did in the wild, Wild West. Today, resistance takes the form of standing together with all people who recognize that dismantling structural inequality is key to understanding racism.
As our coalition met via zoom to discuss appropriate ways to commemorate the lives of our ancestors, a wealth of creative ideas bubbled up and coalesced around several activities. There was a clear intent to pay homage to those who came before us and upon whose shoulders we stand today. Thus, on Friday, May 6, there will be a candle lighting ceremony at the Angel Island Immigration Station barracks. There will also be a wreath laying at the Chinese Immigrant Monument that overlooks China Cove.
In the following short video clips from our May 3 press conference, you will hear directly from the passionate and visionary organizers of our commemorative events.
Eddie and Mark, thanks for putting out such a high quality zine. I recently visited Cuba for the first time in 51 years. Among other things, I learned that 100,000 Chinese fled to Cuba to avoid the violence and discrimination they faced in the US in the late 19th century. Called the Californios, it was this set of immigrants rather than those of the mid-19th century that created Havana’s Chinatown.
Thank you, Bob, for sharing that little known fact about Chinese in Cuba. We still have much to learn about our history of resistance. These are lessons we need to know as we navigate persistent anti-Asian hate stirred up by xenophobic and white supremacist forces today.