Frida's love of Chinatown and the Chinese people is remarkable given the anti-Chinese sentiment in the United States. Chinese presence in San Francisco began in 1848 with the arrival of two Chinese men and one woman. Soon, more arrived as The Gold Rush lured the Chinese laborers from the Canton area to California or "Gold Mountain." Almost from the start there were tensions between the Chinese immigrants and the United States government, which sought to control and regulate people of Chinese descent through the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 (repealed in 1943 with the Magnuson Act). The cartoon above reveals the extent of the fear and hatred projected onto the Chinese people because even Communists, Socialists, and Hoodlum's were welcomed over the "Chinamen."
Despite these restrictive laws, by 1905, San Francisco’s Chinatown had grown to house 40,000 in a district that was demarcated from Sacramento to Pacific Avenue and from Kearny to Stockton Streets. Grant Avenue (at Bush Street) is one of the oldest streets in Chinatown. In the 1880s, known as Du Pont Street, it was part of the Barbary Coast trail with opium dens, sing-sing girls, gambling, and Tong wars. After the 1906 earthquake, the street’s image was cleaned up and given a new name to honor President Ulysses S. Grant; however, older members of the Chinese community might refer to the street as “Du Pon Gai.” Chinatown has helped the Chinese maintain their cultural practices and native language while living in a foreign environment that often barred them from schools, jobs, and neighborhoods. Until 1948, California law prohibited the intermarriage of Chinese and whites. Despite such actions to keep the Chinese people segregated from mainstream white society, in the 1930s, with the economic Depression, tourism was encouraged to supply needed income to the restaurants and businesses in Chinatown. San Franciscans were drawn to this enclave because it was viewed as exotic. For Frida, Chinatown felt more like home. The main source for this information came from Iris Chang's The Chinese in America. © Celia S. Stahr 2014
2 Comments
6/3/2015 12:13:06 am
Frida Kahlo is not only great because of her eyebrow game but also because of her views and perspectives that transcend race. In her time period, she would be considered radical and that is one of the characteristics of greatness - seeing others beyond their skin color and beyond their culture. I would like to read Kahlo's journey into the unknown world of Chinese people and Chinatown.
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12/5/2015 04:21:59 pm
If you are going to start a new business then you should take some help from your friends and elders. It is a very easy way of getting different ideas.
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Celia Stahr teaches art history at the University of San Francisco. She’s interested in women artists and artists who cross cultural boundaries. She fell in love with the power of Frida Kahlo's art in the 1980s, a feeling that has intensified over the years. Frida in America took 10 years to research and write, but Stahr never lost interest in this fascinating woman and artist.
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