The purpose of this paper is to introduce, discuss, and analyze the topic of American history. Specifically it will link Chinese women immigrants' history to American women's history. Chinese women have a particularly difficult history in America, because many of the first Chinese women to immigrate to America were prostitutes imported to serve the many single Chinese men working in the country. Chinese women were effectually banned from immigrating to the country for many years, and most Chinese men left their wives and children behind in China because it was much cheaper for them to live there. The men simply sent money back home to support their families. 1 Chinese women's history parallels American women's history in many ways, but Chinese women have a much shorter history in this country, and most faced many hardships due to their race.
             Chinese women immigrated to American in exceedingly small numbers until the 20th century. In the mid-1800s, there were 63,000 Chinese in the United States, and nearly all of them were men. They came to this country as laborers, and left their families behind. Most of them fully intended to return to China and reunite with their families, and perhaps half of them did, but many remained in the U.S., mostly on the West Coast, where Chinatowns sprang up in most large west coast cities. 2
             In 1882, the U.S. passed an exclusion law, banning almost all Chinese from immigrating to this country, and it made it illegal for Chinese already here to become citizens, too. This kept even more Chinese women in China, and this law lasted until the 1943, and kept the ratio of Chinese men to Chinese women extremely high. One author notes, "By 1890, there were about twenty-seven Chinese men for every Chinese woman. As late as 1930, the ratio was still four to one." 3 During the time of immigration exclusion, thousands of Chinese were smuggled into the country, and many of them were women. Most of ...