On October 6, 2021, I attended the second Indiana Association of Chinese Americans (IACA) meeting where I got to meet Benny Ko. He introduced himself stating that he had moved here to the United States to attend Indiana State University and later attend medical school at Indiana University. He then went on to lecture us on the history of Chinese immigration.
There were two interesting facts that he brought up early on. The first being that immigrating in China didn’t necessarily mean moving outside of the country. China was so big that they considered moving within different parts of China as immigration. This could be since moving and living in a foreign country back then was seen as punishment or exile, with the only exception being monks.
When he mentioned monks, one of the first things that I thought about was a Disney movie that came out in 2006 called Wendy Wu: Homecoming Warrior. The movie is about a monk from China that makes a trip to the United States to get a young, popular teenage girl named Wendy Wu, who is shocked to learn that she is a reincarnated Yin Warrior, to defeat the evil spirit Yan Lo. Throughout the movie, you see many Chinese cultural elements, such as terracotta warriors and mooncakes.
Another thing that Benny brought up that sort of shocked me was that even though China prospered in wealth, there was a period where China fell behind the European countries scientifically and technologically. This came as a shock because China seems to be so technologically advanced and ahead today that it just did not make sense in my mind.
During the Age of Discovery, also known as the Age of Navigation, there were discoveries of new trading routes and partners. One of which were the British who loved and was in high demand of Chinese tea, porcelain, and silk. The mention of tea reminded me of how in the beginning of the short story “Saboteur” by Ha Jin, the policeman purposely throws tea at Chiu and his wife. With tea being something of such value, it doesn’t make sense to me how they could just waste it in a situation such as this.
Britain also traded the Chinese some opium in exchange for silver. The Chinese got addicted to the opium and was losing so much silver from the trades that they tried banning opium trading and caused the Opium War. China ended up losing the first war and lost Hong Kong to the British.
Flash forward to the California Gold Rush, Benny stated how the Chinese immigrants were frowned upon working on the gold fields, so you would most likely find them working as suppliers, such as cooks, or servants. They were treated very poorly with racism and inequality also being a big problem back then.
After learning about the history of China, he tried to get to know us better and what hands-on activities we wanted to possibly do as we continue in the semester. As an Asian American myself, I feel like having this knowledge of the history of China was helpful in helping me understand mine and my family’s culture a little more.