Chinese Gold : The Hidden History of Chinese in The Bay with Sandy Lydon in Conversation with George Ow

The Author: Sandy Lydon

Sandy is Historian Emeritus at Cabrillo College where he taught Asian and Asian American History beginning in 1968. He was a Fulbright scholar at the East-West Center, Honolulu where he studied East Asian History and Japanese. He made his first visit to Japan in 1966 on a State Department scholarship, and led his first group to Japan in 1974. Since then he has led groups to China, Mongolia, Siberia, Southeast Asia, Tibet, Ireland and the United Kingdom. He has written widely on the history of Asian immigrants to the Monterey Bay Region including the award-winning Chinese Gold, and the Japanese in the Monterey Bay Region.

According to Sandy Lydon, in Chinese Gold, if we look diligently, however, we will indeed find their marks indelibly etched in these seaside towns: “Though the Chinese are not explicitly mentioned in the local and regional histories, if you hold each page to the light you can make out a faint pattern. The longer you look, the stronger the pattern becomes. The Chinese are in the very paper, they are the watermark.”

About The Book

Bending to back-breaking work in the fields, on the water, and in service to rail lines, Chinese immigrants to the Monterey Bay area poured sweat and ingenuity into the industries that drove nineteenth-century economic growth: fishing, agriculture, and railways. And yet, ask a passerby in downtown Santa Cruz about the location of a historic Chinatown, and you will likely be met with a blank stare.

“Few people realize that bustling Chinatowns once thrived in Monterey, Watsonville, Santa Cruz, and Salinas. Just as few realize that were it not for the Chinese, the region’s tourist industry and phenomenally productive agriculture might never have been. This first-ever study of the Chinese in the Monterey Bay Region traces their history from the arrival of the first fishing people in the 1850s to the contributions of present-day leaders in the community. In recovering a history made invisible by neglect and prejudice, Chinese Gold sheds light on the whole of Chinese experience in America, revealing the proud saga of a resourceful, inventive, and courageous people who pursued the American dream against incredible odds” – Provided by publisher.

In fact, 98 Chinese lived in the towns and villages that dotted this coastal crescent in 1880. They built homes, developed businesses and set down roots – their descendants are today among the most prominent and prosperous of local families. Yet, their stories are largely untold. Dancing between distrust of government agencies and fear of common prejudice, many chose to live as quietly and anonymously as possible. In an era marked by such catastrophic policy as the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, passing unnoticed afforded them some personal and economic protection. Obscurity was both a survival mechanism and also an unfortunate result of a socially marginalized existence. Bending, but not breaking, they worked, they raised families, and they built communities but in most cases, they left barely a trace.