F I R S TP R E V461NEXTLAST

Falun Gong Practitioners, Civic Center
Out of the first 15,000 Chinese to arrive in San Francisco, only seven were women. By the 1860s, 40,000 Chinese had arrived to mine the Gold Rush followed by another 20,000 laborers who were brought in by the Central Pacific to work on the Transcontinental Railroad. By now the ratio of Chinese immigrants was still as high as 90% male and as a result the mostly bachelor communities slowly aged in place with very low Chinese birth rates. In fact Chinese brides were not allowed to emigrate in significant numbers after 1872. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 further hampered the entrance of Chinese women to the United States. Today 73 percent of all Chinese Americans live in California.
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