Chinese Heritage in Stockton

Chinese settlers first came to California for the Gold Rush. Most were men who left their families in China and came to America to find work. Many wanted to return to China when they had made enough money. Chinese men worked as miners, railway workers, cooks, servants, laundrymen, fishermen, and farm workers.

Early Chinese settlers in Stockton lived near the block where the City Center Cinemas now stands. They built a temple on Hunter Street. The settlers worked in laundries, as servants, and helped to build the levees along rivers. Later many of Stockton’s Chinese settlers moved to East Washington Street.

During the 1880s, many Americans began to resent the Chinese. In 1882 the U.S. Government signed a law (the Chinese Exclusion Act) that banned many Chinese from coming to this country. In Stockton, townspeople tried to have Chinese laundries banned from town. This attempt was not successful.

Life was still hard for Chinese workers in the 20th century. In Stockton Chinese worked as laundrymen, in factories, and on farms. In the 1960s, the East Washington Chinatown was demolished when the Stockton downtown was redeveloped.

Today there is a large and active Chinese-American community in Stockton.

Read an interview with Sylvia Sun Minnick, historian of Stockton's Chinese community here.

Click here to see artifacts used by Chinese people living in Stockton in the 1900s.

 

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