Chinese Americans

Despite having their citizenship withheld before the war, Chinese American women in the Bay Area made significant contributions to the wartime labor force.

A second-generation immigrant, Hazel Ying Lee was the first Chinese American woman to receive her pilot's license.

The Max series makes a radical argument for what constitutes American history.

The story of Mabel Ping‑Hua Lee.

Venture into the Montana eatery, once a gambling den and opium repository, that still draws a crowd.

The surge in violence against Asian-Americans is a reminder that America’s present reality reflects its exclusionary past.

Archaeologists help modern descendants of Chinese railroad workers in Utah commemorate their ancestors' labor and lives.

The laundry: a place to play, grow up, and live out memories both bitter and sweet.

Hollywood's first natural-color feature film and the breakout role for Anna May Wong, considered the first Chinese American movie star.

How San Francisco's Chinatown community used infrastructure as a conduit for identity, empowerment, and resilience.

How white-dominated racial power produces inter-ethnic group conflict.

The actor and martial arts star also wanted to be regarded as a poet-philosopher.

How one doctor’s letter and a string of dodgy studies spurred a public health panic.

Lee's life and work suggested that Asian American identity did not possess—and did not need—any underlying reality beyond solidarity.

The original Los Angeles Chinatown, now known as “Old Chinatown,” developed in the 1860s.

Asian Americans have been both the victims and perpetrators of racial discrimination.

In the gold-rush era, ceremonial greetings swiftly gave way to bigotry and violence.

Remembering Asian-American activists Corky Lee and Yuri Kochiyama.

It all started with the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.

Mabel Ping-Hua Lee fought for the rights of women on two sides of the world.

Travelers brought the Chinese game to American shores in the early 1920s. Why was it such a hit?

The Chinese Hospital in San Francisco is still one-of-a-kind.

Ed Ayers visits the site where the transcontinental railroad was completed. He considers the project's human costs, and discovers how the environment and photography played key roles on the rails.

Retracing the history of Chinatown in Los Angeles using old Chinese restaurant menus as a guide.

A city on the edge.

Before California was West, it was North and it was East: an arrival point for both Mexican and Chinese immigrants.

Searching for the roots of an American classic.

How the Chinese community of Tacoma, Washington Territory was violently expelled in 1885, and what happened next.

For Chinese immigrants, surviving in America has always required intense strategy.

Chinese restaurants are now an American staple, but in the past some Americans tried to shut them down.