Chinese American Identity

Chinese Americans tend to keep their separate identity
In the United States, there are multiple hyphenated Americans groups, such as African- American, Asian- American, Irish- American, and Indian- American. People hold American nationality, but have a foreign birth or origins tend to identify themselves in some term of Hyphenated Americans. It means that they are not only Americans, but also involve in different ethnicity, religion, language, and culture. Chinese- Americans comprises the largest ethnic group of Asian Americans. Most of the early Chinese workers immigrated from Guangdong province in China for the Gold Rush (“Chinese Immigrants and the Gold Rush”, n.d.). Since 1865, lots of Chinese worker come to the United States and worked
According to the 2010 census, the Chinese American population was around 3.8 million, and half of them lived either in California or New York (“Race Reporting for the Asian Population by Selected Categories: 2010”, 2010 ). The Chinatown in San Francisco was the oldest and largest Chinese community in the United States. People can find Chinese culture elements everywhere in the Chinatown, for example, herbal shops, temples, dragon parades, Chinese book store, Chinese restaurant, Chinese language school, and even Chinese hospital. People living in the Chinatown communicate in Chinese language, and live exactly the same life style as people in China. Chinese Americans in New York also have such community in the Flushing area, know as Chinatown. There are Chinese transportation companies; travel agencies, and Chinese language school also. Almost every child in Chinese American family has attended Chinese language school after their regular school time. Their parents want them to keep ancestor’s culture, so they will always remember that they are rooted in
Music and dance are the common language among all human being. Chinese Americans hold Shen Yun performances all around the United States to spread Chinese art and music. Every year, students can see posts about Shen Yun performance on the wall around the OSU campus. The video Shen Yun 2013 Trailer on the Shen Yun website also shows some significant parts of the performance. Dancers wearing different styles of Chinese traditional ancient clothes performed the Chinese cultures of different dynasty and different ethics. The music play by Chinese traditional instruments was as good as the dancing. As it said in the video, the aim of the performance is to revive 5000 years of divine civilization. It shows Chinese Americans’ strong sense of pride of Chinese