Becoming American: The Chinese Experience Part I

This documentary is about how the Chinese started their journey back in the 1800s. It starts off by showing students here from the U.S with Chinese background going to back to China to study and find out more about their ancestry. As one of the students mentions when they ask their ancestors about their journey of how they got here, they only mention what year they got here but usually not how nor how their life was back home because at often times it was painful. When the Chinese moved here first to California they did not know what they would come here to but just left they country in hopes of a better life and a way to make money and send it back home. During that time Chinese villagers didn't usually leave their villages but had to make drastic changes in order to get out of poverty. Once here their background in farming helped them get jobs in mining and other agricultural jobs available for them at the time.
The documentary goes into the law passed making it illegal for Chinese people to come to the U.S and how it was the only time that this act of discrimination was done to a group of people solely based on their nationality. During this time immigration drastically decreased from the Chinese. It also touches how Chinese men were among the first men to become domestic workers. It was definitely hard for them to make a home here in America but once they got here they did not look back and worked in almost anything in order to survive.