Aug 12, 2021
6:00 pm - 7:30 pm
Event
Los Altos History Museum
51 So. San Antonio Road
Los Altos, CA 94022
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Event Details
Award-winning author Connie Young Yu will explore the Chinese experience during the Gold Rush.
Chinese miners were among the ‘Forty-Niners,’ sailing from Canton to “Gold Mountain,” Gum San, their name for America. Catching “gold fever”, more and more of their countrymen came to join them despite hostility faced by white miners. In their search for the precious metal, they were thwarted by the “Foreign Miner’s Tax”, discriminatory laws and racial violence. Driven from the mines, they moved on to other occupations. They would become cooks, laundrymen, levee builders and workers on the railroad that would unite the country.
She’ll talk about the life and times of early Chinese in California, and how the racial strife they faced in the gold country grew into a nation wide-anti-Chinese movement.
Connie Young Yu, author and historian, is a 4th–generation Californian and a long-time resident of Los Altos Hills. She has written extensively on Asian American history, and is the author of Chinatown, San Jose, USA, and co-author of Voices of the Railroad: Stories by Descendants of Chinese Railroad Workers.
The event is free to attend and will be held both in person AND via Zoom. Registration is required and enables attendance to either venue.
This event is in support of the exhibition, “Gold Fever!” appearing in the Museum’s Main Gallery July 22 – August 29, 2021.
