Montana Historical Society Annual Conference: “A Worthy Ambition for a Chinese Girl:” The Changing Status of Chinese Women in Montana, 1860s-1950s
Because Chinese cultural traditions discouraged women from migrating and American legal obstacles excluded Chinese women from entering the nation, Chinese communities in Montana had a severe gender imbalance. The scarcity of women made family formation difficult. The few Chinese women in the region suffered negative stereotypes and assumptions about their character from non-Chinese Montanans, and experienced confinement and oppression within patriarchal Chinese cultural traditions. Despite these obstacles, several extraordinary Chinese women made their mark on Montana, exhibiting perseverance and strength of spirit that helped them carve out influential roles in Montana’s Chinese communities and beyond.
What a century old restaurant can tell us about the Chinese-American experience in the West
A great story from Montana Public Radio on Butte’s historic Pekin Cafe, the longest continuously operating Chinese restaurant in America. Listen for a history of the Pekin Cafe, details on the experience of Chinese Montanans, and more.
Montana’s Chinese Cemeteries: Translating, Interpreting, & Memorializing What Remains
Prepared for the annual meeting of the Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association, this video features a public history project that is ongoing to translate and interpret headstones from four Chinese cemeteries across Montana. The project is funded through the Montana History Foundation and organized through the leadership of Butte, Montana’s Mai Wah Society.
The Chinese Experience in Montana: 2022 Montana Book Festival
Conversation at the 2022 Montana Book Festival featuring poet Teow Lim Goh, author of Islanders (2016), Faraway Places (2021), and Western Journeys (2022) and Mark T. Johnson, author of The Middle Kingdom under the Big Sky: A History of the Chinese Experience in Montana (2022).
MOCA Performs: The Middle Kingdom under the Big Sky
In a creative partnership, actors arranged by the Museum of the Chinese in America performed the letters from The Middle Kingdom under the Big Sky, speaking to the Chinese idioms and poetic language they noted in the originals and the pressures on immigrants then/now.
Museum of the Chinese in America talks with Mark Johnson
A conversation between MOCA NYC President Nancy Yao Maasbach and author Mark T. Johnson about the book The Middle Kingdom under the Big Sky: A History of the Chinese Experience in Montana and the research process to translate and interpret large collections of letters sent between family members in Montana and southern China.
Keeping Chinese Culture Alive on the Montana Frontier, in partnership with the A.S.I.A. group at Montana State University and The Extreme History Project
Montana’s Chinese residents gained comfort through the continuation of their spiritual and cultural practices. Yet, publicly practicing cultural traditions invited unwanted attention from anti-Chinese forces who sought to expel the Chinese from the region. In this lecture, Mark Johnson will detail how Chinese Montanans achieved cultural continuity and togetherness through these practices while resisting tensions and threats from their detractors.
The War of the Woods: Chinese Woodchoppers and Unlikely Allies, 1880-1900, Montana History Conference, 2022
This presentation examines tensions in wood harvesting around Butte, Montana in the early 1880s. Wood was crucial fuel for the residents’ warmth, but more so for the process of “heap roasting,” an early smelting technique used to process ore. Wood crews provided key labor for the city; however, when a Chinese crew took a contract to deliver 10,000 cords to Butte’s Colorado Smelter, some white workers objected. A mob of more than 200 angry woodsmen harassed the Chinese workers, threatening violence if they didn’t withdraw. This mob was stood down by a lone constable from Butte, who later formed a posse and arrested the mob’s ring leaders. Would a crime against non-citizen Chinese Montanans be prosecuted? Find out at this session, which features early environmental issues in Montana, labor rights, legal questions, and the pressures on Montana’s early Chinese community.
“Your Hands are Bathed in Gold”: Pressures on Butte’s Chinese Community, 1880s-1920s, Montana History Conference, 2021
This talk examines connections with Butte, Montana’s Chinese community and relatives in southern China. Through interpretation of close to one hundred letters from the 1880s to the 1920s, the pressures, motivations, goals, and difficulties facing Montana’s Chinese community become clear. Family members who remained in China were certain that their relative was earning great wealth, writing that “your hands are bathed in gold,” pressuring him to send more money, become involved in various investment schemes, and to care for extended family members with his earnings. These pressures from home, combined with discrimination, restrictions from certain professions, and the threat of violent expulsion from Montana, meant that life was not easy for this Chinese Montanan.
“‘The sleeping lion has awakened’: Montana’s Chinese and the Anti-American Boycott of 1905,” Part of the Document Detectives with the Historical Museum of Fort Missoula, 2021
This talk details a little-known event in Chinese American history, the 1905 Special Census. Specific to Montana, government agents conducted document checks throughout the state and anti-Chinese forces hoped this would lead to the expulsion of the state’s Chinese residents. The Chinese resisted this infringement on their rights by initiating a global boycott effort.
The History of the Chinese Experience in Montana, The Dirt on the Past Podcast through The Extreme History Project, 2020
This conversation with the hosts of the Dirt on the Past Podcast focuses on the broad trends in working to tell the story of Montana’s Chinese residents and what kinds of sources help us tell that story in new ways.
Responses of Montana’s Chinese Communities to Local and Federal Discrimination, Western History Association, 2020
From a high of more than 2,500 in 1890, Montana’s Chinese population decreased by more than half by 1910 through enactment of the Geary Act and a 1905 Special Census of the Chinese in Montana leading to searches, arrests, and deportations. Grass-roots discrimination including boycotts and threats of violence also targeted Chinese Montanans. By focusing on migrations into, out of, and within Montana, this talk examines the pressures on the state’s Chinese communities and their responses to these pressures as they fought to remain in the state they had helped to build.
Chinese Religious Traditions & Burial Practices, Montana History Conference, 2019
This talk details the religious traditions and specifically the burial practices used throughout by Chinese Montanans.
Becoming Chinese in Montana, 2017
Presentation at Montana Tech University, Butte, MT on the Chinese Empire Reform Association as a global phenomenon and its specific efforts in Montana.
In Their Own Words: Translating Documents from Montana’s Historic Chinese Community, Montana Historical Society, 2014
Presentation detailing the transnational project to translate and interpret large collection of Chinese-language sources housed at the Montana Historical Society.