Story Of A Chinese Immigrant Essay, Research Paper

A Chinese story

After 12 hours of hard labor work, Wong is exhausted and was fast asleep right after he finish every other mine worker?s laundry. Wong is a Chinese immigrant from China. Back in China he was a farmer peasant, who works 13 hours a day to earn some food for his family. But 13 hours of work was not enough, the crops that he grew is only enough to pay the debt for the land lords, he did not have any left for his family. Sometimes his family would starve for days with nothing but water. Life was especially hard for him because he was the only adult man in the family; he has neither land nor money. Only thing he can do is to work hard but it just won?t work for them so when he heard that in America there are gold mines that are hiring Chinese works to work. He immediately signs up for the trip to America. But he does not have any money for the trip so he was forced to sell his new born child to a land lord and with helps from the neighbor he finally got enough money to go to America.

First, with 5 other chinless they want to Hong Kong to wait for an available ship, after waiting for 26 days they finally start their journey. And it was after another 68 days that they reached the Angel Island. In that 68 days it was like 68 years for Wong. The condition on the ship was bad, worse then bad. Wong and the other some 10 people lived in one crowed room without any light, the room was dark and wet, and there were rats every where. And they were lack of food for the 68 days; they were also short on water. The whole thing is actually like hell for them but however most of them survived, some of them drink their own urine, some eat the rats and some even eat the other Chinese?s dead flesh. Hope is the only thing that kept Wong going on and fights against death. His hope is when he get to San Francisco he will start his gold mine work then he will get his money and soon he will be rich, and went back to China to become on of the land lords.

Unfortunately, things did not turn out as it supposed to be in Wong?s dream. After 68 days of long trip on the ship, when their finally reached Angel?s island they have to do all sorts of inspection for health, diseases…etc. Wong was forced to stay on the Angel?s island for some other 100?s days. By the time he finally gets out of there it is almost been half year when he left China.

Right after Wong got out of the Angel?s island he was immediately taken to the gold mine to work by a Chinese contractor. With 6 other mineworkers, they were taken directly to the gold mine. The road to the gold mine was far; it took them several hours to get there by truck. When they were on the way to the mine Wong was so excited, he is was very happy that he could finally start his work after this entire long trip from China. But he did not realize there is more problems waiting for him on the road.

After arriving the mine, Wong was assigned to live in a crowed room with all other Chinese mine workers that work at that mine. The Chinese worker in the mine were treated badly compare to other whites. They were given only 1 days on rest day per 2 weeks and the whites get like 1 day per every week. The other white workers have discrimination agianst the Chinese. And it probably that the Chinese look totally different compare to the White Americans.

After working getting the job in the mine, things did not turn out to be easy for Wong. He has to work 13 hours a day to get paid 4 dollars per week. Wong save 2 dollars every week when he gets paid and send them back to his family in China. In his rest week he has no where to go to except China town. There he would spend his 1-dollar in the mah jong house and he would save the other dollar for himself. After several years of working in the mine, Wong finally gets tired of the work, he decided to go out and open a Chinese restaurant with the money that he had saved. After opening the business it went out pretty well for Wong, as the business gets bigger Wong can?t handle the whole businesses himself so he hired several other Chinese workers to help him. And that is when he met his second wife-May-jin. May-jin is a window that her husband died when he was still on the ship coming to America. Being a single man for years, Wong was lonely so slowly Wong and May-jin start to build up loves between each other. And finally they got married. After they were married Wong stopped sending his money back to China and try to forget his life and family back there. He does not want to remember his bad time and his poor family; he wants to have a new life, a New World that he can live with out any embarassement.