The museum that I visited was in downtown San Diego called the San Diego Chinese Historical Museum. The museum provides materials from excellent sources, and offers documents of lives of American war veterans and a collection of deeds, photographs, documents, biographies, fishpond, garden, stone path and bronze statue of Confucius in the Asian courtyard. The museum's goal is to help Chinese Americans to learn about their heritage, and to develop an understanding between ethnic groups and to encourage multicultural diversity.
The exhibit that I found interesting was an exhibit entitled Climbing Gold Mountain Chinatown: The Frontier. The exhibit presented the political, social, economic, and cultural aspects of the chinese people that lived in Northern California during the gold rush. The exhibit presented pictures, legal documents, political cartoons, excerpts and quotes from politicians, and a chinese timeline form 1839-1965. .
The early chinese immigrants came looking for gold, but mining in california's mountains proved to be very difficult for the chinese. The chinese were not successful in becoming miners and would become a vital component of the transcontinental railway across the United States. The chinese were so successful in meeting the challenges of the difficult railroad construction, that eventually 12,000 chinese were recruited to work on the railroad line. There was a picture of chinese railroad workers hammering spikes along the tracks. There was another picture of a chinese standing on a suspended platform and the man putting a stick of dynamite into the side of a mountain. The chinese helped to complete the railroad by the year 1869. After the completion of the railroads, californians did not want the chinese to live there anymore and an anti-chinese movement would emerge.
The chinese would face nationalism and unfair treatment that would lead to the exclusionary act in 1882.