Salem’s Chinatown

Salem’s Chinatown was once located right where you are standing. This area was the center of a vibrant community that made up over 10 percent of the city’s population around the year 1900. There were traditional Chinese medicine shops, dry goods stores, food markets, and gambling and opium houses., The Chinese immigrants in Salem came mostly from Toisan (Taishan) County, Guangdong (Canton) Province in south east China in the latter half of the 19th century. They were invited here initially as workers and helped to build the region’s roads, levees, and dams; they cleared land for railroads, and they worked the hops farms. When worsening economic times hit, however, they faced intense racism and discrimination. This occurred at the local, state, and national levels, culminating in the federal Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 that denied entry for laborers and the right to apply for citizenship for immigrants., Anti-Chinese sentiment was evident in Salem for many decades. The Salem City Council condemned the entire China town in 1903 and developers eventually pushed out the last of the Chinese from downtown by the 1930s., Today, times have changed. Now over 1,200 individuals of Chinese descent make up part of the 4,600 Asians or Asian Americans that call Salem home., [Second panel captions], Photo caption one , George Lai Sun (center>pictured here with two of his children, Maxine and Hem, came to Salem in 1868. A successful merchant Sun was considered the "Mayor" of Chinatown in Salem., Photo caption two , In 1884, Chinatown was located along State Street, east of Liberty Street. Sanborn Insurance Map, Caption three, “I like Salem because all people treat me nicely. Then my children all grow up. They can vote but I have been here so long, for fifty-four years next June, I ought to be a citizen. I ought to be voting too. I see some country-man comme over to this country; he stay not very long, theree or four years; he can vote. Why I be here fifty four years altogether, why I cannot vote. I ought to be a citizen too. They must make mistake' something wrong.”, Speech by George Sun, Hal D. Patton’s Fiftieth Anniversary, 1922, Marion County Historical Society., (Chinese not transcribed) ,