Chinese Laundries: Tickets to Survival on Gold Mountain

By John Jung

A social history of the role of the Chinese laundry on the survival of early Chinese immigrants in the U.S.during the Chinese Exclusion law period, 1882-1943, and in Canada during the years of the Head Tax, 1885-1923, and exclusion law, 1923-1947. Why and how Chinese got into the laundry business and how they had to fight discriminatory laws and competition from white-owned laundries to survive. Description of their lives, work demands, and living conditions. Reflections by a sample of children who grew up living in the backs of their laundries provide vivid first-person glimpses of the difficult lives of Chinese laundrymen and their families.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Mar 12, 2013
• ISBN: 9781257149247

John Jung

 John Jung is a retired psychology professor whose memoir, Southern Fried Rice: Life in A Chinese Laundry in the Deep South described the lives of his immigrant parents and his siblings, the sole Chinese family in Macon, Georgia, where they operated a laundry from the 1920s to 1950s during the pre-civil rights era . Three additional books explore how Chinese immigrants from the late 1800s through the middle of the 20th century overcame harsh societal prejudices and laws against them to succeed in running family businesses such as laundries, grocery stores and restaurants.The goal of these books is to inspire, educate, and preserve the history of the many contributions of the Chinese to American society. His latest book, A Chinese American Odyssey: How a Retired Psychologist Makes a Hit as an Historian, describes the process and experience of a decade of research, writing, and speaking about Chinese American history.