The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories

by Ken Liu

The Chinese made up a large percentage of the population of Idaho Territory in the late 1800s.1 They formed a vibrant community of miners, cooks, laundry operators, and gardeners that integrated well with the white communities of the mining towns. Almost all the Chinese were men seeking to make their fortune in America.2 By the time many of them decided to settle in America and become Americans, anti-Chinese sentiment had swept the western half of the United States. Beginning with the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, a series of national laws, state laws, and court decisions forbade these men from bringing their wives into America from China and stemmed the flow of any more Chinese, men or women, from entering America. Intermarriage between whites and Chinese was not permitted by law. As a result, the bachelor communities of Chinese in the Idaho mining towns gradually dwindled until all the Chinese had died before the repeal of the Exclusion Acts during World War II. To this day, some of the mining towns of Idaho still celebrate Chinese New Year in memory of the presence of the Chinese among them.