Given the famines and chaos of imperialist intervention, as well as the disintegrating Qing regime, mass exodus of emigrants from China from the mid-nineteenth century into the twentieth century should come as no surprise. Few of those fleeing sought promised lands, rather, survival as China sank into a colonized backwater. Many Chinese migrants to the United States, mostly men, sent a portion of their earnings from gold seeking or labor back to families at home and living under dire circumstances.
