Overview and Brief History:
The Asian land known as China has had a long and variegated History. Western culture has had a special fascination with this Oriental land since long before the fabled Marco Polo began his travels along the Silk Road in 1271. According to most historians, Chinese culture began to develop around 2000 BC along the Yellow River. The Chinese were the first culture to utilize bronze and developed the material during the Shang dynasty (c. 1750 - c. 1040 BC).

During the Eastern Zhou dynasty (771 - 256 BC), China gave the world three gifts, Daoism, Confucianism, and Legalism. Dao, literally “the Way,” comes from the ancient Chinese text known as the Dao de Jing, (the Way and Virtue), purportedly written by a man named Lao-zi. Daoism’s paradoxical philosophical outlook later had a profound influence on the development of Zen Buddhism. Confucianism is based upon the philosophies of the philosopher Confucius who believed that virtue was one of the most important properties that humans and especially leaders could have. He believed that virtue could be attained by following the proper way of behaving. Legalism was developed by a disciple if Confucius’ named Xun-zi who believed that man would look out for himself first and was therefore basically evil. Consequently, the Legalist philosophers designed and advocated for a series of draconian laws, secret police, and an atmosphere of fear to make China easier to control.

In the early thirteenth century, much of China was conquered by the Mongol army, lead by Ghengis Khan. During the seventeenth century, China began having more contact and trade with European countries and Chinese tea became quite popular in the West. In the mid-nineteenth century, China and Britain went to war ostensibly over opium, although there were issues of British sovereignty on Chinese soil as well. The British were trading tons of opium grown in India to Chinese merchants for goods and tea, even though the drug was illegal in both countries. The result of releasing this huge amount of opium on the Chinese people was socially devastating and Chinese officials, appalled at the conditions of their countrymen, shut down the illegal opium dens. When a fleet of Chinese junks prevented a British trading vessel laden with opium from landing on Chinese soil, the British sent in their warships and army to enforce their right to do business in the opium trade. Following a humiliating defeat, China was forced to reopen its markets to the opium traders and cede Hong Kong to the British. Shortly after this war, large numbers of Chinese began immigrating to the United States in large numbers.

Immigration to the United States and Albuquerque:
Sparked by news of the discovery of gold in California, thousands of Chinese immigrated to the land they called the “Gold Mountain.” Many staked claims in the gold fields in and around San Francisco. By 1851, there were 25,000 Chinese working in California and San Francisco’s Chinatown was established.

Thousands of Chinese were also recruited to help build the western leg of the first transcontinental railroad. Nine out of ten laborers employed by the railroad on this project were Chinese. However, racism and the scarcity of jobs in the west following the Gold Rush, the completion of the railroad, and the subsequent increase in population non-Asians lead to a series of anti-Chinese statutes that eventually culminated in the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. The Chinese Exclusion Act, which forbade immigration by unskilled Chinese laborers remained on the books until it was repealed by Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1943.

The railroad brought the first Chinese to New Mexico in the latter part of the nineteenth century. Census data from 1885 lists 33 Chinese as living in Albuquerque and 41 in 1900. Most of them were concentrated in the 200 block of West Silver. As with the rest of the nation under the Chinese Exclusion Act, the Chinese were openly discriminated against in Albuquerque. Sadly, they did not have any legal recourse to stop the discrimination as prejudices against them also pervaded the courts. One Albuquerque story from that time concerns a Chinese man named Joe Kee who gambled $35 of his employer’s money away. Although his employer agreed to drop the charges and let Kee work off his debt, Kee was held in jail for over two years before he was finally issued a pardon by the governor.

Economic opportunities were bleak for Chinese at the turn of the century as well. Most Chinese in Albuquerque owned or worked in laundries. Because of the Chinese Exclusion Act whereby no new Chinese could immigrate to America, Albuquerque’s Chinese population began to decline. The repeal of the Act in 1943 did little to increase Chinese immigration because strict quotas instituted under the National Origins Act of 1924, which tied immigration percentages to 1890 population numbers, only allowed for 105 Chinese a year to enter the United States. However, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 finally ushered in a new period in Chinese American immigration.

The Civil Rights Act restored many of the basic rights that had been long denied to Chinese Americans. Under these new laws, thousands of Chinese people came to the United States to reunite with their families. There are different types of Chinese immigrants that have been immigrating to the United States since the 1970's. One type consists of highly select and well-educated Chinese. A second type is made up of thousands of less skilled/educated Chinese immigrants who have entered the United States to escape either political instability or repression. Still others are ethnic Chinese from places like Vietnam and Cambodia who became poverty-stricken refugees after fleeing to escape postwar threats and ethnic cleansings.

Most of the Chinese population currently residing in Albuquerque immigrated here as a result of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. Many came because of the University of New Mexico which receives from twenty to forty new students from China each year. Many others earned their degrees in other locations and came to UNM to teach. Still others have come to work in the scientific laboratories. In the late 1970's and through the 1980's, most immigrants were from Taiwan, but today that trend has reversed and most new immigrants are from the Mainland. We also learned that there is an association that facilitates the adoption of Chinese children and that there are over two-hundred of them living in Albuquerque. In 2000, the Chinese community in Albuquerque was estimated by the US Census to consist of 2,414 people.

Cultural Traditions:
Language is very important to Albuquerque’s Chinese community. There are many different Chinese dialects such as Cantonese, Putonghua, Minnan, Chaozhou, Shanghai, Mandarin, and Kejia; but Mandarin is common to many. In spite of these many dialects, they all share one common written Chinese language which facilitates communication across them. There are five or six families in Albuquerque who share the responsibility of teaching their native language in the Children’s Chinese Language Program. There are two instructors at UNM currently teaching Mandarin and an extension course about Chinese culture is also offered. The Career Enrichment Center, affiliated with the Albuquerque Public School system, also provides classes in Mandarin.

Learning Chinese characters and the reading and writing of the Chinese language is very different than speaking it. It is a visual language and American born Chinese, (affectionately nick-named ABC’s), need professionals to teach them the characters. For example, some old Chinese stories consist of only three different characters that when spoken might contain over one-hundred words.

In our survey, we learned that some Chinese cultural traditions are non-verbal and not obvious to outside observers. For example, Chinese do not like to use credit cards and instead prefer to put money up first. Children in China are expected to live with their parents if they are living in the same city even if they have children of their own, whereas children in America are expected to move away from their parents’ home after reaching adulthood. In China, titles such as Dr., Master, or Professor, are always used to show respect, whereas in western culture people address each other directly by their first name. In China, when you shake your head from side to side it means, “yes” rather than “no.” In China, the bride wears red at her wedding. In China, you invite your professor for a meal after you finish your degree; in the U.S. professors invite their students to their houses after they finish their degree. In China, if an older male came into the room, a woman would stand and greet him; but in the America a woman would stay seated and just say “hello.” In China, people fight to pay the bill when they dine out with others; in the US you don’t lose face if someone else pays the bill. Finally, in China the last name always goes before the first, but in western culture it is in the reverse order, so Chinese here have adopted the American custom.

Chinese cuisine available in Albuquerque is fairly standardized fare that caters to the non-Chinese public. Many Chinese do prepare traditional Chinese dishes in their homes, however. Rice is still a daily stable in most Chinese household diets. The increased availability of certain products common to Chinese cooking, such as like tofu and moon cake, in local groceries has helped as well. The Chinese grocery Ta Lin also supplies many hard-to-find culinary specialities.

The Chinese Cultural Center, which has been in existence since 1974, offers classes to the public and teaches oriental philosophy, Chinese holidays, stories and legends, cultural customs, and history. These concepts are incorporated into martial arts classes. Both Kung Fu and Tai Chi, are taught at the center. Most of the students are non-Chinese. Eighty-three students will go to China next year to visit Shaolin Temple and Dong Mountain, two cites known for the origin of Kung Fu and Tai Chi respectively. The Center also sells a variety of culturally related items, including martial arts implements, gongs, Feng Shui books, etc.

Albuquerque has a wu shu Master who has won the gold medal in the Asian Olympic Games as well as several gold medals in China’s National wu shu Competition. wu shu is martial art that is noted for its method of achieving heath, self-defense skills, mental discipline, recreational pursuit and competition. Wu shu is the correct term for all Chinese martial arts, therefore kung fu and wu shu were originally the same. During the last thirty years, wu shu in Mainland China was modernized so that there could be a universal standard for training and competing. Emphasis has now been placed on speed, difficulty, and presentation. Consequently, wu shu has become an athletic and aesthetic performance and competitive sport, while kung fu remains the traditional fighting practice. Taijiquan is a major division of wu shu that utilizes the body’s internal energy or chi to turn one’s opponents’s strengths against them.

Artistic Traditions:
There is a Chinese Chorus that has existed in Albuquerque for about ten years, which sings in Chinese. It originated among friends who just enjoyed singing together. The chorus is also open to non-Chinese and practices three times monthly, usually on Friday nights, at the Presbyterian or Central United Methodist churches. They have given performances at the churches as well as at Keller Hall and often invite famous musicians to perform with them.

Annual Events and Celebrations:
The Chinese New Year is the main event that is celebrated in Albuquerque annually. Although both are based on lunar cycles, the Chinese calendar has a different cycle than the Western calendar. Because the start of the lunar year is based on the cycles of the moon, the beginning of the year can fall anywhere between late January and the middle of February. A complete cycle takes 60 years and is made up of five twelve-year cycles, each of which is named after an animal.

Originally, the Chinese New Years was a smaller affair and mostly confined to the small Albuquerque Chinese community. They would typically celebrate the event indoors with a banquet. Beginning in 1993, the celebration moved outside and the entire Albuquerque community has been invited. An annual parade is held and Kung Fu groups and Chinese acrobats are sometimes brought in to participate in the festivities. Following the parade fireworks are set off. However, because of a lack of financial resources, food is not usually served at the celebration.

The Moon Festival, also known as the Mid-Autumn Festival, is also held in New Mexico annually. This event takes place when the full moon is at its brightest on the fifteenth day of the eighth month of the Chinese lunar calendar. The exact date in the Western calendar changes from year to year but it typically falls in September.

Traditionally the event is celebrated by constructing folded paper Chinese lanterns which are taken to high vantage points after dark and lit. Families and friends sit and watch the moon rise and then eat moon cakes, which are a kind of cookie with fillings of sugar, fat, sesame, walnut, the yoke of preserved eggs, ham or other material.

While not an annual tradition in Albuquerque, some Chinese students at the University of New Mexico would like to initiate a celebration popular in China in early Summer called Duan Wu Jie. The Duan Wu Festival commemorates the Chinese patriot and poet, Qu Yuan who drowned himself in sorrow. It is celebrated on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month. This festival, also known as the Dumpling Festival, is celebrated by eating a variety of dumplings made of steamed rice mixed with pork and vegetables and wrapped in bamboo or locust leaves. Some people will start making and exchanging dumplings among relatives and friends as early as one week before the actual day of the festival. In some places, Dragon Boat races are held in commemoration of Qu Yuan’s drowning in the river.

Conclusions:
Because the Chinese community in Albuquerque is relatively small and lacks access to financial resources, they could use assistance in putting on the annual New Years celebration. It was suggested that several Asian groups might collaborate in the event. They would also like to apply for grants to help fund the celebration as well as to pay for bringing artists and acrobats. Ideally the celebration could be partly held indoors with booths and vendors.

Many expressed a need for a library where one could access Chinese books, CD’s, and videos. A budget to be able to purchase and ship books from China would be a great asset for maintaining the language and culture.

Albuquerque has two sister cities for China, one, Hualien, in Taiwan and one, Lanzhou, on the Mainland. As with the other groups interviewed, the loss of Summerfest has been profoundly felt in this community. Many Chinese feel that they need to educate Americans more about their culture; but that Americans need to open themselves up to being educated as well.

There is a definite distinction between Mainland Chinese and Chinese from Taiwan although the rivalries are not as pronounced in America. However, it was a regular part of discourse among those interviewed in this survey. Among the Chinese organizations in the city that we learned about are: the Chinese American Citizenship Alliance (C.A.C.A.) which is made up of mostly earlier Taiwan Chinese immigrants, the New Mexico Chinese Association, which is more recently arrived Taiwanese, and the Chinese Student Friendship Association which has over six-hundred members from Mainland China. This number includes four-hundred students and their family members, as well as the families of some Chinese professors. There is also a group called the American Chinese Civic Exchange.

There are two Chinese churches in Albuquerque: the Albuqurque Chinese Baptist Church and the Albuquerque Chinese Christian Church. Sermons are delivered in both Chinese and English. A few Chinese go to the Soka Gakkai Buddhist Temple, although the members of that temple are predominantly Vietnamese.