Hong Kong. The Jewel of the Orient. The place where East meets West. A British city with Chinese characteristics. Why would anyone want to leave paradise? But, of course, Hong Kong is not a paradise and never has been; these were all phrases that Westerners, not Chinese, have coined. That Hongkongers would want to leave this place for America is not surprising; plenty of people from other Asian countries have left and thrived in their new adopted country, the United States of America. The reasons for leaving have been varied throughout Hong Kong's history, but it has always been driven by historical circumstance. From the late 1800's to early 1900's, Hongkongers wanted to leave primarily because Hong Kong was poor, they were poor, and there was the promise of jobs and a better life on the "old golden mountain" (San Francisco) and elsewhere in America. But by the time immigration quota laws in the United States were lifted in the 1960's, Hong Kong's demographics had changed dramatically. Certainly, a significant portion of people emigrating from Hong Kong to the United States still came for the same reasons as those of Andrew Pham and Carlos Bulosan: to escape a cycle of poverty and dead ends to search for a better life elsewhere; but they were no longer the majority. From the 1960's onwards, Hong Kong has become a modern first-world city. The modern Hong Kong immigrant is educated, with specialized skills, and come to the United States not because he seeks a better life, but because he fears that historical events have threatened the Hong Kong way of life. The modern Hong Kong immigrant may still have trouble adjusting to life in the United States, but the endemic racism that was so talked about by Bulosan is, for the most part, gone. Some of the newcomers are, in fact, plain wealthy, and have come to the United States simply to protect their assets. But, whether the reasons for emigration are political or economic, their presence has transformed the Chinese-American landscape socially and economically, most noticeably in America's Chinatowns.

     ;In order to understand the reasons why Hongkongers chose to leave Hong Kong, one must first examine its history. Before 1842, Hong Kong was nothing more than a small fishing hamlet, sparsely populated. All that changed when the Chinese government took a hard line on opium addiction and the British export of opium to China. As a result of the First Opium War, during which the Chinese government forced the surrender and the destruction of all foreign-held opium in Canton, the British armed forces took action and forced the Treaty of Nanking in 1842, during which "His Majesty the Emperor of China cedes to Her Majesty the Queen of Great Britain the Island of Hong Kong, to be possessed in perpetuity by Her Britannic Majesty" (Rafferty 117). Hong Kong grew quickly from then on, becoming the access point from which Britain traded with China. The land area of the colony was subsequently increased after the British won the Second Opium War and again in 1898 (129). In 1898, the British obtained a ninety-nine year lease on the New Territories, which today makes up a larger portion of Hong Kong; the lease was to end on June 30, 1997 (131). Many Chinese laborers flocked to Hong Kong to service the thriving trade, but nevertheless, it was still a colonial backwater and a transit point for a long time.

     This status changed after World War Two. At first, the colony was teeming with refugees fleeing the civil war in China (162), but many of them also brought with them a desperate entrepreneurial spirit or actual assets from China. That, combined with a economically laissez-faire colonial administration which built the necessary government infrastructure needed for business success, transformed Hong Kong into one of the world's foremost manufacturing centers (163). And beginning in the 1970's, rampant corruption which was present in the ranks of the Hong Kong government was cleaned up, resulting in a clean and efficient civil service which helped propel Hong Kong into one of the world's leading cities and financial centers.

     ;Though living standards had risen greatly and Hong Kong had become highly successful, not all was well with the political situation. In 1967, during the height of the Cultural Revolution across the border, Hong Kong experienced a series of Communist-inspired bombings and ultimately, Communist-led riots (Rafferty 157). In the 1970's, there was political uncertainty as the question of the end of the New Territories lease in 1997 started to come up. In 1984, the British and Chinese governments signed the Joint Declaration, a treaty which provided for the return of the whole of Hong Kong on July 1, 1997 (Flowerdew 41). The treaty provided for the preservation of Hong Kong's political and economic system for fifty years after 1997, and was supposed to guarantee the maintenance of the political rights and freedoms and the common-law legal system present in Hong Kong. (Flowerdew 41) In 1990, the Chinese government finished drafting the Basic Law, which was to replace the Royal Instructions and Letters Patent as Hong Kong's constitution after 1997 (Flowerdew 70). It implemented the provisions of the Joint Declaration, including the gradual democratization of the Legislative Council (Flowerdew 70). On July 1, 1997, the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) of the People's Republic of China was established.

     At the start of Hong Kong's history in the 1800's, Chinese immigration from Hong Kong was a reflection of the poverty-dominated society in Hong Kong at the time. Lord Kadoorie, a member of the British colonial elite in Hong Kong, once said that "Hong Kong before the Second World War was snobby and provincial." (Rafferty 122). The British were at the very top of society, and the Chinese were at the very bottom. One of the earliest recorded acts of Chinese immigrantion to the United States was in 1848, when a Chinese woman traveled to California with the Gillespie family (Sinn 15, 34). Like so many Chinese-Americans of that era, she was physically barred from holding any white collar jobs; she was a domestic helper instead. In the 1850's, Hong Kong became a transit point for Chinese from Guangdong province rushing to get to California. In 1852 alone, 30,000 Chinese embarked from Hong Kong to San Francisco (Sinn 16). Their reason for leaving was simple: gold. In a pattern that would be repeated among Filipino-Americans and some Hongkongers later on, many of these immigrants worked as laborers in debt bondage, forced to work without pay to repay the free passage they received to get to the United States (Sinn 20). Elizabeth Sinn, of the University of Hong Kong, writes, "This system, which was very prevalent, was naturally open to abuse. It was reported that contractors advancing money charged interest as high as five percent per month" (37). In the early 1900's, this abuse continued, under the more innocent-sounding name of "assisted emigration" (Sinn 38). But by this time, the tide of immigration to the United States had grind to a halt, thanks to a 1882 law which excluded Chinese laborers from coming to the United States (Sinn41). That effectively ended the era of early Chinese immigration to the United States.

     During this early era of immigration, Chinese immigrants were discriminated against. America in the late 1800's was still quite xenophobic, especially in the wild west. Chinese railway workers were despised because they worked harder and earned less than native workers. But the effect of Chinese in America was permanent. These influences could be felt in the Chinatowns which sprung up, and in the gold fields and on the railroads. One could even argue that Stanford University was founded on the blood and sweat of Chinese railroad workers; after all, Leland Stanford became rich largely due to his part as a "railroad baron". And it was this very discrimination which caused the rise of Chinatowns. Writes Bernard P. Wong, a professor of anthropology at San Francisco State University, "As a result of anti-Chinese sentiment in California…[they opened] businesses that would not compete with those of white workers, such as Chinese restaurants and laundries… and moving to major metropolitan areas… where they could attract a large clientele for their ethnic businesses" (237). This type of endemic discrimination is similar to the type that Carlos Bulosan wrote about in America is in the Heart. As Bulosan overhears from a white girl, "Why don't they ship those monkeys back where they came from?" (99) Indeed, Okies, Filipinos, Chinese, they all felt the same societal biases.

     As time went on and as immigration dwindled to a trickle in the early 1900's, those who were in America were trapped in this oppressive society. Because of immigration laws, there were very few women in these Chinatowns, leading to a "bachelor society" (Wong 238). Wang Gungwu, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Hong Kong, asserts, "the exclusions policies persisted… which led to the truncation or division of many families. This brought isolation for many, especially for the old who rejected Western ways yet did not wish to return to China" (129). It was no accident that this sad state of being occurred; it was American xenophobia which led to these exclusionary policies which first barred women from the States, and then all Chinese laborers, from coming. Hence the link with China was severed. These Chinese experiences have a lot in common with other Asian-American experiences of this era. In "Scent of Apples" by Bienvenido Santos, farmer Celestino Fabia has accepted his fate in America. When asked about his homeland, Fabia states, "but you see, nobody would remember me know" (29). And in "The Day the Dancers Came", we see two old Filipino men who have lived their lives in America; but with the exclusionary policies in place, they have had to live their lives as bachelors, since there weren't any Filipino women. It is true that they chose to come to America, as did the other Filipino immigrants and Chinese immigrants, but how were they to know just how closed American society was? To live as an Asian-American during this period, the mid-twentieth century, must have been quite tough.

     In the 1960's, a combination of events in Hong Kong and the United States fueled a fresh wave of Hong Kong immigrants. By this time period, there were audible differences, both political and economic, between China and Hong Kong, so I will stop referring to China and Hong Kong interchangeably. In the United States, immigration quotas were lifted in 1965, allowing more people from Asia to immigrate to the United States (Skeldon 54). In Hong Kong, "the situation… was tense. There were riots in 1966 and again 1967, the latter fired by the upheavals in China during the Cultural Revolution" (Skeldon 54). The lifting of quotas, coinciding with a turbulent series of events in Hong Kong, started the first wave of post-war American immigrants from Hong Kong.

     Certainly, the new reasons for going to America for Hongkongers were different than the pure economic reasons of the nineteenth century. After the 1960's, the uncertainty of the 1997 question drove many to seek immigration. Studies before 1997 have shown that the 1997 question was the primary factor for leaving (Mak 1). For example, in a miniature survey asked to sixteen prospective immigrants who had just received approval to immigrate to Australia, a majority of respondents would not leave Hong Kong if Communist China was not going to take over Hong Kong after 1997 (Mak 24). Another more thorough survey involving almost 1400 Hong Kong adults conducted by the University of Hong Kong confirmed this trend. The conclusion was that "[those] who indicated tendencies to emigrate spoke foremost of a lack of security, especially financial security for themselves and their children. Political reasons for worry about 1997 were predominant in the survey (43%) followed by economic reasons (18%) and a concern for freedom or lifestyles (15%)" (Emmons 53). Indeed, all three of these reasons to leave are related to the uncertainty of the political situation after 1997. Immigration statistics have further reinforced this view, as the immigration rate of Hongkongers to the United States has gradually increased since 1984, the year when the Join Declaration was signed to allow for the return of Hong Kong to China (Skeldon 54). This is despite the fact that gross national product has increased in Hong Kong since then. And of course, the Tiananmen Square incident of 1989 did nothing to comfort Hongkongers' of the Chinese government's political motives. These new immigrants were not driven to leave their country because of desperation or war; they were driven to leave because of a fear of the end of a prosperous era.

     Hongkongers' reasons for leaving set them apart from typical Southeast Asian migrations, which, as documented by Andrew Pham, usually involved economic deprivation or desperation. In Catfish and Mandala, Pham's family escapes from certain death. Pham recounts, "Dad knew if we waited till next spring, he stood a fair chance of being discovered and executed" (59); while Hong Kong people leave their homeland because of the threat of future persecution, Pham's family leaves because of the threat of severe, immediate persecution. And while most Hongkongers probably leave on a Cathay Pacific Jumbo 747, Pham's family left on little rickety boats. What's perhaps most ironic is that many of the Vietnamese boat people ended up in Hong Kong refugee camps, where they waited, sometimes for years, to get the chance to go to America, in a place much like Pham's Jakarta camp. It is in Hong Kong that one could see side-by-side the difference between a Hong Kong immigrant and an immigrant like Pham. Pham's family was desperate, penniless despite Mr. Pham's college education, and hopeful for a new beginning. The typical Hong Kong immigrant is well established in Hong Kong, and only reluctantly leaves because he fears that his lifestyle is threatened. Indeed, the Hong Kong immigrant is more similar to Eric Liu's father in The Accidental Asian; the photo of his father "wearing a sweatshirt emblazoned with… a Starts and Stripes shield… smoking a pipe" (12) reveals the relative comfort in which many Taiwanese-Americans and Hong Kong-Americans arrived in the States. Hongkongers were not running away from their homeland; they were simply walking off.

     As a result of Hong Kong's industrialization, the new Hong Kong immigrant is educated, comprehends the capitalistic system, and is politically sophisticated, even more than the typical Hong Konger. Since World War Two, Hong Kong has not faced a political or economic situation so grave that people would want to leave for their very survival. This means that those who would want to leave typically are not desperate and would not be spending their life savings just to leave. Indeed, the poor would not want to leave Hong Kong; they're doing fine and wouldn't have the money to leave. A ship's cook, when asked about the 1997 question, responds, "What's to be afraid of? There are a billion people in China. They're still alive. Only the rich are scared [of 1997]. For the poor, it's just the same!" (Salaff and Wong 177). Another, a secretary, says, "How can I leave? I don't have the money!" (Salaff and Wong 177). Those blue-collar Hongkongers who do leave typically "can only exit with considerable family support. They are the one who apply on family reunification grounds… some see a real [economic] opportunity" (Salaff and Wong 204). These blue-collar workers would also have less attachment to Hong Kong because life is not so good for them. Prof. Siu-lun Wong states, "Those who identified themselves as Hongkongers were actually more likely to consider leaving the territory" (Wong 172), suggesting a strong drive to preserve their way of life. Ronald Skeldon, of the University of Hong Kong, writes that "the more recent pattern of emigration from Hong Kong … is essentially urban-based and involves some of the territory's most highly skilled and educated people" (54). Along with being well-educated, Hongkongers seem to also be in tune with Western culture and economics. Bernard P. Wong asserted that "in general, they are better educated, more urban, and more Westernized than the old immigrants. The new immigrants from Hong Kong are more familiar with the capitalist economy and have a keener business sense" (241). Certainly, these new immigrants don't fit the stereotype of the poor, naïve, uncultured newcomer.

     This new wave of Hong Kong immigration to America has transformed the Chinese-American landscape. For one thing, the male/female ratio in America Chinatowns, has switched from two to one to almost equal from 1960 to 1990 (Wong 239). The American government has been much more supportive of the new Asian wave of immigrants, setting up affirmative action programs for them instead of hoarding them up into Chinatowns. As a result, Chinatowns have become diversified. Whereas old living restrictions kept Chinese-Americans in Chinatowns, they now live in other areas. In the Bay Area, just like in white America, they want a better life, and so move to places like San Mateo, San Bruno, Burlingame, Sunset and Richmond (242). They still face some resentment though, as "the established white residents complain about the intrusion of Chinese shops into the residential area, which changes the character of their neighborhoods" (243). Indeed, in Monterey Park in Southern California, the population, which used to be majority White and Hispanic, is now majority Chinese-American. Even old timers, those who used to form the Chinatowns' "bachelor society", are affected by this new wave. The old immigrants resent the new ones for their affluence and education, and the new immigrants see the old timers a bumbling and incompetent (244).

     Members of the Hong Kong business elite have moved their capital to the United States, revitalizing America's declining Chinatowns. Today, San Francisco's Parc 55 Hotel, the Hong Kong Flower Lounge Restaurants (of which there is a branch in Palo Alto), the Harbor Village Restaurants, and significant pieces of real estate in San Francisco are all owned by families of Hong Kong tycoons who have relocated to the United States (247). And unlike the old timers, these newcomers are politically active as well. It would have been impossible to be politically active as a Chinese during America's xenophobic past, but that is not the case today. Wong notes, "the new educated immigrants from Hong Kong have run for various political offices such as judgeships, school board seats, and city council positions… in 1988-89, Mayor Art Agnos appointed twenty Chinese Americans to twenty San Francisco commissions." (249) Finally, unlike Chinese immigrants of the past, who came to America with no friends or family to turn to, the Hong Kong Chinese often arrive with their families, and have additional "old school and friendship ties… it is commonly recognized that students form certain Christian schools [in Hong Kong] are highly successful" (247). For an immediate and tangible example, one can look at the Hong Kong graduate student population here at Stanford, California's elite university. I've been told that many of the Hong Kong students here went to St. Paul Co-Educational College, the same school that I myself attended as a young child. Like the broad sweep of a hand, Hong Kong immigrants have swept across Chinese communities in America and have called it their own.

     The stereotype of the modern Hong Kong immigrant has been that of the affluent, established immigrant, but there is a significant portion of Hongkongers who came to America needing to struggle to make it. While most of these immigrants did not come to America penniless like Andrew Pham's parents, the struggle by Pham's father to "make it" and etch out a good living is shared by many Hong Kong Chinese. One prospective immigrant who was not so well off was anxious, "I don't know how to start the whole family again… my brother will help us… but I still worry… I've heard that many people in America are unemployed" (Salaff and Wong 209). With the rich capital that affluent Hongkongers brought with them to America, also came the poor immigrants who would serve these new masters. Wong stated that "there are 500 garment factories in New York's Chinatown, employing more than 20,000 workers" (246) and conceded that despite the advantages that Hongkongers had when coming to the States, "the majority of the new immigrants initially work as employees in someone else's business and hope eventually to establish a business of their own" (245). Peter Kwong, a social scientist, goes further. He describes New York's "Little Hong Kong" like this, "profits were maintained through raw exploitation. Workers labored under sweatshop conditions… the dumping ground for the desperate undocumented" (256). His picture of Chinatown, as Eric Liu reminds us, is one which is vicious, where like in the case of Bulosan, Chinese people take advantage of their own people. The credit-ticket system, so prevalent in the nineteenth century, still exists today, "Some illegal immigrants are even obliged to work for three years without pay, 'to work off the fees' charged by the smugglers or face torture and beating" (Kwong 265). He does not have the same vision that Wong has of Hongkongers in America; what Kwong sees is Chinese triad crime, the unwillingness of American authorities to stop it, and "downward mobility… for an immigrant who remains in Chinatown as a worker" (264-5). Undoubtedly, Hong Kong Chinese in the United States are not all rich; Wong elaborates, "some are millionaires, many more are drawn from the middle layers of Hong Kong society; some are merchants, some workers. Some are students who have decided to stay in the United States and sponsor their parents' immigration" (241). There are still many Hongkongers in America today who face adversity upon coming to America; it's certainly no walk in the park.

     Looking at the two different stages of immigration from Hong Kong, first in the 1800's and then more significantly after the 1960's, one can see the strong historical connection. This immigration did not just happen by itself. In the 1800's there were strong economic motives for going to work in the gold fields and the railways, and in modern times, there were strong political reasons to come and run away from Communist China. As professors Janet Salaff and Siu-lun Wong notes as a common response in a survey of affluent Hong Kong Chinese immigrants, "they have many contacts with the Chinese government, often negative contacts… couples with well-off parents who had lost property and status under the communist regime" (187). It was this fear of the future that lay ahead for Hong Kong that drove most of the new immigrants here. Some of them were rich, many were white-collar professionals, but just like most other migrations to the United States, there were still others who were downtrodden and desperate for a new life in America. America, even for the affluent, is a place to escape to, to work for a more stable life.