I am a Chinese and I see how my parents work all day long in order for us to live. Being immigrants in a foreign land, such as the United States, is very hard considering that we need to adapt to the environment, climate, mingle and cope with diverse groups of people, adapt socially as well as with the culture of this alien land. The first major immigration wave started around the 1850s.
The West Coast of North America was being rapidly colonized during the California Gold Rush, while southern China suffered from severe political and economic instability due to the weakness of the Qing Dynasty government, internal rebellions such as the Taiping Rebellion, and external pressures such as the Opium Wars. As a result, many Chinese emigrated from the poor Toisanese- and Cantonese-speaking area in Guangdong province to the United States in order to work (Wikipedia.
org, 2006). Across the country, Chinese immigrants clustered in Chinatowns, most of them lost their hopes of ever going back alive to China and be with their families. Among them was my great grandfather who came from China during the early part of the 1940s. As Chinese immigrants were usually hired as laborers, many of them were not paid and some were discriminated harshly, my great grandfather worked hard and saved enough money to get the rest of his family over from China.
A generation later, I can still see some of my relative spending their lives working hard to earn a living, among them my parents. They call America the Land of the Free as well as the Land of Opportunity. The experiences of my family were hard-earned lessons that pushed me to work harder and strive to get an education for myself and have a good future ahead. I know life gets better with patience, perseverance, industry, and honest labor.
Reference:
www. wikipedia. org, 2006 [web page] http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Chinese_immigration_to_the_United_States Date Accessed: 15 December 2006