China in America A study in the social life of the Chinese in the eastern cities of the United States — Themes and Context

Regional Origins and Social Divisions

Culin begins by mapping the source of Chinese laborers to a tract "little more than 100 miles square" in Kwantung province, yet he emphasizes its diversity: mountainous north, hilly coast, and well-watered rivers. He names each district—Nánhái, Pw'anyú, Shunteh, Sinhwui, Sinning, Kaiping, Ngánping, Hohshan, Tungkwán, Hiángshán, Sánshwui, Sinngán—and notes that the Sz' Yup people, especially those from Sinning, are "ruder and more adventurous" than those from near Canton. Their speech, he says, can only be understood with difficulty by inhabitants of the Provincial City. This careful differentiation reveals that Culin treats the Chinese community not as a monolith but as a federation of local groups.

Clan Ties and Guild Organization

The author observes that "the ties of kindred, preserved with so much care in China, are recognized here," and that immigrants from the same village often claim relationship. Because a Chinese village frequently belongs to one clan with a single surname, many family members migrate together. This pattern extends to economic life: separate districts establish their own shops, assembly-rooms, and guild-halls. Culin references the Six Companies in San Francisco as guilds formed by emigrants from different parts of the province. The text thus presents social structure as an extension of Chinese local organization, adapted to American cities.

Religious Belief and Practice

Culin describes Chinese religion as not a single system but a blend: "the worship of the spirits of the dead, with a kind of fetichism even more primitive, constitutes the principal element." He finds traces of Buddhism in the worship of Kwan Yin and ideas of transmigration; Taoism in a spiritual hierarchy; and Confucian methods of divination. Yet he argues that the deepest belief is in the continued presence of the dead and their influence on the living. Ceremonies observed among Chinese in America aim at propitiation and expulsion of phantoms. The author's tone is descriptive, not dismissive, though he predicts that contact with Western science will dissipate these illusions.

A First Reading: Tracing Local Detail

Readers approaching this short work (about 6,000 words) will benefit from noting how Culin builds his argument from specific, named places and practices. The opening pages list district names and map coordinates; later sections refer to footnoted sources such as Seward's Chinese Immigration and a New York Daily Tribune article. The text is dense with proper nouns and geographic references, rewarding careful attention. Because the excerpts are incomplete, the full scope of Culin's observations on eastern cities—New York, Philadelphia, Boston—remains unknown, but the pattern of local specificity is clear from the start.

Culin's study, though brief, offers a snapshot of late-nineteenth-century ethnographic method: it prioritizes observable social facts—dialect, district, guild, ritual—over anecdote. Readers should watch for how he balances description with the evolutionary assumptions of his era, particularly in his closing remarks about science dispelling illusion. The work stands as a document of both Chinese American community life and the intellectual frameworks of its time.

I have spent many afternoons with Stewart Culin's careful notes on the Chinese in our eastern cities, how they carried their villages within them, clan by quiet clan. There is a similar patience in The People of Palestine An enlarged edition of "The Peasantry of Palestine, Life, Manners and Customs of the Village" — Background and Themes, that same tender weight of soil remembered abroad. Both whisper that home is never quite left behind.