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19th-century Chinese immigration to America
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Chinese immigration to America in the 19th century is commonly referred to as the first wave of Chinese Americans, and are mainly Cantonese and Taishanese speaking people.
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About half or more of the Chinese ethnic people in the U.S. in the 1980s had roots in Taishan, Guangdong, a city in southern China near the major city of Guangzhou. In general, much of the Chinese population before the 1990s consisted of Cantonese or Taishanese-speaking people from southern China, predominately from Guangdong province.
This is specifically in contrast to post-1980s Chinese Americans. During the 1980s, more Mandarin-speaking immigrants from Northern China and Taiwan immigrated to the U.S. The Chinese population in much of the 1800s and 1990s was almost entirely contained to the Western U.S., especially California and Nevada, as well as New York City. Chinese immigrants and their descendants generally lived in Chinatowns (especially the ones in San Francisco and New York), or Chinese populated districts in downtowns of major cities.