From laundries to almond boneless chicken, Chinese Americans make mark in Detroit
The Midwestern U.S. city of Detroit is known as the home of American automakers. What’s less known are the contributions of the Chinese residents throughout the city’s history.
Detroit may be known for its car industry, but there is something else famous among locals that can be found in the city and suburbs of Detroit. This signature dish: almond boneless chicken.
While its exact origins in the new world are unknown, local lore claims the dish is the product of Chinese immigrants from the early 1900s. It’s hugely popular in Detroit and the surrounding suburbs – a region with some 70,000 Chinese Americans. There used to be a centralized Chinatown here. Now, Detroit’s Chinatowns are only remembered in this museum exhibit. The first Chinese immigrants arrived in 1872, and established laundry businesses, which attracted more migrants from China. Some opened restaurants. Most of them were from Guangdong province in Southern
China.
Lily Chen
Detroit Historical Museum assistant curator
People come from this area, called Taishan, in Guangdong, China, and make it over to the U.S. in order to escape the level of poverty that they were dealing with at the time.
Many Cantonese-speaking immigrants faced new obstacles in their new home. In 1882, the Chinese Exclusion Act banned Chinese laborers from entering the U.S. with only a few exceptions. Those already living in the U.S. had to get permission to re-enter if they left the country. Chinese immigrants could only live in certain neighborhoods, but they kept coming.
Four years later, the U.S. repealed the Chinese Exclusion Act. Wing Lim Wong and his sister grew up in Detroit’s second Chinatown after the first one was forced to move for a new freeway in the 1960s. Their father worked in a restaurant, which he later bought.
Wing Lim Wong
Former Detroit Chinatown resident
At the age of like maybe 11 years old, you start learning, maybe you help out with waiting the tables.
The second Chinatown was in a rough part of Detroit, remembers Curtis Chin. He wrote about his family’s restaurant.
Curtis Chin
Author
The red light district. Yeah, it was terrible. I mean, it was tough. We were exposed to a lot of things growing up as a kid. You would see the prostitutes on the road all the time and coming into our restaurant, too.
Most of the businesses in Chinatown closed due to rising crime, including Wong’s. The area eventually revitalized with new businesses, but this no longer feels like Chinatown.
Wing Lim Wong
Former Detroit Chinatown resident
It’s not a Chinese community anymore down there and that’s the sad part.
Similar to many U.S. cities, the nexus of the Chinese community in Detroit assimilated into the suburbs and strip malls. But the memories of the Chinatowns live on out here and inside Chinese restaurants where almond chicken is still served.
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2024-05-31
