Background

The history behind the film, dated

The film moves fast. This page puts dates and sources under the history it compresses, so the references can be followed up.

  1. 1848–1855 · Gold RushChinese miners arrive in California in large numbers. The Foreign Miners' Tax of 1850, reissued in 1852, falls mainly on them. This is the period where the film begins, with the treatment of Chinese women as objects of fetish and suspicion.
  2. 1871 · Los AngelesOn 24 October a mob kills about eighteen Chinese residents of the city's Chinatown. It is one of the largest mass lynchings in US history.
  3. 1875 · Page ActThe first federal law to restrict immigration by race and sex. In practice it barred most Chinese women from entering, on the assumption that they came for "immoral purposes".
  4. 1882 · Chinese Exclusion ActSigned on 6 May 1882, it suspended immigration of Chinese labourers and barred Chinese immigrants from naturalisation. It was extended in 1892 and 1902 and not repealed until the Magnuson Act of 1943.
  5. 1885 · Rock Springs, WyomingOn 2 September white miners attack the Chinese section of the town and kill 28 Chinese miners. Two years later, in 1887, 34 Chinese miners are murdered at Hells Canyon on the Snake River.
  6. 1917 and 1924 · Barred zones and quotasThe Immigration Act of 1917 creates an "Asiatic Barred Zone". The Immigration Act of 1924 effectively ends immigration from Asia.
  7. 1942 · Executive Order 9066Signed on 19 February 1942, it leads to the forced removal and incarceration of about 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry, most of them US citizens. The Civil Liberties Act of 1988 apologises and pays $20,000 to each surviving detainee.
  8. 1965 · Immigration and Nationality ActThe Hart–Celler Act abolishes the national-origins quotas. Immigration from Asia grows substantially in the following decades.
  9. 1982 · Vincent ChinChin, a 27-year-old Chinese American, is beaten in Detroit on 19 June by two white autoworkers who blame Japan for job losses, and dies four days later. The killers receive probation and fines, and the case becomes a turning point for Asian American civil rights organising.
  10. 2020–2021 · Stop AAPI HateThe reporting centre founded in March 2020 records more than 6,500 reports of harassment and violence in its first year. In early 2021, 84-year-old Vicha Ratanapakdee is killed in San Francisco, 61-year-old Noel Quintana is slashed on the New York subway, and on 16 March eight people are killed at spas near Atlanta, six of them women of Asian descent. Centuries and Still is made in the months that follow.

Sources and further reading