December 13, 1869
Dear Auntie,
Life in America is very difficult and hard. There is a lot of discrimination towards the Chinese, and i have experienced it. They have beaten us, burned and destroyed our homes. It is very difficult to find work in America. We heard so many wonderful things about it, but it was all just a lie, we didn't get any freedom, and once we came, they started passing a lot of laws to ban us from immigrating here. Many whites hate us because they think that we took their jobs. It's because we work harder for cheaper pay then them. Last year in 1849, white miners drove off a team of 60 Chinese miners working for a British company at a Chinese Camp in Tuolumne Country. You see, I'm afraid that the Chinese are having it bad. We could not even testify against whites in court, which is so racist and unfair to all the Chinese who had worked so hard to get here.
Many of the Chinese came to California in America to get rich quick. But the Chinese couldn't; they couldn't even get in without being checked. This is so discriminating and violating. I refuse to do this kind of work; I would rather go back to China. There were many laws passed to keep the Chinese out such as the Chinese Exclusion Act and the Geary Act. These laws were very bad, they tried it was to keep the Chinese out of America. But in 1868 the Burlingame Treaty was made and it was a treaty between the United States and China. It provided for reciprocal exemption from persecution of account of religious belief, the privilege of schools and colleges, and in fact it agreed that every Chinese citizen in the United States should have every privilege which was expected by the American citizen in China. This law made it seem better but it was really not. They broke this treaty and started to pass more laws prohibiting the Chinese to enter the United States under any circumstances.
The whites in America think that we are cheap, and affordable labor. Which we are, but they are using us to do their work that no one else would do because they were too cheap to pay other people to work. Many of the Chinese who had been brought to Arizona for the backbreaking task of extending the railroad through the desert. The owners of Arizona's copper mines sought the Chinese because they we were cheap and we worked hard. There was a lot of racism in Arizona at that time. When we came, the Anglos and Mexican workers didn't understand our dress and customs. The railroads brought the Chinese to America, we were never intended to become permanent members of American society, and the whites were using us. There were many places that didn't like the Chinese. A place was Chicago Chinatown. A law passed in 1863 encouraged acts of violence against the Chinese by forbidding them to testify against white men.
Most of the Chinese came for work. You see we work hard, but the whites just didn't understand us. Their were many laws restricting the Chinese such as, propaganda being spread in favor of laws restricting immigration as means of protecting the American wage earned. 1875 was the first restriction of immigration of prostitutes and felons. 1882, the government reacted to the anti-immigrant feelings, such as the anti-Chinese not and the United States enacted further restrictions barring the insane, the retarded, and people likely to need public care and the Chinese Exclusion Act suspending Chinese laborers for ten years. It is very dangerous in America, if you decide to come, good luck.
		Take care and good luck,
				Mei Lei [mary]