English Abstract

Soon after the first wave of Chinese immigrants arrived on the West Coast in the 1840s, St. Louis, the city by the Mississippi River, received its first recorded Chinese, Alla Lee, in 1857.

In the years following that, several hundred more arrived in St. Louis and established in the downtown district of the city a commercial, residential, and recreational center, commonly known as "Hop Alley" where Chinese hand laundries, merchandise stores, herb shops, restaurants, and clan association headquarters were located.

Chinese businesses, especially hand laundries, were indispensable to the larger St. Louis communities that readily utilized the much-needed services available to them due to the presence of the Chinese immigrants. Chinese businesses thrived and Chinese contributed unproportionally in some areas - less than one tenth percent of the total population provided sixty percent of the laundering services for the city.

Meanwhile, "Hop Alley" was stereotyped as an exotic and mysterious place often associated with crimes of opium manufacturing, smuggling, and smoking, tong fighting and murder, and consequently suffered from frequent police raids and social isolation of the larger society. With all the odds against it, however, "Hop Alley" survived with remarkable resilience and energy until 1966 when the urban renewal program leveled the area to make a parking lot for Busch Stadium.

While the old Chinese congregation was disappearing, the new suburban Chinese American communities were quietly yet rapidly emerging since the 1960s. In the next few years, the ethnographic distribution changed considerably with more Chinese residing in St. Louis County which constitutes the suburban municipalities in the south and west areas outside of St. Louis City.

The U. S. Censuses indicate that the number of suburban Chinese Americans increased from 106 (30% of total Chinese in St. Louis area) in 1960 to 3873 (83.1% of total) in 1990. Since 1990, Chinese population in the Greater St. Louis areas has increased rapidly. Various unofficial estimates show the figure from 15,000 to 20,000, among which a predominant majority reside in suburban communities and constitutes one percent of the total suburban population of St. Louis.

The intriguing story of Chinese St. Louisans and their transformation from Chinatown residents to suburban Chinese Americans, however, has not yet been told. This study attempts to reconstruct the past of Chinese St. Louisans and then to examine the transformation and its significance.