Lesson 2: Chinese Immigration to California and Lives in Heinlenville

In this lesson the students will watch Home Base, a 16 minute video of first person accounts of what it was like to live in Heinlenville. Students reflect on how their lives differ and are similar to these early immigrants by creating collaborative Venn diagrams.

As a introduction to integrating the history content to an understanding of animation, students create flip stick and begin to learn about frame rate and speed at which images begin to appear to move and blend. See below hand out.

Above is the handout and below is the lesson plan file for this workshop class.

Why Did Chinese Come to California?

For opportunity!
They came to Gum San  (Gold Mountain) to search for gold,  work on railroads, and to work in agriculture. Most came to escape poverty and bad conditions in China. Heinlenville, The last Chinatown of San Jose, was home to many Chinese agricultural works of the strawberry fields and fruit orchids of Santa Clara County. Heinlenville was also a safe resting spot and mail pick-up center to other Chinese who were migratory field laborers.

Resource list: 
Home Base, a Chinatown Called Heinlenville,  Jessica Yu.  order movie from here: http://www.chcp.org/video.html
Chinatown San Jose, USA Connie Young Yu
Life along the Guadalupe River_An Archaeological  Historical Journey.
Rebecca Allen and Mark Hylkema


Click on video below to see an animation of the path from Guangzhou, China to the exact location of Heinlenville, San Jose. The trip from China to California took from four to eight weeks in the late 1800's. Students used Google Earth to retrace this path themselves.