Untitled (China Hall)
Young Shin | San Gabriel, California, USA
China Hall was a store at the head of Mill Street in the village of Middlebury. An advertisement in the April 27, 1883 issue of the Middlebury Register invites “attention to his line of crockery, plain and decorated French China and Majolica ware, also a splendid line of silver ware, bird cages in great variety, lamps, milk pans, and everything in tin-ware.” 8 The same issue contained an article about villages in China which remarked, “A Chinese village has but little in common with those of this country, either in detail or in general appearance” and after commenting on the domes and minarets of Europe concludes, “China is almost absolutely without any of these striking architectural points. The result is great monotony and dullness of aspect.” 9 The previous year, the United States Congress had passed the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 which banned immigration from China. Merchants, as well as teachers, students, travelers, and diplomats, were excluded from the Act and allowed to travel to the United States. America’s relationship to China was one of intrigue and repulsion. Americans were threatened by the competition Chinese immigrants would present in the labor market, but they also wanted their material goods while simultaneously presenting Chinese culture as inferior. Young Shin struggled to find references to Asians in the Stewart-Swift Research Center archives. The photograph of China Hall got Shin thinking about the material goods available in the town.
The artist wrote: “Although Asians have been in this country as far back as the 1800s, their long and prolific history is rarely recorded, taught, or even mentioned. Due to various exclusion acts and discriminatory domestic and immigration policies against them, not only their population was stifled in growth, but also their pathway to settling in the United States was difficult and per - ilous. I was not surprised that there were no archived images of them living in Middlebury in the late 1800s and early 1900s. However, what delighted me was that their existence in Middlebury was well evidenced and documented by the receipts, checks, books, newspapers, and letters dating back to the 1800s. I layered such images and then stripped and ripped them to signify the erasure of these people in the community. Lastly, goods imported from China, and likely traded and sold in stores such as China Hall in the collage, indicate the disheartening but unavoidable fact that products from Asia were readily accepted while the people from the same region were not.”