Conflict, Adjustment, And Integration: The Changing Identities Of American Chinese 1849-1979

The identities of American Chinese in California can be divided into three categories, which are "cultural identity", "political identity", and "ethnic identity". The paper mainly studies the transformation of the concrete connotation, the direction of Chinese identities, and discusses the factors that influence Chinese choosing their identities, the interaction of the three kind identities. It comes to the conclusion that the Chinese in United States tended to identify themselves with their ancestry China before the end of the 19^th century, which can be called "the inheritance of tradition"; From the late 19^th century to the end of World War Ⅱ, the identities of American Chinese showed a new meaning on the connotation because of the emergence of native-born Chinese groups and the Chinese nationalism, the ethnic Chinese in America began to integrate into one unit through the disintegrating on groups; Ever since the Word War Ⅱ, generally speaking, the Chinese in America began to "take root in local nation" with acculturation, naturalization, pluralism within the ethnic Chinese, and cross-ethnic integration among pan-Asians in America had become an overall tendency. Whatever choices they made, the identities of Chinese in America were the adaptation to the social circumstances at that time, the way that the transformation of Chinese identity was transplantation → inheritance → conflict→ adjustment → integration. While integrating themselves into the mainstream society and culture, how can the American Chinese, in future, manage to transmit the essence of Chinese Culture from generation to generation, and how to create a "new culture" successfully by integrating the Chinese and the American culture? That's not only a theoretic question, but also a fundamental matter of reality of overall significance.