It was common to see Chinese immigrants work in the Santa Clara Valley in the early 1870s. In the 1877 congressional hearings on Chinese immigration, the president of Woolen Mills was asked, “Are Chinese employed by other parties in your neighborhood in San José?” Robert Peckham replied, “Yes sir; they are very generally employed, particularly in fruit-raising and hop-raising...In the business of raising fruits, strawberries, blackberries, currants, and everything of that kind they are very generally employed, and I think perform most of the labor.”

Two Chinese farm workers are pictured in their living quarters on the Heron Ranch, Hostetter Road, San Jose. Circa 1890s. Courtesy of Connie Young Yu

The Chinese farmworkers worked in every aspect of agriculture in the Valley. They learned about the California soil, native varieties of plants, the use of implements and new methods of irrigation from Americans. Chinese immigrants arrived in the Bay Area in the 1860s and the earliest crop farmed was the strawberry. As sharecroppers and farm laborers, the Chinese worked on vegetable crops for large landowners who were interested in the financial profit. However, in 1882, the Chinese Exclusion Act was passed by Congress prohibiting Chinese immigration through 1892, when it was extended an additional ten years. In 1902, Theodore Roosevelt signed a bill denying further Chinese immigration with few exceptions. Only American-born Chinese were allowed to own land. Yet, Chinese farmers contributed to the agricultural success of Santa Clara Valley. In addition to growing strawberries, the Chinese farmer grew a variety of berries and vegetables and would be tenant farmers, expected to work and live in one place. After all the anti-Chinese rhetoric, Chinese farm workers succeeded in the Valley’s strawberry crops through the sharecropping system.” The fact that white farmers understood was that only Asians would ’stoop to labor’ in the fields to grow exacting strawberry.” According to the census data from 1870, 17 percent of the Chinese residents in Santa Clara County were strawberry growers, yet it is understood that a larger number of Chinese were involved in the cultivation of berry farming not listed by census takers. They also grew blackberries, raspberries, and loganberries.

Though the Chinese mastered the cultivation of strawberry crops, they would later master the post-World War II flower industry, where the Chrysanthemum would become the single biggest crop in Santa Clara County. By 1924 the Chinese Flower Growers Association was formed with 26 growers, many of which started in the San Mateo hillsides until the 1950s when Chinese growers started nurseries in Mountain View and Sunnyvale. Just like other crops, flower growing was labor intensive but had financial rewards. The growth of the industry continued into 1956 with the establishment of the Bay Area Chrysanthemum Growers Association, which grew to 140 members in the late 1970s.

Gordon Chan and Paul Fong were among the Chinese flower growers prominent in the Valley. Grandson to the “Potato King,” Gordon Chan grew up on the Peninsula where his father grew asters in the 1940s. Growing up in Sunnyvale in the 1960s, Paul Fong watched his father and grandfather, who were both flower growers. Paul Fong would eventually own his own flower business in the Valley. He recounts helping in his family’s flower nursery where they grew Chrysanthemum:

“It was a pretty difficult job. You would have to wake up early in the morning to open the black cloth, the windows, and the vents. Then at night, you have to shut the black cloth and windows to deprive the flowers of sunlight. There was a regular route every morning and every night, and in between we had a lot of chores to maintain the flowers. It’s very time-consuming to maintain. It’s hard work. It’s farming. I can still remember every detail.”

Growing AgriCultural Roots

Chinese Farmworkers

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