9Memory and Masculinity at Stanford's Arboretum Chinese Quarters

Abstract

Using archival, archaeological, and oral historical evidence, I explore how Chinese men living at Stanford University's Arboretum Chinese Quarters navigated changing attitudes toward gender and race at the end of the nineteenth century. Artifacts helped prompt an intersubjective process of oral history and stories shared by descendants of Chinese employees at Stanford and other members of the local Chinese American community in California's San Francisco Bay Area. Based on these interviews and further research into documents and objects, I highlight two intertwined social spheres for the Chinese population at Stanford, including networks based on business, family, or fraternal organizations, and competitive games and athletics. I show how these men may have forged new ways to perform an emergent Chinese American masculinity by combining practices from both sides of the Pacific. Research conducted between 2016 and 2019 helped produce new senses of heritage for the Chinese American communities at Stanford and elsewhere in the Bay Area.