The Life of a Chinese immigrants when they lived of the west coast

Life as a chinese immigrant in the 1860s,

Last week my class went on a trip to shantytown, and learnt about the Chinese immigrants when they lived on the West Coast mining gold.

The Chinese men came to NZ - the West Coast to mine for gold, to get money for their poor villages back in China. Lots of the time the Chinese elders said that they had received letters saying that you have now got a wife and you have to make sure that you find and collect more gold to look after her. If you didn’t get much after that the elders would say that you now have a baby and you have to find even more gold to make sure they have enough money for a house and food.

The Europeans hated the Chinese and didn’t treat them very well. The Europeans found it funny when they stoned them by throwing rocks at them. The Chinese believed in this religious saying that if you have a long plait you will go to heaven and if you don’t you will go to hell. Because of that the Europeans snuck up behind the Chinese, grabbed their plait and chopped it off!

The Europeans were so desperate to find gold that they raced through the rivers so fast that they missed half of the gold. But the Chinese went slow and found most of the gold that had been left behind by the Europeans.

The Chinese didn’t live in a very good environment because they had to live in a old cold cave in the dark. On the good side someone would go to the closest town or village and buy some necessities like food and candles.

In the end the Chinese didn’t have A very good life because the Europeans we're racist about them and only I can imagine how it would feel to be the Chinese in the 1860s gold rush.