Gaps in age

[chumley]

I don't know much about Canada's Chinese Immigration Act or the White Australia Act, but the Chinese Exclusion Act in the U.S. did create gaps in age between the immigrant Chinese male and his children. I'm curious to hear from forum members.

During my research on my paternal grandfather, I needed to learn more about the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 in order to understand the reasons behind the questions (interrogation) of my paternal grandfather's request for a U.S. Passport to go to China and return to the U.S. I visited many websites and learned a bit from each.

I also noticed gaps in age within my immediate and extended paternal family. This also applied to my limited research on my maternal family.

There were/are gaps in age between the immigrant Chinese male and his children. In some cases, there were/are gaps in age between the children and sometimes a huge gap in age between the immigrant Chinese male and his wife. I also read about it on many websites.

[laohuaqiao]

Besides gaps in age between the husband and wife, and among the children, in many cases the couple never produced a male child, there was a high rate of male adoption within the immigrant families. In one case study of a village in Taishan, 1 out of every 2 male children was adopted.

[chak]

We are still trying to figure out the real age difference between my g-grandparents. Haven't found any records on my g-grandma yet but her headstone shows a 19 year difference between her and my paternal g-grandfather.

On the 1910 census, he is about 61 and she is 32 - a 28 year difference.
On the 1920 census, he is about 60 and she is 38 - a 22 year difference
and on the 1930 one, he is 70 and she is 55 - only a 15 year difference.
Can't wait until the 1940 census comes out - wonder how old they will be on that one?!

Any way we look at it, this forum member has a large gap in age between her GGF and his U.S. wife. Thier first son born in the U.S. was my grandfather, born in 1898, and his youngest son was born in 1920 when he was in his 60s!

[helen]

In the NZ Experience - The men came here, and only returned about every 10 years, each time leaving a child. Often they had 2 wives, so 2 families. All this changed in the late 1930s when the NZ government allowed the children and wife to come here. Once the wife was here, there were a few more children. The wife/wives were a lot younger than the men.

[jing]

Hi All,

I heard this story about a friend's Mom: In 1940, this 20 yr. old woman was married to an older man - in his 60's. This young woman had been engaged to someone her age, but her fiance died in a war and due to the old fashion thinking at that time, she was considered a bad luck choice as a wife for other younger men ...

JIng

[Doug 周]

Oct 6, 2010 21:38:13 GMT -5 laohuaqiao said:

Besides gaps in age between the husband and wife, and among the children, in many cases the couple never produced a male child, there was a high rate of male adoption within the immigrant families. In one case study of a village in Taishan, 1 out of every 2 male children was adopted.

I asked laohaoqiao for the reference:

Doug,

In an article published in the French Center for Research on Contemporary China journal on the diaolou of Kaiping, it was mentioned, citing this as footnote #38:

" In the first half of the twentieth century, as Hua Linshan and Isabelle Thireau¡¯s study shows, emigration led to more than half the male children in the village of Ping¡¯an, in the neighbouring xian of Taishan, being adopted (op. cit., pp. 26-28)."

www.cefc.com.hk/pccpa.php?aid=2066#_edn38

That study was published in French,
Hua Linshan and Isabelle Thireau, Enqu¨ºte sociologique sur la Chine, 1911-1949, Paris, PUF, 1996.

Thanks,

Doug

[chumley]

Around 1905, my maternal great-grandfather had an arranged marriage (picture bride). He had been in the U.S. since the 1870s and hadn't made a return to China yet.

His bride had moved into his parents home in Hoiping (Kaiping) and my great-grandfather told his wife to adopt a son since he wasn't sure when he would return to China again. The adopted son was my late maternal grandfather's elder brother.

Since my maternal great grandfather had been in the U.S. prior to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, I suspect there were no documents on him. It's possible the Great 1906 San Francisco Earthquake & Fire had destroyed his papers on his initial voyage to the U.S.

I also suspect my maternal great grandfather was in the U.S. so long that he spoke English well enough to convince authorities he was born in San Francisco. Once he got his official documents as a U.S. born Chinese, he returned to China in late 1906 or early 1907.

The trip to China was the only two years my late maternal great-grandfather ever met his wife. My maternal grandfather and his younger brother were born in consecutive years. My maternal great-grandfather probably left China in early December 1908 in order to arrive at the port of San Francisco on Jan. 1, 1909. He never returned to China again.

The adopted son and younger son would later reunite with their father in the U.S. around 1922. Later in life, the adopted son also had an arranged marriage in which the wife was in China. He also requested his wife adopt a son (just like his adopted father, he wasn't sure when he would return to China). This adopted son would be his only child.