The Rancho Los Cerritos Historic Site is hosting “Unburying a Past: the High Lung Chinese Laundry in Santa Barbara,” a lecture about how the Chinese laundry business exploded in Southern California thanks to the Rancho family.
The lecture starts at 10 a.m. Saturday, April 21, with gates to the site opening at 9:30 a.m.
In the second half of the 19th century, the Chinese laundry business boomed in California. These laundrymen even traveled to Rancho Los Cerritos on a weekly basis to handle the family’s wash. Discover why this avenue of employment was open to the Chinese population as Kelly Fong, from the UCLA Interdepartmental Graduate Archaeology Program, discusses the lives and experiences of Chinese laundry men in the Golden State during the late 1800s.
Written documentation is scarce. Focusing on research at an archaeological site in Santa Barbara, Fong will illustrate how the material record provides details about these people, who they were, when and where they came from, and how they lived. She finds “archaeology has a unique potential for letting us learn about populations marginalized in the documentary record.”
Admission is $3 for members and students, and $5 for non-members. This includes light refreshments. Advanced reservations are requested, call (562) 570-1755 to make one today.
Once part of an early Spanish land grant, Rancho Los Cerritos Historic Site features one of the few remaining two-story adobes in Southern California. Visit www.rancholoscerritos.org for more information.
