Photos

China Camp History

The aspect of nature that fascinates me most is the concept of interdependence, where everything in nature is connected. This concept is true for humans and their environment. Our survival is closely connected to the resources -- food, water, shelter -- of the place in which we live. Our surroundings influence our actions.

People tend to seek not only sustenance from their environment, but also profit. For California this trend began when gold was discovered.

In the late 1840s news spanned the globe about the Gold Rush. Thousands flooded into the state in 1849, including hundreds of Chinese. Many of the immigrants came to California with the goal to make $500 then to return home. This sum would provide them the funds to buy farmland. Unfortunately, the profits didn't match their expectations. High taxes placed on foreigner-owned businesses decreased income. Meanwhile, the political situation in China was deteriorating. Poverty was becoming more widespread and as a result, many families were stuck in the states.

Many Chinese became laborers in the burgeoning railroad, merchant, mining and brick-building industries. In 1868 the McNear family of San Rafael began producing bricks along the San Pablo Bay, hiring Chinese laborers.

Most of the Chinese working in California hailed from Canton on the delta of the Pearl river. At the time of their emigration Canton was the only open port in China. This port just happened to have been the location for centuries of shrimp harvesting. San Francisco Bay had many of the same attributes as the Pearl River delta, including tons of shrimp.

By 1870, according to the U.S. census report, 77 Chinese shrimpers were harvesting at Point San Pedro. They had developed special bag nets that consisted of six adjacent 30-foot-wide by 40-foot-long nets set in the bay's muddy substrate. When the tide rushed in the planktonic shrimp were swept into the bag nets. The openings were threaded so that when full, the shrimper pulled the string capturing the crustaceans inside. The nets were emptied onto junks and sampans -- traditional flat-bottomed fishing boats.

The variety of shrimp caught was the "grass shrimp" that are born in high salinity water in the winter or spring. They then quickly migrate to the protective salt grass where they mature. The larger female shrimp were sold to restarauteurs in the City. The males were dried and sold as flavoring while the heads, tails and keratinous exoskeletons were crushed and sold as chicken feed.

By 1875 there were 30 shrimping villages around the Bay Area. The catch was exported to Chinese communities worldwide. But by 1885, thought to be the peak production year, the Chinese were finding it increasingly difficult to catch shrimp, as they were first stripped of some of their rights. In 1854 Chinese were excluded from testifying in court. Then in 1901 the shrimp season was closed during the height of the season. In 1905 the export of shrimp was banned. And in 1911 the use of bag nets and the possession of dried shrimp was illegal.

Concurrently, the bay was muddied by hydraulic mining in the Sierra Nevada. The large water canons, popular during the 1850s, caused a constant flow of mud into the bay. The salt grass was being destroyed by siltation, decreasing the sites where the shrimp could find protection to mature. Meanwhile, houses were springing up around the bay wetlands. By 1915 the annual catch was down to 100,000 pounds. The industry dried up and many of the villages were abandoned.

Although some of the restrictions were lifted in the late teens and into the '20s, and the shrimp population sprung back to almost 500,000 pounds in 1930, the Chinese shrimping industry would never regain its strength.

China Camp managed to survive for many years from the profits of a family store in the village. They weathered the Depression by providing essentials to the working locals. Frank Quan, a descendant of Quan Hung Quock -- who is thought to have started the village store -- began to rent boats and sell his declining shrimp catch as bait to locals. He continued to legally harvest shrimp, using a technique developed in 1924 by the Spengers (of the Berkeley fishing and restaurant family).