Pupils Study in San Francisco's Chinatown

This photograph shows a schoolroom scene from San Francisco's Chinese Public School, circa late nineteenth or early twentieth century. The Chinese immigrant students are taught by a middle-class white woman. Note the students' traditional dress and pigtails, a remnant of life under the Manchu Dynasty. The Manchus mandated that Han Chinese wear pigtails as a sign of subservience; after the Manchu Dynasty fell in 1911, Chinese men no longer wore the style. The students' hairstyles help date the photograph to before 1911.

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