By Zoe Wennerholm, Junior Fellow, Asian Division, Summer 2026
The Asian Division at the Library of Congress holds a collection of over 8,000 titles of 20th-century Chinese magazines and serials. These publications encompass a huge range of subjects, including science and technology, politics and propaganda, literature and the arts, women’s issues, history and religion, and more. While much of this collection has been catalogued for researcher access, a large subset has not yet been integrated into the Library’s online catalog. As a Junior Fellow for 10 weeks in the summer of 2026, I recorded bibliographic information in Chinese, pinyin romanization, and English for over 1,000 uncatalogued items. This information will help catalogers add these titles to the catalog, where researchers can discover the collection’s breadth and richness and request items for access in the Asian Reading Room.
As I worked my way through the collection one item at a time, I discovered that these serials display a surprising geographical diversity. The vast majority were published in mainland China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, but some are from cities as distant as Paris, Moscow, Johannesburg, and São Paulo. There are about 70 titles from the United States, half of which were published in New York City from 1929 to 1984. As a resident of Manhattan’s Chinatown, these caught my eye. Their hyper-local advertisements, discussions of identity, and emphasis on community reflect the shifting dynamics of the Chinese diaspora in mid-century New York. This post will present a brief overview of Chinese serial publications in the U.S. before focusing on three magazines from the 1940s through 1960s.
Chinese-language journalism in the United States began shortly after the first wave of Chinese immigration to California in the mid-19th century. The first few Chinese-language newspapers, the Golden Hills News (Jin shan ri xin lu 金山日新錄), The Oriental (Dong ya xin lu 東涯新錄), and the Sacramento Daily News (Sha jia mian du xin lu 沙架免度新錄), were published in California in the 1850s. These early publications faced intense challenges as the Chinese population in the United States was small and literacy rates were low. However, as the Chinese population on the East Coast expanded, New York City arose as a new major center of Chinese American printing and journalism.
New York’s emerging Chinese-language print culture offered a new awareness of what it meant to be Chinese in America. One noteworthy early example is the Chinese American (Mei hua xin bao 美華新報), a newspaper launched by Wong Chin Foo (Wang Qingfu 王淸福) in 1883. Foo was a prolific writer and activist, commonly credited with coining the term “Chinese American.” His newspaper encouraged readers to assimilate into American society and pursue naturalization, offering an idealistic view of cultural integration in a time when Chinese populations were isolated within American cities. The Chinese American portended a new wave of dailies and weeklies by the 1920s that featured local, national, and international reporting.
Despite this initial boom in New York’s Chinese American press around the turn of the century, the harmful effects of the Chinese Exclusion Act led to a gradual decline in publications. The Act was first passed in 1882 and extended until 1943, though in practice, Chinese immigration was still tightly controlled until the mid-1960s. This legislation severely curbed incoming immigration from China and limited legal protections for immigrants who already resided in the country. As the Chinese population in the United States declined, America’s Chinese-language press inevitably began to shrink.
Simultaneous with these challenges, the Chinese Civil War in the 1930s and 1940s led to a political splintering of the Chinese American population. As numerous parties battled for control of China in the 1930s and 40s, Chinese American political organizations took sides. Scholar H. M. Lai describes how they “turned the overseas Chinese communities into arenas in which they contended,” establishing newspapers that “dominated Chinese American journalism up to the end of World War II.” In this precarious journalistic moment, the Chinese American press struggled to maintain its momentum of earlier years.
Though New York’s Chinese-language press continued to decline throughout the first half of the century, the magazines and journals still in publication reflected an effort to engage with local readers. America’s Chinese population remained small but gained wealth and developed a middle class with an appetite for entertaining, light reading matter. Prominent examples include the China Post (Da hua xun kan 大華旬刊, 1942-1964), the Chinese-American Digest (Guang ming za zhi 光明雜志, 1954-1962), and Guang ming hua bao (光明畫報, 1954-1968). The Chinese-American Times (Zhong mei shi bao 中美时报, 1955-1972), published by William Yukon Chang (Zheng Yu’an 鄭玉安) from his home in Forest Hills, was notably the first fully English-language newspaper catering to the American-born second generation.
However, many magazines and newspapers during this period struggled to succeed, sometimes lasting just a few months before folding. These include Chun Phone (Chun feng 春風,1945), Chinaweek (Zong he 綜合, 1949), Congtan 叢談 (1950), and China Life (Sheng huo 生活, 1950-1953). Even the literary magazine Tian feng 天風, founded in 1952 by famous author Lin Yutang 林語堂 and his daughter Lin Taiyi 林太乙 (Anor Lin), did not survive a full year. Despite their limited lifespans, the contents of these publications demonstrate a concerted local effort towards community building.
Magazines and journals from this period are now quite scarce, but luckily the Asian Division has several in its Chinese collection. Two issues of Chinaweek from 1949 present a range of reporting, including local, national, and international news. Large photo spreads in each are reserved for New York’s Chinatown community, featuring dynamic shots of youth events like a Thanksgiving Day social by the Ging Hawk young women’s club (Nü zi jing xue hui 女子竟学会) and a “Miss Chinatown of New York” beauty pageant. A joke section brings levity to the magazine, while articles about Chinatowns across the United States indicate growing Chinese American solidarity. A letter from a young reader named Dorothy in Kingston, Jamaica requesting pen pals highlights the surprisingly international reach of this publication and its significance in building Chinese diaspora networks.
An issue of Chinese Community Magazine (Hua qiao she hui za zhi 華僑社會雜誌) from 1952 shares similar themes, including a striking full-spread pinup of “Miss Louis Leung of New York.” Local events like the opening of the Chinatown Golden Age Center are highlighted, as well as practical advice about filing taxes.
The advertisements in this issue feature both Chinese businesses and those from nearby Jewish and Italian establishments, suggesting some local cross-cultural connections.
The Asian Division also holds two issues of The Chinese Youth (Hua qiao qing nian 華僑青年) from 1939 and 1940, published by the Chinese Youth Club on Canal Street. Articles in both Chinese and English address “the problems, aspirations, and desires” of Chinese American young people. The magazine describes many collaborative projects between about a dozen clubs in the area, all of which were part of the New York Council of Chinese Youth. Photographs of club activities share space with advertisements from local businesses—many written by hand—expressing confidence and pride in being Chinese American.
The ethos of community fellowship in these magazines foreshadowed the emergence of a broader Asian American identity in the latter half of the 20th century. The term “Asian American” is widely credited to students at the University of California, Berkeley in the late 1960s as a statement of solidarity in opposition to the Vietnam War. This coalition of Asian American young people navigated questions of political resistance, shared experience, and cultural identity through print. As journalist Camille Bromley writes, “Before Asian-American magazines, there was no Asian America.” Magazines like Getting Together and Gidra began this movement, but the range of Asian American magazines continued to broaden and diversify in the 1980s and 1990s. Bromley points to titles like A., Bridge, TransPacific, Yolk, Rice, Jade, Monolid, Hyphen, KoreAm, and Giant Robot as crucibles in which Asian American youth shaped their identities. Though the magazines of New York’s Chinatown in the 1940s had a more limited scope and reach, they set the groundwork for this diasporic solidarity, representing a key moment in Asian American history.
Issues of Chinaweek, Chinese Community Magazine, and The Chinese Youth are available for research in the Asian Reading Room at the Library of Congress, along with dozens of other Chinese-language publications from Chinese American communities across the country. Some titles in the larger collection of 20th-century Chinese-language magazines and journals remain uncatalogued. In the meantime, while cataloging work continues, users can consult the published volume “Chinese Periodicals in the Library of Congress: A Bibliography” for a list of available titles and issues held. The Chronicling America digital newspaper collection also includes publications that document Chinese American history. Interested researchers can learn more about the Asian Reading Room through its website or Ask a Librarian.
Further Reading:
Bromley, Camille. “How magazines made Asian America”. Columbia Journalism Review, July 9, 2019. Available online via Columbia Journalism Review.
Huang, Han Chu Huang and David H.G. Hsu, comp., Chinese Periodicals in the Library of Congress: A Bibliography. Library of Congress, 1988. Available online via HathiTrust.
Lai, H. M. “The Chinese-American Press” in The Ethnic Press in the United States: A Historical Analysis and Handbook, edited by Sally M. Miller. Greenwood Press, 1987, pp. 27-43.
Lai, H. M. “The Chinese Press in the United States and Canada Since World War II: A Diversity of Voices” in Chinese America: History and Perspectives, 1987, pp. 13-51.
Museum of Chinese in America. “Chinese American Times,” accessed Oct. 21, 2026. https://www.mocanyc.org/collections/stories/chinese-american-times/.
Museum of Chinese in America. “The Chinese American, Wong Chin Foo’s 1883 New York Newspaper,” accessed Oct. 21, 2026. https://www.mocanyc.org/collections/stories/the-chinese-american-wong-chin-foos-1883-new-york-newspaper/.
Seligman, Scott D. The First Chinese American: The Remarkable Life of Wong Chin Foo. Hong Kong University Press, 2013.
Singh, Amardeep. “Asian American Little Magazines, 1968-1974.” Lehigh University, last updated Mar. 31, 2026. https://scalar.lehigh.edu/asian-american-little-magazines/index.
References:
“H. M. Lai describes” H.M. Lai, “The Chinese American Press,” p. 30 in The Ethnic Press in the United States: A Historical Analysis and Handbook.
“Camille Bromley writes” Camille Bromley, “How magazines made Asian America” in Columbia Journalism Review, July 9, 2019.
( Originally published in Library of Congress )
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