Welcome to the Bridgetown Church podcast. For the month of May we are honoring Asian American

Pacific Islander Month. Each week members of our church family will be sharing stories

that acknowledge and celebrate AAPI history from their lived experiences and the world at

large. Hello, my name is Tiffany Flores. I am a co-chair of the Racial Justice Committee

here at Bridgetown Church. And my name is Kylie Logan. I'm on the Racial Justice Committee.

I lead the Communications Subcommittee and I identify as Chinese American. So May is Asian

American in Pacific Islander Heritage Month or AAPI. During the month of May we'll have

a series of five podcasts that are going to celebrate Asian American in Pacific Islander

people in our church. So to kick us off with these podcasts we wanted to start with a history

of AAPI communities in Portland and how these communities have shaped our city. Kylie, can

you tell us a little bit more? Yeah. So Portland actually has a pretty rich history with different

Asian communities. Chinese people, mainly Cantonese, Chinese people started moving here

in the mid 1800s and at one point Portland was home to the second largest Chinatown in

the west coast of America. And the community was really growing. People were moving here

to mine. Some people were merchants and were a bit more wealthy than the miners. But

things started growing really quickly and people were getting scared I guess of the rise

in the Chinese community. And so there were also different acts of violence towards the

Chinese community. Like at one point they burned down to Chinese buildings in the city.

And there was also just other natural disasters such as flooding and other fires that happened

that displaced some of the Chinese community. But in the late 1800s the hostility towards

Chinese Americans started to grow. And so the first act that was passed to the targeted

Chinese folks was in 1878. It was called the Page Act and it banned the immigration

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