The Bay Area Chinese Fishing and Shrimping Industry

Shrimpers aboard the Chinese junk Grace Quan in San Francisco Bay, c. 1890.

SF Maritime National Historical Park Archives

Even before the 1849 Gold Rush, Chinese of the Hakka Clan immigrated to California in their own junk ship and established fishing businesses. The Hakka also had experience as miners, so after gold was found in 1849, they and other Chinese immigrants took part in the mining operations. After California passed the Foreign Miners Tax in 1850, some returned to San Francisco Bay and established a thriving shrimp fishery. Twenty-five shrimp camps dotted San Francisco Bay by 1875. By some accounts, local Chinese fishermen used China Beach as a camp site. But an 1871, California State survey of fisheries gives no supporting documentation for a camp at this location outside of San Francisco Bay. Alternatively, San Francisco was also the northern limit for Chinese fishermen that fished and collected abalone from ocean-going junks that were headquartered in Southern California. Oral tradition holds that these fishermen periodically anchored at China Beach. Some say that they lit large bonfires at night that excited shore observers who thought perhaps they were pirates, and thus they inspired the name “China Beach”.

View of seven miners standing next to a sluice box; three white miners standing to the left of the sluice, four Chinese miners standing on the right.

California State Library, Attributed to Joseph B. Starkweather.