Male populations dominated the gold mines of California, Chinese men, along with white miners, “did their own domestic work – they cooked, sewed and washed their own clothes.” Along with their long pajama-like tunics and long hair, “Chinese men were depicted as lacking virility. Most Americans could not help but notice the queue.

For Americans, Chinese men were the only representation of Chinese people and the queue added to the perception that the Chinese men were unnatural. Therefore in their native homeland, the queue was both a military necessity and a symbol of submission to Qing rule.įew Chinese women were permitted entry into the United States. By 1645 the mandate read that “every Chinese man must shave his forehead and begin to grow the queue within ten days or face execution.” The queue hairstyle remained a key to identification of soldiers in battle. The new Manchu rulers insisted that the Chinese adopt the Manchu style of dress and hairstyle. To successfully rule China, the Manchus adopted many Chinese practices, but the hairstyle was not one of them. In the early part of the seventeenth century Manchu general Nurhaci demanded that all males who surrendered to his victorious army “must imitate Jürchen practice and shave the fronts of their foreheads and braid their hair into a long pigtail or “queue,”” (Spence 29).īy the mid-seventeenth century, the Manchus ushered in the Qing Dynasty and dominated the major cities of China. The queue (pronounced cue) was a distinctive hairstyle of the Jürchen-Manchurian or Manchu tribes who occupied the northeast region of what is now modern China.

Story on chinese queue