The Joy Luck Club is set in two places: China in the 1930s and 1940s and San Francisco's Chinatown from the 1960s through the 1980s. Since Chinatown was a haven within an isolated country, the experiences of Tan's fictionalized daughters differ sharply from their mothers' generation, which was displaced by war.
The turn of the twentieth century hailed massive upheavals for China, with the end of the Imperial dynastic system and the opening of China to global influences. These changes led to civil wars between the Nationalists and the Communists. The leader of the Nationalist Party, or the Kuomintang, was Chiang Kai-shek, and Mao Tse-tung led the Communist Party. The Long March, a 6,000-mile-long retreat of the Red Army in 1934-35, enabled Mao to consolidate his power. (Survivors of the march are heroes to this day.)
The Chinese peasantry was lifted by Mao's doctrine, which encouraged his soldiers to "not take a single needle or a piece of thread from the masses"—masses often terrorized by the nationalist Kuomintang. The Nationalists, who were armed with the need to combat Western hegemony, clashed with the Communists, who were strengthened by their appeal for the many rural poor.
These two groups formed fragile alliances to fight a guerilla war against waves of Japanese invaders in the 1930s. Although few in number, the Japanese gained control of major Chinese cities and coasts.
As the United States entered World War II in 1941, the marriage of convenience between the Kuomintang and Communists against Japan was falling apart. The U.S. backed the Nationalists, although corruption among Kuomintang generals diverted supplies and information to the Japanese. This corruption and political instability, coupled with the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949, drove many Chinese to emigrate.
These Chinese took the already well-worn route to California, which to this day retains the largest Chinese population in the United States. The Chinese still refer to San Francisco as "Old Gold Mountain," because the first wave of émigrés had come through the Port of San Francisco at the start of the Gold Rush. They had formed tight networks and built "Little Shanghai," because exclusionary laws made it difficult for Asian immigrants to assimilate or gain citizenship.
For decades the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 had limited imported labor. The World War II alliance between China and the United States became instrumental in repealing this and other exclusionary laws. The immigrant population slowly shifted from male sojourners to permanent citizens.
Even though racial bias persisted in immigration law until at least 1965, families thrived in Chinatown, with its familiar Chinese customs, food, and merchandise. By the 1960s Chinatown's seedy intrigue existed only in movies, and it became an alluring tourist destination—an exotic island of a different culture in the middle of a major American city, complete with temples, fortune cookie factories, and, of course, Chinese restaurants. The famous Chinatown gate went up in 1970. Nine years later, diplomatic ties were reestablished between the two countries, making it easier for Chinese-American families to reunite.