[Miss April Lou, teacher at PS 1, Manhattan, with six Chinese children, recent arrivals from Hong Kong and Formosa, who are holding up placards giving his or her Chinese name (both in ideographs and in transliteration) and the name to be entered upon the official school records] / World Telegram & Sun photo by Fred Palumbo.

The New York World-Telegram, later known as the New York World-Telegram and The Sun, was a New York City newspaper from 1931 to 1967. The Library of Congress collection includes about 1 million photographs that the New York World-Telegram & Sun Newspaper assembled mostly 1890 and 1967, the year in which the newspaper closed. This newspaper photo morgue is typical of the files that newspapers maintain of images that either were published or were believed to have some future publication potential. Such files were periodically "weeded" by newspaper staff members. Much of the photography used by newspapers is "quick copy," and many images have been cropped, retouched, or highlighted for publication. Some images were taken by the newspaper's staff photographers while others came from wire press services, studios, or amateur photographers.

In the 19th century, British trade of Chinese commodities like tea, silk, and porcelain was high but Chinese interest in European manufactured goods was insignificant so that Chinese goods could only be bought with precious metals. To reduce the trade imbalance, the British sold large amounts of Indian opium to China. In 1839, the Daoguang Emperor rejected proposals to legalize and tax opium and ordered imperial commissioner Lin Zexu to eradicate the opium trade. The commissioner destroyed opium stockpiles and halted all foreign trade, triggering a British military response and the First Opium War. The Qing surrendered early in the war and ceded Hong Kong Island to the United Kingdom in 1842. Piracy, disease, and hostile Qing policies initially prevented the government from attracting commerce. Conditions on the island improved during the Taiping Rebellion in the 1850s, when many Chinese refugees, including wealthy merchants, fled mainland turbulence and settled in the colony. Further tensions between the British and Qing over the opium trade escalated into the Second Opium War. The Qing were again defeated, and forced to give up the Kowloon Peninsula and Stonecutter's Island in the Convention of Peking. By the end of this war, Hong Kong had evolved from a transient colonial outpost into a major port. The colony was further expanded in 1898 when Britain obtained a 99-year lease of the New Territories. Hong Kong was transferred to China on 1 July 1997, after 156 years of British rule.

In the 19th century, a majority of Chinese immigrants were single men who worked for a while and returned home. At first, they were attracted to North America by the gold rush in California. A relatively large group of Chinese immigrated to the United States between the start of the California gold rush in 1849 and 1882, before federal law stopped their immigration. After the gold rush, Chinese immigrants worked as agricultural laborers, on railroad construction crews throughout the West, and in low-paying industrial jobs. Soon, many opened their own businesses such as restaurants, laundries, and other personal service concerns. With the onset of hard economic times in the 1870s, European immigrants and Americans began to compete for the jobs traditionally reserved for the Chinese. Such competition was accompanied by anti-Chinese sentiment, riots, and pressure, especially in California, for the exclusion of Chinese immigrants from the United States. The result was the Chinese Exclusion Act, passed by Congress in 1882. This Act virtually ended Chinese immigration for nearly a century.