The first recorded Chinese woman to arrive in the U.S. was Afong Moy. She was on board the Washington, a ship filled with Chinese goods for the American middle class, when it pulled into the New York Harbor in November 1834. https://us-china-mtc.org/wp-admin/post.php?post=924&action=edit&swcfpc=1

The Gold Rush and the Transcontinental Railroad — In the decades following the Opium Wars (1840-1860), economic, political, and social upheavals in China led to mass migration of Chinese workers, particularly those from the coastal provinces of Guangdong and Fujian, to seek work overseas. When gold was discovered in California in 1848, the wave of annual migration to the U.S. exploded from a few hundred to ~20,000 in 1851. The Chinese had quickly become a significant minority on the West Coast. Their hard work and knack for finding gold led to hostility from local citizens; and with gold drying up by 1865, many Chinese were forced to leave the field. They moved to urban areas such as San Francisco, where they were often confined to performing some of the dirtiest and hardest work. Many also migrated to work on the Transcontinental Railroad. By the time the western half of the Railroad was being completed and connected to the eastern half in Utah in 1869, 90% of the workforce building the western half were Chinese. Yet, on the official photograph celebrating this historic event, Chinese workers were totally absent. 

The Chinese workers were finally recognized for their role in building the Transcontinental Railroad in 2019 at the 150^th anniversary celebration. https://chineseheritagefoundation.org/chinese-railroad-workers/

Among Americans in the West, the stereotyping of the Chinese as degraded, exotic, dangerous, and competitors for jobs and wages continued to persist. Sen. John F. Miller of California thought of the Chinese workers as “machine-like … of obtuse nerve, but little affected by heat or cold, wiry, sinewy, with muscles of iron.” Partly in response to thisstereotyping, organized labor in the West made restricting the influx of Chinese into the U.S. one of its goals, leading to the Chinese Exclusion Act.

Chinese Exclusion Act — This Act, which provided an absolute 10-year ban on Chinese laborers immigrating to the United States, was passed by the U.S. Congress, and signed by President Chester A. Arthur in 1882. It was extended for another 10 years by the 1892 Geary Act, which also required that people of Chinese origin carry identification certificates or face deportation. Later measures placed several other restrictions on the Chinese,

such as limiting their access to bail bonds and allowing entry to only those who were teachers, students, diplomats, or tourists. Congress closed the gate to Chinese immigrants almost entirely by extending the Chinese Exclusion Act for another 10 years in 1902 and making the extension indefinite in 1904. The Chinese Exclusion Act was finally repealed in 1943 with the passage of the Magnuson Act, which permitted a quota of 105 Chinese immigrants annually. 

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Chinese-Exclusion-Act

Many scholars explain the institution of the Chinese Exclusion Act and similar laws as a product of the widespread grassroots anti-Chinese movement in California in the second half of the 19th century. Other scholars have argued that the exclusion should be blamed on top-down politics rather than a bottom-up movement, explaining that national politicians manipulated white workers to gain an electoral advantage. Still others have adopted a “national racism thesis that focuses on endemic anti-Chinese racism in early American national culture.”

It should be noted that the Chinese Exclusion Act dealt only with Chinese laborers and not with scholars, businessmen or indentured coolies coming from China. It showed that there has been a deep-seated distrust among a sizeable group of Americans since the Chinese first started arriving in the 1850s, comprised primarily of those whose livelihoods were perceived to be threatened by an influx of cheap foreign labor. This distrust has bubbled up again recently in the sweep of anti-Asian crimes throughout the country.  

Despite these obstacles, the majority of Chinese immigrants and their families, on a people-to-people level, have thrived in the U.S. and found Americans to be frequently open and welcoming. Many warm friendships have been formed and organizations have sprung up to promote and deepen mutual understanding between the Chinese and the Americans.