Joss House

Joss House Review

An active place of worship on the outskirts of the city, the Joss House was built during the gold-rush days by Chinese miners. At the height of the boom in the 1850s and 1860s, about a quarter of the miners were Chinese. These men were usually dispatched from villages on the Chinese mainland, and they were expected to work hard and return as quickly as possible with their fortunes. The Chinese were scrupulously law-abiding and hardworking—qualities that did not always endear them to other miners—and anti-Chinese riots were common.