In the case of America, the earlier Chinese immigrants either went there freely as gold prospectors or were sent there as contract labor to work on building railways. Normally their descendants continued to speak Cantonese and clustered together in Chinatowns, where they usually worked.
以美國來說，老僑早年都是去挖金礦的自由工人及築鐵路的契約華工，他們的子孫有許多仍說廣東話，聚居在中國城，或在中國城裡工作。