Ghosts of Gold Mountain
Page 35
The opening shot: Scott Zesch, The Chinatown War: Chinese Los Angeles and the Massacre of 1871 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 180.
In June 1876: Appendix to the Opening Statement, 68–71; Sue Fawn Chung, Chinese in the Woods: Logging and Lumbering in the American West (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2015), 119; Wallace R. Hagaman and Steve F. Cottrell, The Chinese Must Go!: The Anti-Chinese Boycott, Truckee, California, 1866 (Nevada City, Calif.: Cowboy Press, 2004), 9; and Jean Pfaelzer, Driven Out: The Forgotten War Against Chinese Americans (New York: Random House, 2007), 167–69.
In October 1880: “Anti-Chinese Riots in Denver, Colorado,” Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, November 20, 1880; Liping Zhu, The Road to Chinese Exclusion: The Denver Riot, 1880 Election, and Rise of the West (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2013), 166–92.
Formalizing these mob anti-Chinese: Gordon H. Chang, “China and the Pursuit of America’s Destiny: Nineteenth-Century Imagining and Why Immigration Restriction Took So Long,” Journal of Asian American Studies 15, no. 2 (June 2012): 145–69.
In these perilous years: Huie Kin, Reminiscences (Peiping: San Yu Press, 1932), 26–27.
In September 1885: “Rock Springs Massacre,” Wikipedia.org (accessed July 31, 2017); and see Craig Storti, Incident at Bitter Creek: The Story of the Rock Springs Chinese Massacre (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1991); and “Memorial of Chinese Laborers at Rock Springs, Wyoming (1885),” in Yung, Chang, and Lai, Chinese American Voices, 48–54.
The worst incidence of violence: R. Gregory Nokes, “‘A Most Daring Outrage’: Murders at Chinese Massacre Canyon, 1887,” Oregon Historical Quarterly 107, no. 3 (Fall 2006); R. Gregory Nokes, Massacred for Gold: The Chinese in Hells Canyon (Corvallis: Oregon State University Press, 2009), 24–29, 42.
The number of expulsion: Beth Lew-Williams, The Chinese Must Go: Violence, Exclusion, and the Making of the Alien in America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2018), 247–51.
Many today who: See discussion in CPRR Museum, http://discussion.cprr.net/2006/12/reparations-for-families-of-those-who.html and http://discussion.cprr.net/2007/01/dead-chinese.html (accessed August 11, 2017). Also see, Haiming Liu, “Chinese Railroad Laborers and Their Transcontinental Death Culture,” CRRWP Digital publishing series (forthcoming).
Take, for example: Wong, Gum Sahn Yun, 96–100. Anti-Chinese sentiment was strong in the area in the 1880s and 1890s. William Harland Boyd, The Chinese of Kern County (Bakersfield, Calif.: Kern County Historical Society, 2002), 28, 29, 35, 151, and 184.
After the railroad work: Wong, Gum Sahn Yun, 99–100.
The second calamity: “Catastrophe on the South Pacific Coast Railroad—Explosion in the Tunnel,” Sacramento Daily Union, February 14, 1879; “Another Tunnel Explosion—Terribly Fatal Effects,” Sacramento Daily Union, November 19, 1879; “The Tunnel Explosion and a Farcical Inquest,” November 21, 1879, Sacramento Daily Union; “Fatal Explosion,” Santa Cruz Weekly Sentinel, November 22, 1879; “Death in a Tunnel—Terrible Catastrophe in the Narrow-Gauge Tunnel Through the Santa Cruz Mountains,” Los Angeles Herald, November 20, 1879; “A Tunnel Horror: Nearly Thirty Men Killed by an Explosion in San Francisco,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, November 19, 1879; The Tunnel Disaster, Daily Alta California, November 20, 1879; and Sandy Lydon, Chinese Gold: The Chinese in the Monterey Bay Region (Capitola, Calif.: Capitola Book Company, 2008), 92–101. A careful and moving study of this incident and others in the history of Railroad Chinese in the Santa Cruz area is presented in Bruce MacGregor, The Birth of California Narrow Gauge: A Regional Study of the Technology of Thomas and Martin Carter (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003), 533–36, 542–49, 553–57.
Chinese took death rituals: Sue Fawn Chung and Priscilla Wegars, eds. Chinese American Death Rituals: Respecting the Ancestors (Lanham, Md.: Alta Mira, 2005). In their home region, Chinese continue to care for remains returned from abroad in “Gold Mountain coffins” that are still unclaimed after more than a hundred years. This work is seen as a solemn responsibility for the living to bear. See Chinese Culture Center and Tung Wah Group of Hospitals, Requiem (San Francisco, Chinese Culture Center, 2018).
Some Railroad Chinese waited: “Ah Jim Waits to Join Honorable Ancestors,” Call Bulletin, July 22, 1941, clipping in box 4, News Clippings Re: Biographies, Charles Leong Papers, Asian American Studies Archives, UC Berkeley.
CONCLUSION
As the excitement: “Driving of Gold Spike Celebrated at Ogden,” Salt Lake City Tribune, May 11, 1919; Ogden Standard, May 8, 1919. The workers’ names are given variously as Wong Fook, Lee Chao, Lee Shao, Lee Cho, Low Chai, Ging Cui, and Ah King. Thanks to Kevin Hsu for locating this information and articles. On the long association some Railroad Chinese had with railroad work, see “Old Central Pacific Men Still at Work,” Southern Pacific Bulletin, October 1, 1914, 18.
The man identified: “‘Rock Canyon Charlie’ Taken by Death at County Hospital,” Mountain Democrat, April 17, 1931; “Pioneer Chinese of Gold Rush Days Dies in Placerville,” Santa Cruz Evening News, April 14, 1931; and “Chinese Pioneer Dies,” Los Angeles Times, April 15, 1931.
He died of heart disease: California Department of Public Health, Vital Statistics, “Hung Wah Rock: Permit for Removal and Burial,” April 15, 1931, provided by Mary Cory, El Dorado County Historical Museum, Placerville, email to author; and https://www.edcgov.us/Government/Cemetery/Pages/county_hospital.aspx (accessed August 18, 2018). Federal records on departures and returns of Chinese from America show no evidence that Hung Wah ever left the country.
After the completion: Contract between Hung Wah and Peter Maher, June 24, 1879, Bryanna Ryan to author, email, July 13, 2018; Lillian Rechenmacher Oral History, March 28, 1991, Placer County Oral History Collection, Placer County Archive and Research Center, Auburn; and “Anti-Chinese,” Placer Weekly Argus, July 24, 1880.
One such descendant: Gene O. Chan, with Connie Young Yu, “Jim King, Foreman of the Central Pacific: A Descendant’s Story,” in Voices from the Railroad: Stories by Descendants of Chinese Railroad Workers, ed. Sue Lee and Connie Young Yu (San Francisco: Chinese Historical Society of America, 2014), 9–13.
Another family historian: Russell N. Low, “Hung Lai Woh Was a Great Grandfather I never met,” in Lee and Yu, Voices from the Railroad,. 15–19; and Russell N. Low, “The Story of Hung Lai Woh: Chinese Railroad Worker on the Transcontinental” (n.p., 2003).
Lim Lip Hong came: Andrea Yee, “Lim Lip Hong: An Indomitable Pioneer,” in Lee and Yu, Voices from the Railroad, 21–26.
Lim Lip Hong had achieved: Michael Andrew Solorio to author, email, August 6, 2018.
Connie Young Yu, one: Connie Young Yu to author, email, September 22, 2017; Connie Young Yu, “Stanford Memories from a San Jose Chinatown Store,” June 8, 2016, in author’s possession; and Barre Fong, interview of Connie Young Yu, May 29, 2013, Chinese Railroad Workers Project Archives, Stanford.
Stories about Chinese: Connie Young Yu, “Three on the Payroll,” and transcripts of oral histories with railroad descendants in the collection of the Chinese Railroad Workers Project, Stanford.
Railroad descendants’ accounts: Many Chinese Americans worked diligently to keep their history from disappearing. Railroad Chinese history has been of primary importance to generations of historians of the Chinese American community, including William Chew, Thomas Chinn, Philip Choy, William Hoy, Him Mark Lai, H. K. Wong, and Connie Young Yu, among others. Railroad Chinese have inspired a broad range of Chinese American writers including Frank Chin, David Henry Hwang, Maxine Hong Kingston, Alan Lau, Genny Lim, Lisa See, Shawn Wong, and Lawrence Yep. The Railroad Chinese are immortalized in the contemporary music of Jon Jang and Francis Wong. Pioneering Chinese American artists Jake Lee and Tyrus Wong and contemporary artists Alan Lau, Zhi Lin, Mian Situ (whose stunning work appears on the dust jacket on this book), and Hung Liu imagine work on the railroad and memorialize the experience. Actors Ruy Islandar, John Lone, Tzi Ma, Bryon Mann, Yuekun Wu, and Angela Zho
u presented Railroad Chinese characters on stage and screen. Descendants of Chinese from the railroad era include authors Maxine Hong Kingston and Lisa See, and perhaps Mae Jamison, the first black female astronaut, among others. See Pin-chia Feng, “History Lessons: Remembering Chinese Railroad Workers in Dragon’s Gate and Donald Duk,” in Chinese and the Iron Road: Building the Transcontinental and Other Railroads in North America, ed. Gordon H. Chang and Shelley Fisher Fishkin (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2019); and Julia H. Lee, “The Railroad as Message in Maxine Hong Kingston’s China Men and Frank Chin’s ‘Riding the Rails with Chickencoop Slim,’” Journal of Asian American Studies, October 2015, 265–87.
“After the Civil War”: Maxine Hong Kingston, China Men (New York: Vintage, 1989), 146.
Though it is long overdue: President Barack Obama, Proclamation, “Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, 2014,” April 30, 2014. On U.S. textbooks and Chinese railroad workers, see William Gow, “The Chinese Railroad Workers in United States History Textbooks: A Historical Genealogy, 1949-1965,” in Chang and Fishkin, Chinese and the Iron Road. On Chinese views of the railroad workers over the years, see Yuan Shu, “Representing Chinese Railroad Workers in North America: Chinese Historiography and Literature, 1949–2015,” in Chang and Fishkin, Chinese and the Iron Road.
Photo Credits
Page 2: “East and West Shaking Hands at Laying Last Rail” by Andrew Russell. Courtesy of the Collection of the Oakland Museum of California.
Page 40: Philip P. Choy Papers. Courtesy of the Department of Special Collections, Stanford University Libraries.
Page 49: Carleton E. Watkins, Views of Southern California and Arizona. Western Americana Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. WA Photos 220: 1004470 and 1004468.
Page 51: Carl Mautz Collection of Cartes-de-visite. Photographs Created by California Photographers. Western Americana Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. WA Photos 357: 1062435, 1062437, and 1062439.
Page 81: “Filling in Secret Town Trestle, C.P.R.R.” by Carleton Watkins. Courtesy of Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley. (Catalog No. 13-1304ee)
Page 83: “Chinese Laborers Group Portrait” ca. 1976 from Security Pacific National Bank Collection. Reprinted by permission of Los Angeles Public Library.
Pages 90, 94, and 95: Alfred A. Hart Photographs, ca. 1862–1869 from the Department of Special Collections, Stanford University Libraries.
Page 96: Photograph from the collection of the Society of California Pioneers used with permission.
Page 105: Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper (San Francisco, Saturday, June 04, 1870; pg. 189; Issue 766), published by Gale.
Page 105: Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper (San Francisco, Saturday, June 11, 1870; pg. 205; Issue 767), published by Gale.
Pages 106–107: Photographs courtesy of The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.
Pages 128–133: Alfred A. Hart Photographs, ca. 1862–1869 from the Department of Special Collections, Stanford University Libraries.
Page 134: Robert B. Honeyman, Jr. Collection of Early Californian and Western American Pictorial Material, BANC PIC 1963.002:0808—C. Courtesy of The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.
Page 135: “Chinese Railroad Workers and Landscape” and “Chinese Porters for Railroad” c. 1869–1870. Courtesy of the Becker Collection, Boston College, Boston, MA.
Page 155: Illustration by Comte Ludovic de Beauvoir, voyages autour du monde.
Pages 192–194: Alfred A. Hart Photographs, ca. 1862–1869 from the Department of Special Collections, Stanford University Libraries.
Page 202: “Laying the Last Rail” by Andrew Russell. Courtesy of the Collection of the Oakland Museum of California.
Page 208: “China section gang Promontory, c. 1869–1870” by J. B. Silvis. The Denver Public Library, Western History Collection, Call No. X-22221.
Page 235: Eugene Antz photo, ca. 1885. Courtesy of The Community Library Center for Regional History, Ketchum Community Library, Ketchum, Idaho.
Page 238: Surviving Central Pacific Chinamen, Wong Fook, Lee Chao, Ging Cui, 1919, gelatin silver print. Courtesy of Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas.
Page 242: Photograph of Lim Lip Hong with his wife and seven children, c. 1905. Courtesy of Lim Lip Hong Family.
Index
A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z
A
“Across the Continent” (illustration), 134, 167, 272 n134
African Americans
Chinese replacement of, 213, 217
Civil War veterans, 3
freed from slavery, 64, 67, 153, 154, 213, 219
hired by CPRR, 142, 143, 154, 162
at Promontory, 207
in Truckee, 169
Ah Chew, 257 n50
Ah Coon, 84
Ah Faw, 170, 175
Ah Fong, 84, 170, 175
Ah Fu, 257 n50
Ah Gee, 142
Ah How, 170
Ah Jim, 235–36
Ah John, 181
Ah Ling, 67–68
Ah Louis, 114–15
Ah Ming, 142
Ah Shau, 179
Ah Sing, 174
Ah Sum, 170
Ah Tom, 174
Ah Toy, 72, 180
Ah Wing, 84
Ah Wo, 234–35
Ah Yow, 84
Alaska (steamship), 29
Altair and Vega, 99–100
American River, 26, 69, 71, 78, 87, 90–91, 165–66
Anglo-Chinese War (1839–1842), 19
anti-Chinese sentiment and violence. See also racism and discrimination
Chinese Exclusion Acts, 231–32, 255 n41
Cleveland, Daniel, and, 53
eastern cities as escape from, 215–16
Irish and, 196–97
Lai Yong and, 51–52
murder, 71, 221–22
in Placer and Nevada Counties, 69–71
politicians and, 60–63, 145
prostitution and, 177
Sinophobia, 46, 211, 232
Six Companies and, 46
songs, 59–60
in years following railway completion, 11–13, 230–34, 239, 241, 243
Arthur, Chester Alan, 232
Asing, Norman, 61
Auburn, California
Chinese presence in, 70, 112
Hung Wah in, 4, 68–69, 113–14, 172–74, 239–40
McDaniel’s murder in, 173–74
train route through, 11, 81, 97, 121, 165
avalanches. See snowslides and avalanches
B
baige piao (game), 172
“Bank and Cut at Sailor’s Spur” (photograph), 94
Barbary Coast, San Francisco, 43
baskets story, 87–92, 266 n92
batholiths, 101
Becker, Joseph, 133–35, 167, 218
Bee, Frederick A., 88
bendi-kejia conflict, 24–25
Benton, Thomas Hart, 56–57
Big Fill, 81–82, 192
Big Four, 4, 66, 215
The Big Four (Lewis), 87
Bigler, John, 60–61, 259 n61
Bird, Isabella L., 89–90
black powder, 101, 124, 136
“Blasting at Chalk Bluffs Above Alta” (photograph), 93–94
Bling Gouie, 170
Bling Gum, 170
Bling Ti He, 170
Bloomer Cut, 96–97, 267 n97
bone boxes, 229, 243
Bradley & Rulofson (portrait studio), 257 n50
brides, arranged, 42, 71
British and British Empire, 19, 21–22, 34–35, 214
Brooks, Charles Wolcott, 44
Brown, Arthur, 143, 162
budai (laughing Buddha), 49
Buddhism, 116–17
Burlingame, Anson, and Burlin
game Treaty, 219
Burlingame delegation, 58
C
California. See also specific place names
Chinese community in, 9, 10–11, 12, 25, 27–28, 48, 69
Chinese ethnic groups and, 182
Chinese farmers in, 110, 112
Chinese male-female ratio in, 183
Chinese prostitutes in, number of, 178
Chinese temples in, 117
connection to Midwest and East, 8
gold country in, 4, 10, 25–28, 68–70, 80, 195
as Gold Mountain, 11, 15, 25–27, 29, 37, 73, 252 n25
Hart’s photography and, 92–93
mountain climate in, 20
Native people in, 111
California Central Railroad Company, 58
California Powder Works, 124
campsites of Railroad Chinese, 102–8, 112, 115–17, 119, 130–31, 134, 171–72, 192–93, 282 n192, 283 n194
Canadian immigrants, 169
Canadian trans-Pacific line, 215, 223
Canton (Guangzhou), China, 10, 16, 18, 21–22, 25, 31, 34, 36