The completion of the transcontinental railroad in May 1869 is usually told as a story of national triumph and a key moment for American Manifest Destiny. The Railroad made it possible to cross the country in a matter of days instead of months, paved the way for new settlers to come out west, and helped speed America's entry onto the world stage as a modern nation that spanned a full continent. It also created vast wealth for its four owners, including the fortune with which Leland Stanford would found Stanford University some two decades later. But while the Transcontinental has often been celebrated in national memory, little attention has been paid to the Chinese workers who made up 90 percent of the workforce on the Western portion of the line. The Railroad could not have been built without Chinese labor, but the lives of Chinese railroad workers themselves have been little understood and largely invisible.
This landmark volume explores the experiences of Chinese railroad workers and their place in cultural memory. The Chinese and the Iron Road illuminates more fully than ever before the interconnected economies of China and the US, how immigration across the Pacific changed both nations, the dynamics of the racism the workers encountered, the conditions under which they labored, and their role in shaping both the history of the railroad and the development of the American West.
Introduction
—Gordon H. Chang, Shelley Fisher Fishkin, and Hilton Obenzinger
1. Chinese Railroad Workers and the US Transcontinental Railroad in Global Perspective
—Gordon H. Chang
2. Chinese Labor Migrants to the Americas in the Nineteenth Century: An Inquiry into Who They Were and the World They Left Behind
—Evelyn Hu-DeHart
3. The View from Home: Dreams of Chinese Railroad Workers Across the Pacific
—Zhang Guoxiong, with Roland Hsu
4. Overseas Remittances of Chinese Railroad Workers in North America
—Yuan Ding, with Roland Hsu
5. Chinese Railroad Workers' Remittance Networks: Insights Based on Qiaoxiang Documents
—Liu Jin, with Roland Hsu
6. Archaeological Contributions to Research on Chinese Railroad Workers in North America
—Barbara L. Voss
7. Living between Misery and Triumph: The Material Practices of Chinese Railroad Workers in North America
—Barbara L. Voss
8. Landscapes of Change: Culture, Nature, and the Archaeological Heritage of Transcontinental Railroads in the North American West
—Kelly J. Dixon, with contributions by Gary Weisz, Christopher Merritt, Robert Weaver, and James Bard
9. The Health and Well-being of Chinese Railroad Workers
—J. Ryan Kennedy, Sarah Heffner, Virginia Popper, Ryan P. Harrod, and John J. Crandall
10. Religion on the Road: How Chinese Migrants Adapted Popular Religion to an American Context
—Kathryn Gin Lum
11. Tracking Memory: Encounters between Chinese Railroad Workers and Native Americans
—Hsinya Huang
12. Railroad Frames: Landscapes and the Chinese Railroad Worker in Photography, 18651869
—Denise Khor
13. 'Les fils du Ciel': European Travelers' Accounts of Chinese Railroad Workers
—Greg Robinson
14. The Chinese Railroad Worker in United States History Textbooks: A Historical Genealogy, 1849-1965
—William Gow
15. Representing Chinese Railroad Workers in North America: Chinese Historiography and Literature, 19492015
—Yuan Shu
16. History Lessons: Remembering Chinese Railroad Workers in Dragon's Gate and Donald Duk
—Pin-chia Feng
17. The Chinese as Railroad Builders after Promontory
—Shelley Fisher Fishkin
18. The Construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway and the Transpacific Chinese Diaspora, 18801885
—Zhongping Chen
19. Beyond Railroad Work: Chinese Contributions to the Development of Winnemucca and Elko, Nevada
—Sue Fawn Chung
20. The Remarkable Life of a Sometimes Railroad Worker: Chin Gee Hee, 18441929
—Beth Lew-Williams
21. The Chinese and the Stanfords: Nineteenth-Century America's Fraught Relationship with the China Men
—Gordon H. Chang
