The date May 10, 1869, has been memorialized in American transcontinental history through Andrew J. Russell’s symbolic photograph, ‘East and West Shaking Hands at Laying Last Rail,’ which was taken at a ceremony in Promontory, Utah (See Figure 1). After five years of construction, the final golden spike was driven into the rails to complete the transcontinental railroad. In the photo, two enormous steam engines, heading East and West, represent the Central Pacific Railroad (CPRR) and the Union Pacific Railroad (UP). These competing companies lead the project of Pacific Railway, or the U.S. Transcontinental Railroad, which united the east and west coasts of a quickly-industrializing 19th century America. The CPRR started working in Sacramento, California, and built eastward. The UP began in Omaha, Nebraska, and built westward. The completed project connected to the existing rail networks of the eastern United States and created a pathway across the nation (Chang 2019: 4). Even though the CPRR’s railway construction length was much shorter—only a little over half of the UP’s portion—the western section of the railroad was far more challenging to build due to the mountainous and hazardous terrain (Chang 2019: 5).
However, despite their significant contributions, not a single Chinese worker appears in the photograph of this historical event at Promontory Summit. Chinese workers comprised over 90 percent of the Central Pacific Railroad labor force. Their hard work and sacrifice made the incredibly treacherous and seemingly unimaginable western half of the Pacific Railroad possible. From 1863 to 1869, around 20,000 Chinese migrant laborers shoveled 20 pounds of rock over 400 time a day to lay tracks across this difficult terrain (Sayej 2019). They blasted tunnels, constructed roadbeds, and aligned the steel. They faced dangerous working conditions — illness, snow and rock avalanches, tunnel explosions, freezing winters, and blistering summers — which killed hundreds, perhaps thousands, of unnamed Chinese laborers along the route (Chang 2019: 5).
During the 19th century, a series of historical events drove over 2.5 million Chinese to leave their home country, many of whom immigrated to the United States. Between the 1830s to the 1860s, after the ban of the African slave trade, the so-called ‘coolie trade'[1] began to flourish due to: (1) The rapid growth of the global economy powered by the British and American industrialization; and (2) high demands for labor across various local economies in order to supply of food and raw materials to the industrial and industrializing countries (Lai 2009: 243).
A tragic number of Chinese were pirated from China and forced to work on plantations and in mines around the world. During the 1850s, American ships carried hundreds of Chinese to foreign countries without workers’ consent. For example, in 1852, the Connecticut-registered ship Robert Brown carried more than 400 Chinese on board. The ship left Xiamen with a stated destination of California, but the captain had deceived the Chinese migrants. The true destination was Peru’s dangerously notorious guano mines (Chang 2019: 27-28). In 1860, the American ship Messenger carried over 400 Chinese laborers, who were treated as merely ‘cargo.’ The ship captain refused to free these workers to Chinese officials, arguing that he gained ownership over them after paying port dues in Guangzhou. Such atrocities alarmed American officials in Hong Kong and China, who reported the incidents to Washington. In the official report detailing the Messenger case, John Ward, the U.S. minister to China, informed the Secretary of State that 1,000 Chinese had died in incidents involving American ships, which he condemned it as a ‘disgrace’ to the American national flag. Facing domestic pressure, the U.S. Congress passed an 1862 law banning American vessels from participating in the coolie trade (Chang 2019: 29; Lu 2009: 244).
Destabilizing events internal to China also spurred emigration and the growth of the Chinese diaspora. Between 1850 and 1864, the Taiping Rebellion, a millenarian peasant movement led by Hong Xiuquan who perceived himself as the ‘Jesus Christ’s Divine Younger Brother’ (Heath & Perry 1994: 3), overthrew the Manchu-led Qing dynasty, which had ruled since 1644. The resulting civil war was one of the most devastating, dangerous, and bloodiest wars in human history, with over 25 million deaths, twice that of World War I (Chang 2019. 20; Weatherhead East Asian Institute 2025). Around the same time, the Red Turban Rebellion, named after the red headscarves, worn by its fighters, also revolted against the Qing government across the southern province of Guangdong (Wakeman 1966: 117-148; Kim 2005: 2). These rebellions set the stage for increasing foreign interventions from Western powers, including the British, the Americans, the Irish, and the Italians, all of whom held colonial interests in China (Heath & Perry 1994).
Following the First Opium War in the 1840s, Western nations signed a series of forced treaties with China that opened lucrative Chinese markets to Western trade. During the 1850s, due to dissatisfaction with the Qing Government’s failure to adhere to the terms of treaties, the British attacked the Chinese port cities of Guangzhou and Tianjin. This began the Second Opium War (1856-1860), during which British and French forces occupied Guangzhou (Chang 2019: 18). These military struggles—both domestic and international—resulted in widespread instability and hardship across China. This instability was further exacerbated by famines, ferocious seasonal monsoons, and fearsome typhoons, which caused widespread death and deconstruction in the Siyi coastal counties (Chang 2019: 14, 17).
Many Chinese, including many workers from Qiaoxiang ( 侨乡, Cangdong Village) in the Guangdong region, sought emigration to more stable foreign locales. Materials and archives in from the Guangdong region can provide new sources and perspectives related to the personal stories, oral testimonies, relics, and materials of popular culture of Chinese railroad workers. Historical documents located in Qiaoxiang archives, for example, echo the hopes, struggles, and hardships faced by migrant Chinese labors who went overseas and never returned. Stories in poetry and popular songs from the era reflect the pain of separation from families, the disillusionment of failed dreams, the sacrifices made by wives left behind in China, and the suffering of parents awaiting the return of their sons (Chang et al. 2019: 67-75).
A significant number of Chinese arrived in the United States to seek fortunes and economic opportunities during the California Gold Rush of 1848-1855. This coincided with construction of the Pacific rail network and, the Central Pacific Railroad (CPRR) faced a considerable challenge regarding labor shortages. After receiving only a few hundred responses from white workers to job postings, CPRR Director Charles Crocker suggested hiring Chinese workers. The recommendation may have been raised first by Crocker’s Chinese servant (Chang 2019; Kennedy 2019), but when Crocker shared it with his colleagues, it ignited anti-Chinese sentiment. James H. Strobridge, the CPRR construction superintendent, thought that Chinese workers were too weak for the physically demanding and dangerous task of constructing railways (Kennedy 2019).
The company, however, had few other options. ‘It was impossible to get white labor,’ said Lewis M. Clement, one of the principal CPRR engineers (Chang 2019: 50). ‘White workers, whom the company wanted, did not sign on in numbers anything close to what was needed’ (Chang 2019: 50; c.f. Kennedy 2019). According to the Stanford Chinese Railroad Workers Project, CPRR employed 21 Chinese workers in January 1864. As labor demand increased and white labors were increasingly unwilling to take on the dangerous and life-threatening work, Chinese hirings accelerated. By the end of 1865, the majority of the railroad labor force was Chinese and, by 1867, almost 90 percent of the construction workers were Chinese (Kennedy 2019). In 1868, over 11,000 Chinese workers were employed across the Pacific Railroad network (U.S. National Park Service, 2024).
The hard work demanded of Chinese migrants did not mean they received fair treatment. According to the Pacific Project, Chinese labors were paid less than $26 per month, often working six grueling days a week. Job responsibilities ranged from basic manual labor to specialized tasks such as blacksmithing, tunneling, and carpentry, with most of the work completed using hand tools (Kennedy 2019). The salaries paid to Chinese migrants were significantly lower, between thirty-three and fifty percent cheaper, than those afforded white workers in similar positions. The Chinese laborers lived in tents, while white workers were accommodated in train cars, and physical abuse from company supervisors was common (Chang 2019: 104; Kennedy 2019). By paying Chinese laborers low wages, company executives accumulated riches by skimming millions from the cost of railroad construction (Sayej 2019).
The unfair conditions bubbled up on June 19, 1867, when a massive tunnel explosion killed one white worker and five Chinese workers. In response, over 3,000 Chinese workers organized an eight-day non-violent strike, which one news report described as ‘the greatest strike ever known in the country’ (Chang 2019: 109). From Cisco to Truckee, spanning over 30 miles of track, workers laid down their tools and demanded the same wage payment as white workers. Through ‘organized,’ ‘disciplined,’ ‘methodical,’ ‘planned,’ ‘communicated,’ ‘coordinated,’ and ‘collaborative’ actions, these workers challenged the stereotypical imagery of obedient Chinese (Chang 2019: 109-115). Dominant histories often describe the strike of 1867 as ‘desperate.’ But Chinese workers knew that the company would crash without their cooperation. Thus, it was the ‘vulnerability’ of the CPRR, rather than workers’ ‘desperation’ (Chang 2019: 110) that inspired the action. According to historian Gordon Chang, ‘[The Chinese strike] scared the pants off the company leaders’ (Chang 2019: 113). Although the strike ended without meeting the workers’ demands, it was not in vain. The collective action significantly improved working conditions, and the CPRR quietly raised the salary of experienced workers over the next several months (Kennedy 2019).
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There were about 4,000 men working there in the mountains, 3,000 of them Chinamen, and they all had to get out. Most of the Chinamen came to Truckee and they filled up all the old buildings and sheds that were in Truckee. With the heavy fall of snow one old barn collapsed and killed four Chinamen. A good many were frozen to death. There was a dance at Donner Lake at a hotel, and a sleigh load of us went up from Truckee and on our return, about 9 a.m. next morning, we saw something under a tree by the side of the road, its shape resembling the shape of a man. We stopped and found a frozen Chinaman. As a consequence, we threw him in the sleigh with the rest of us, and took him into town and laid him out by the side of a shed and covered him with a rice mat, the most appropriate thing for the laying out of a Celestial.
–– A.P. Partridge, 1867
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[1] The coolie trade refers to the migration of Chinese indentured workers to plantations of slave and ex-slave America, Cuba, and Peru, with small flows to Britain, France, and Dutch West Indies, during the nineteenth century (Lai 2009: 243). There was also a great labor demand in Panama, Chile, Demarara, the West Indian Islands, and, to a lesser extent, Australia (Farley 1968: 257). Most of the workers were from South China, and they were officiall under contract for years of service, but it was, in many aspects, akin to slavery (Farley 1968: 258). Others apply the term 'coolie migration' to the entire global movement of Chinese labor during this era (Lai 2009: 243).