Haoqing Yu started this project by digging into a variety of archives, including academic journal articles and books related to the topic of transcontinental railroad and Chinese immigrant workers. The archival mappings on the official website of the Library of Congress that contain historical documents and Central Pacific Railroad (CPRR) payroll sheets (from 1864 to 1866) that record the economic history of the Chinese who helped build the Central Pacific railroad were particularly helpful. Drawing upon a distinction elaborated by Lawrence Lessig (2008), we shift these Read Only (RO) archives into a source and inspiration for Read-Write (RW) culture. In RO culture, audiences passively receive materials, often in a hierarchical manner with limited dynamic discussion (Lessig 2008: 85-86). RW culture does not replace or discard RO culture. Instead, RO materials expand into RW culture, where archives become the first step in learning from the past and imagining alternative futures (Lessig 2008: 106). The ability to reject older understandings and develop new ones via artistic reimagining is incredibly valuable, especially now as historical interpretation is politicized. RW culture enables audiences to reinterpret and collaborate in the artistic process of education and sharing. By re-interpreting and reworking historical sources, we found new meanings in the untold stories of migrant workers. As Lawrence Lessig argues, ‘Doing something with [past] culture, remixing it, is one way to learn’ from and honor the past (Lessig 2008: 82).
Archives, such as the Alfred A. Hart’s photographic collection and Central Pacific Railroad (CPRR) payroll records, omit the voices of Chinese laborers. Arts-based research enabled the reconstruction of these lost narratives via imaginative storytelling and visual artmaking. The artmaking process allowed us to invoke and provoke new questions. We explored and represented the experiences of Chinese migrants in creative ways that traditional research methods may not express or capture effectively. Furthermore, we found that art-making enhanced knowledge translation. he artistic process functions as a sensory and emotional medium for conveying research findings, which is incredibly valuable, especially when a research topic is complicated and challenging to express verbally. Artistic research and art installations can make research more engaging and accessible to non-academic and broader audiences. Unlike traditional text-based publications, artworks open meaningful dialogues between researchers and their audiences, unfolding over time and space as diverse audiences interact with different phases of a project (Morris & Paris 2021: 101-102).
The artmaking process began with hand-made ink drawings, that traced the arduous and lonely journeys of Chinese railroad workers. These journeys and memories were then elaborated via artistic practices and digital tools, including Adobe Creative Cloud, Miro, Midjourney, Runway ML, and so forth, Juxtaposing the flexibility of digital tools and generative AI with more time-intensive methods of handmade artistic production led us to reflect on what it means to create digitally when those who came before us had to endure immense physical hardship––hardships that enabled and built the infrastructure of our digital present. Compared to Chinese railroad workers who toiled under extreme conditions and dangerous circumstances, we can quickly produce AI-generated images with a few clicks, and we can remix artworks by copying and pasting within online digital platforms. AI and digital tools, for all their speed, often hide the invisible labor of data harvesting. The unseen automation behind image generation echoes how the Chinese workers who built the railroad became invisible.
During the artmaking and installation process, we used the letters ‘E’ and ‘W’ to symbolize ‘The East’ and ‘The West’ for efficiency sake. We labelled each of the ghostly pixel patterns as ‘E-A,’ ‘E-B,’ ‘E-C,’ ‘E-D,’ ‘E-E,’ ‘W-A,’ ‘W-B,’ ‘W-C,’ ‘W-D,’ and so forth (Figure XX). In doing so, we abstracted the individual patterns in the much same way that railroad companies abstracted worker labor. The installation process mirrors how capitalism reduces human labor to a measurable unit of history. Unlike digital artworks, the U.S. Transcontinental Railroad is ‘handmade’ — constructed by relentless, repetitive labor under harsh conditions, much of it carried out by Chinese migrant workers whose perseverance and sacrifice shaped its path. The original ghostly pixel patterns (Figures x-X) re-present this repetition, infinity, patience, and the passage of time. When creating these hand-drawn ink drawings, Yu reflected upon and followed the Chinese railroad workers’ spiritual journey: a long, lonely, arduous, and enduring path. And during the physical art installation process, we needed to measure each printed piece precisely, because even minor errors and misalignments resulted in large gaps between sections. We can only imagine how much more difficult the process was for Chinese railroad workers, who laid the 690 miles of track between Sacramento, California, and Promontory, Utah by hand. These workers connected hundreds of miles of track without catastrophic measurement mistakes under severe and dangerous natural conditions. While AI-generated images can generate abstract patterns and the internet connects us around the globe within seconds, the experience of digital life often feels ephemeral. In contrast, the handmade Pacific Railroad built by Chinese workers left a permanent and inerasable mark on American history.
Through arts-based research, we sought to learn from and share the hardships and untold stories of Chinese migrant railroad workers. By intervening in historical archives and engaging with contemporary research, the project attempts to reclaim the memory of these invisible workers. However, the produced artworks are simply the first step in a longer process. Our artworks do not resolve the complex questions of injustice and historical recovery that underlie the project. Instead, we aim to open spaces for questioning, reflection, remembering, and reimagination. Elsewhere, J.R. Osborn has referred to this method as a ‘retrofuturology’: the exploration of past techniques in order to inspire future possibilities (Osborn 2017: 200). We honor the Chinese railroad workers as living beings who sacrificed their lives on the rail lines that still unite the East and the West coasts of the United States. Through various artworks and installations—both physical and digital––we hope to contribute to a more inclusive historical narrative: a narrative that sees, names, and remembers those who built the foundations of our present, yet were denied recognition in their time.
Remembering the past also helps us to rethink and question the present. The assistant of Washington’s Attorney General Bob Ferguson noted that Trump’s 2017 travel ban (Executive Order 13769), which primarily targeted peoples from Muslim-majority nations was based on the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 (Vansynghel 2018). Eight years later, on January 20 2025, President Trump issued Executive Order 14161. This order impacted how immigrants can enter America with visas for education, work, or to simply visit their loved ones. Such an order set the stage for further restrictions, and a new travel ban, often referred to as the ‘Trump 2.0 Travel ban,’ was launched in June 2025 (Presidential Proclamation 10949). This proclamation suspends visas for citizens of 12 countries from entering the United States and it restricts entry for citizens of 7 additional countries. The Trump administration is considering additional bans that could affect citizens of over 40 nations (Savage et al. 2025). As Professor Zhi Lin, who has directed an enormous amount of scholarly, artistic, and creative energy toward honoring the lost memory of Chinese railroad workers, states: ‘Yesterday it was the Chinese, today it’s people south of the border or people with different faiths. We are doing it all over again.’ (Vansynghel 2018). When history is lost, its currents return in the future.
Thus, this project is not only about remembrance: It is also about opening a dialogue in the present about immigration, labor, cultural heritage, diversity, equity, and inclusion. The invisible Chinese migrant railroad workers remain an unhealed scar in American history and collective memory. Remembering them can help society imagine a better tomorrow. The discrimination faced by past Chinese migrant railroad workers echoes current debates on immigration, labor rights, and national identity. From the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 to present-day anti-immigration policies that have canceled international student visas, patterns of xenophobia persist. We hope that, one day, our world will not resemble the image of ‘The East and The West’ (Figure 2), in which people and continents are separated by the confusing and hurtful accumulation of lost bodies and texts. Instead, we imagine a space of ‘Reunion’ (Figure 27) in which people of the present and the past can come together to bridge the gaps of lost history.
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Such violence was simply the street manifestation of a broader pattern of racialized, legally sanctioned discrimination against all Chinese, including Railroad Chinese, which was pervasive in the mid-nineteenth century.
–– Chang, 2019
Figure 27. Reunion. Haoqing Yu, 2024. Mixed-media art, traditional Chinese black ink, Pentel
color brush pen, Miro Board, ink patterns, six pieces of Strathmore sketch paper (9’’x12’’).
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