Beneath the Steel: Chinese Railroad Workers, Lost Histories, and Art as Remembrance

Haoqing Yu

The histories, stories, and names of Chinese railroad workers who dedicated their lives to constructing the U.S. Transcontinental Railroad have remained in the shadows for over a century. Completed in 1869, the railroad was a monumental achievement in America’s ‘Manifest Destiny’ during the nineteenth century. But despite their contributions, the Chinese laborers have not received the recognition they deserve. This project seeks to remember Chinese railroad workers via arts-based research methods (ABR). Archives are not merely repositories of the past but also products of political power. In this light, the project poses a key methodological question: How can art-making critically reconfigure the power of archives and lost history? We seek to ask questions, initiate a dialogue, acknowledge the absence, and give form to the invisible. Building upon the historical recovery work of previous scholars, we reconstruct fragmented pieces through remixed artworks. The current article highlights key artworks that demonstrate the scope and variety of a much larger project (Yu 2025b). We dedicate this work to the Chinese master railroad builders––to the great-grandfathers––whose stories and names demand remembrance.

Blood Wall in Prison

Figure 15: Blood Wall in Prison. Haoqing Yu, June 2024. Digital art, pattern brush, Apple pencil, Procreate, 4096 x 1714px

The Ghost of Hornitos: One tale, handed down from generation to generation by Chinese Americans whose ancestors lived through these times, tells of an unfortunate Chinese miner in Mariposa County, south of the CPRR line, who was thrown in jail after he accidentally wounded a white miner in an altercation. Imprisonment did not satisfy twenty white men loaded with whiskey. They wanted blood. They stormed the jail and managed to slip a rope through the bars and around the prisoner. The gang gleefully pulled and pulled, squeezing the man’s body against the bars until suddenly his agonized screams stopped. The rope flew out soaked with viscera. His body had been cut in two and his head battered to a pulp. The jail cell was a mass of gore. For years afterward, prisoners who inhabited the murder cell swore a Chinese ghost haunted the place. Try as they might, jailers could never completely cover over the bloodstains on the walls. They were still faintly visible more than seventy-five years later, the lingering presence of what became known as the Ghost of Hornitos.

— Chang, 2019

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