More recently, scholars have begun delving into the experiences and personal histories of Chinese railroad workers. Stories shared through family oral histories not only shed light on the dilemmas and challenges faced by the Chinese migrants but also recognize their contributions to U.S. society. Examples of family histories include those of Jim King, Lim Lip Hong, and Hung Lai Who, who later became a cigar merchant in San Francisco. After working under harsh conditions as a railroad laborer, he achieved financial success, and his family descendants have contributed to various fields, including medicine, engineering, and the arts (Lee & Yu 2019).
Given the lack of first documentation and records from the workers, there is a significant interdisciplinary effort to recover and preserve the history of Chinese workers who worked on the Transcontinental Railroad. Thousands of artifacts found at North American railroad sites, including tools, coins, and remnants of daily life, provide valuable insights into workers’ living conditions and cultural practices. Such research challenges traditional Eurocentric narratives of American Western expansion by placing the contributions of Chinese migrants at the forefront (Chang & Fishkin 2015). U.S. and Chinese scholars are collaborating to explore rich cultural exchanges and transnational links. Cultural studies, art history, literary scholars are analyzing and identifying creative work from the nineteenth century, including travel narratives, paintings, political cartoons, modern novels, plays, operas, and pictorial art (Khor 2016: 435). And new methodologies, such as digital humanities, geomapping, bioarchaeology, photographic reconstruction, have been employed to visualize and reconstruct workers’ life experiences (Chang & Fishkin 2015; Khor 2016: 430).
The Chinese Railroad Workers in North America Project (CRRW), an open-access archive housed by Stanford University, serves as a cornerstone for these efforts (Chang et. al. 2019). The project aims to create a comprehensive digital archive containing oral histories, payroll records, photographs, and archaeological materials (Khor 2016). The CRRW includes interviews with living descendants of Chinese workers, thousands of material objects collected from worksites, local American records, and histories of the Guangdong region and elsewhere in China (Khor 2016: 434-435). Digital archives such as this challenge traditional archives by reshaping historical narratives and foregrounding untold stories.
Khor (2016), for example, emphasizes the role of photography as both a source of historical evidence and a tool of manipulation. This work raised questions about cultural representation and the limitations of archives biased towards the perspective of white business elites (Khor 2016: 432). The remarkable absence of Chinese workers in Andrew Russell celebrated photo ‘East and West Shaking Hands at Laying Last Rail’ is merely the most prominent example. Other 19th century photographs offer material records of Chinese presence, but they often frame Chinese workers in ways that obscure their individuality and agency. Prominent photographers—including Russell, Alfred A. Hart, and Charles Savage—prioritized the grandeur of landscapes and the railroad as a symbol of triumph: ‘The Chinese workers who appeared in these photos, however, were framed against the grandeur of the Western landscape. Their working conditions and their subjection to exploitation and racial violence were often muted amidst the majestic depiction of trees, mountains, rivers, and valleys’ (Khor 2016: 441).
Census records and historical documents from the Central Pacific Railroad (CPRR) Company did not record the actual names of individual Chinese railroad workers.[2] Chinese workers were organized into groups of up to 30 people, with foremen responsible for receiving and distributing all labor wages, and CPRR payroll sheets typically only record the names of foremen rather than those individual workers (Khor 2016: 438). These financial practices of erasure make it extremely challenging and nearly impossible to recognize individual contributions and histories. And even where Chinese names do appear, the names are Americanized and written in Latin character, which prevents researchers from tracing the names back into Chinese characters. Only a few Chinese names can be identified, including Ah Hop, Toy Gee, and Charlie Dan, some of whom dedicated over 50 years to CPRR railroad construction (U.S. National Park Service, 2024).
Despite their indispensable role in U.S. history, the contributions and voices of Chinese railroad workers remain silent to the present day. Yet large number of these workers were literate in their native languages, and they maintained close connections with their families in China. Harper’s Bazaar noted that ‘the Superintendent of the Central Pacific Railroad, after having employed thirteen thousand Chinese, said that he never heard of one who could not read and write in his own language’ (Harper’s Bazaar 1869; as cited in Chang & Fishkin 2019: 4). And the Morning Republican stated in 1869 that ‘The large number of Chinamen now in the Pacific states, who all or very nearly all read and write, have sent to China, in private letters, a vast amount of information concerning those states and the United States generally’ (Morning Republican 1869; as cited in Chang & Fishkin 2019: 4). During the nineteenth century, tens of thousands of letters travelled back and forth across the Pacific Ocean. In 1876, ships from the Pacific Mail Steamship Company carried over 250,000 letters between China, Japan, and America. However, no letters or texts attributed to Chinese railroad laborers have been identified or catalogued (Chang 2019: 9).
Building upon primary and secondary literature, including Stanford’s open-access CRRW archives (Chang et. al 2019), CPRR payroll records, newspaper articles, and scholarly studies, this project reimagines available sources in a new and artistic ways. We seek to raise questions for the public and scholars alike, including: What were the workers’ names—both their Chinese birth names and the names they adopted in the U.S.? What happened to the letters home written by railroad Chinese workers in the United States? Why have the letters been lost and, given their absence, how do we give voice to the voiceless? How can we reimagine the stories, lived experiences, and lost history of Chinese migrant workers if we lack descriptions in their own words? Due to the absence of texts and documents from the workers themselves, the project draws together hints and stories from various collections. By piecing together the fragments, much like the process of reconstructing a pot from ceramic shards, the artworks suggest a richer picture of the lost history of Chinese workers in North America.
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The picture of Chinese railroad worker life begins to become textured and dimensional and moves beyond the simple and general.
–– Chang & Fishkin 2015
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[2] CPRR payroll sheets, the original copies of which are preserved in the State of California State Railroad Museum, offer insight into the economic history of Chinese railroad workers. Some sheets do include the Chinese names associated with specific occupations, including washers, waiters, dishwashers, ‘China helpers,’ laborers, cooks and stewards, second cooks, drivers, blacksmiths, blacksmith helpers, hostlers, assistant ‘Hostler,’ ‘Lie Cook,’ carpenters, ‘leaging’ splitters, packers, and so on.