Ghosts of Gold Mountain

by Gordon H. Chang

  Notes

  INTRODUCTION

  Hung Wah stepped: Hung Wah was a real person. Newspaper accounts of this moment do not provide his name, but evidence points to him.

  Others at the time: “Transcontinental Railroad Postscript,” San Francisco News Letter and California Advertiser, May 15, 1869; “Pacific Railroad Inauguration,” Sacramento Daily Union, January 9, 1863; and “UPRR Contractor Lewis D. Carmichael,” http://discussion.cprr.net/2014/07/uprrcontractor-lewis-d-carmichael.html (accessed August 18, 2018).

  “May God continue”: https://news.stanford.edu/news/2013/april/cantorgoogle-partner-030313.html (accessed July 25, 2018).

  The Chinese railroad workers: Strobridge was known among his contemporaries as demanding and sometimes physically abusive, certainly “bossy.” But Cantonese speakers also commonly added an “ee” at the end of some English words to help with the pronunciation. “Bossy” could also just be nineteenth-century Chinese American English for “boss.”

  “Chinese Laborers at Table”: “Pacific Railroad: Close of the Inauguration Ceremonies at Promontory Summit,” Chicago Tribune, May 12, 1869; “Honors to John Chinaman,” San Francisco News Letter, May 15, 1869; and “The Last Rail,” Daily Alta California, May 12, 1869.

  “silent spikes”: Huang Annian, ed., The Silent Spikes: Chinese Laborers and the Construction of North American Railroads, trans. Zhang Juguo (Beijing: China Intercontinental Press, 2006). The author gratefully acknowledges the dedicated efforts of Professor Huang Annian of Beijing in bringing the Chinese railroad workers’ story to readers in China and for introducing the notion of “silent spikes.” The term “nameless builders” comes from William F. Chew, Nameless Builders of the Transcontinental Railroad (Victoria, B.C.: Trafford, 2004). Chew was a retired engineer when he self-published his pioneering account.

  At the 1969 centennial: Dale Champion, “The Forgotten Men at Gold Spike Ceremony,” San Francisco Chronicle, reprinted in Chinese Historical Society of America Bulletin 4, no. 5−6 (May−June 1969): 6, 7.

  “Railroad Chinese”: Emma Jinhua Teng, Eurasian: Mixed Identities in the United States, China, and Hong Kong, 1842–1943 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013), 1−2.

  “The road could never”: David L. Phillips, Letters from California (Springfield: Illinois State Journal, 1877), 89–92; Rev. John Todd, The Sunset Land; or, The Great Pacific Slope (Boston: Lee and Shepard, 1870), 234.

  The Pacific Mail Steamship Company: In 1876, the Pacific Mail Steamship Company, one of the most active shipping companies in the Pacific, which operated out of San Francisco, reported that it had carried 96,717 letters to China and Japan and received 159,717 from these two countries for the United States. Along with remittances sent home, business and church correspondence, and travelers’ letters, this mail must have included many personal letters from Chinese and is evidence of literacy, or at least the busy activity of professional letter writers. See “Pacific Subsidies,” news clipping, Stanford Family Scrapbooks, vol. 13, 41–44, Stanford Library Special Collections.

  This presents: The problem of recovering history when there is little or no documentation from the central subjects has been confronted through the use of creative interpretive methodologies and imaginative use of materials. For example, see the classic works Natalie Zemon Davis, The Return of Martin Guerre; Jonathan D. Spence, The Question of Hu; and Richard White, The Middle Ground.

  An international research project: I give proper recognition to the Chinese Railroad Workers in North America Project at Stanford (CRWP) in the acknowledgments.

  Many years later: Teng, Eurasian, 1–2.

  1. GUANGDONG

  In the second reign year: The second reign year of Haamfung (Xianfeng) of the Qing dynasty was 1852.

  Villagers constructed: In 2007, UNESCO designated the diaolou in Kaiping and Taishan, two of the Siyi, as a World Heritage site. These unusual structures once numbered several thousand. About 1,800 remain standing.

  An estimated one quarter: Madeline Y. Hsu, Dreaming of Gold, Dreaming of Home: Transnationalism and Migration Between the United States and South China, 1882–1943 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000), 31.

  The soil of the Siyi: Sucheng Chan, This Bittersweet Soil: The Chinese in California Agriculture, 1860–1910 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), 7–21.

  He fondly evoked: William Speer, The Oldest and the Newest Empire: China and the United States (Hartford: Scranton and Co., 1870), 472–73.

  The next settlement: G. William Skinner, “The City in Late Imperial China,” in G. William Skinner, ed., The City in Late Imperial China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1977), 211–49.

  “The narrow streets”: Speer, Oldest and the Newest, 473.

  Schooling was rudimentary: Augustus Ward Loomis, “What Our Chinamen Read,” Overland Monthly and Out West Magazine, December 1868, 525–30; Stewart Culin, “China in America: A Study in the Social Life of the Chinese in the Eastern Cities of the United States,” paper read before the American Association for the Advancement of Science, New York, 1887, https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000336210 (accessed August 13, 2018).

  The geography of: Hsu, Dreaming of Gold, 18–27.

  The Siyi people: Yan Phou Lee, When I Was a Boy in China (Boston: D. Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Co., 1887), 11–12.

  man named Huie Kin: His full name was Huie Kin-kwong. He is also known as Xu Qin and Xu Qinguang. For his account, see Huie Kin, Reminiscences (Peiping: San Yu Press, 1932), 3–25. The Huie family history in America is a wonderful story that NPR has documented. See http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5699710 (accessed October 15, 2018). Much of the description Huie Kin gives of his home life, including the living arrangements of the family and children, and his departure from his village is similar to the stories provided by others, such as by Lee Chew in 1903. Lee came to the United States from the Siyi in the 1880s and for a time worked as a laundryman for railroad workers. Like Huie Kin, he was just a teenager when he left for America, which he also claimed was his idea. He paid for his passage with money his father provided. Lee Chew, “The Biography of a Chinaman,” New York Independent, February 19, 1903. Also, see the brief biography of Ng Poon Chew, who became an important Chinese American minister, publisher, and advocate in the early twentieth century. His village life, childhood, and travel experience are also very similar to the other accounts. Corinne K. Hoexter, From Canton to California: The Epic of Chinese Immigration (New York: Four Winds Press, 1976), 135–39.

  a new goddess: Author’s conversation with Selia Tan, December 15, 2017.

  Basic literacy for males: Huie, Reminiscences, 36; Lee, Boy in China, 50–62.

  The missionary William Speer: Speer, Oldest and the Newest Empire, 495.

  Located a little farther: Hsu, Dreaming of Gold, 23.

  The bloodletting: Yung Wing, My Life in China and America (New York: H. Holt, 1909), 54–55; David Faure, Emperor and Ancestor: State and Lineage in South China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007), 277–83, 295; Hsu, Dreaming of Gold, 21–23.

  migrants from the Pearl River: Robert G. Lee, “Red Turbans in the Trinity Alps: Violence, Popular Religion, and Diasporic Memory in Nineteenth-Century Chinese America,” Journal of Transnational American Studies 8, no. 1 (January 2017): 1–21.

  “Gold Mountain”: The Chinese term can also be translated as “country of gold.” Chinese overseas often referred to their homeland as the “Land of Tang,” or Tangshan and themselves as Tangren, or “people of Tang.”

  Chinese also settled: Thomas Chinn, H. Mark Lai, and Philip P. Choy, A History of the Chinese in California: A Syllabus (San Francisco: Chinese Historical Society of America, 1969), 36–41.

  Though the Qing empire: Gungwu Wang, The Chinese Overseas: From Earthbound China to the Quest for Autonomy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000), 43–65; Jack Leong, “The Hong Kong Connection for the Chinese Railroad Workers in North America,” Chinese Railroad Workers in North Am
erica Project, digital publishing series, https://web.stanford.edu/group/chineserailroad/cgi-bin/wordpress/ (forthcoming).

  From the early 1850s: Elizabeth Sinn, Pacific Crossing: California Gold, Chinese Migration, and the Making of Hong Kong (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2013), 43–60.

  Chinese labor recruiters: Hsu, Dreaming of Gold, 29–33.

  The ship companies: “Mass Hiring of Workers in San Francisco,” California China Mail and Flying Dragon (Feilong), January 1, 1867. The paper was bilingual. The article on hiring was in Chinese; translation by Tian Yuan.

  A railroad company: Ibid.

  The promise of well-paying: Law Yow, August 12, 1924, Survey of Race Relations, box 27, no. 191, Hoover Archives, Hoover Institution, Stanford.

  On February 15, 1875: Ezekiel B. Vreeland testimony and appendix B, exhibit 1, in Report of the Joint Special Committee to Investigate Chinese Immigration, United States Senate, 44th Cong., 2nd sess. (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1877), 173–80, and 1147–58.

  The 801 passengers: Ibid.

  A second passenger list: Ibid., 1158–64.

  The migration experience: Other personal accounts of out-migration and village life in the Pearl River delta are consistent with much of Huie Kin’s account. See the collection of stories in Thomas W. Chinn, Bridging the Pacific: San Francisco Chinatown and Its People (San Francisco: Chinese Historical Society, 1989), 65–107; Teresa Sparks, China Gold (Fresno, Calif.: Academy Library Guild, 1954); Scott D. Seligman, Three Tough Chinamen (Hong Kong: Earnshaw Books, 2012), 12–21; and Mae Ngai, The Lucky Ones (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010).

  None of their fathers objected: The account of Huie Kin’s emigration is drawn from Huie, Reminiscences, 16–21.

  One journalist’s report in 1870: Thomas W. Knox, “The Coming Man,” Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, May 7, 1870. The travel journal of a young writer, Lucius A. Waterman, completed during his return trip to the United States onboard the Pacific Mail steamship China in early 1869, contains brief observations about the hundreds of Chinese on the ship. In Hong Kong, it took on 400 Chinese women and 150 men. More Chinese came onboard in Yokohama. He records that the ship heaved and rolled in the winter seas, making the Chinese seasick. They observed the Chinese New Year by gambling. Waterman reported on conflicts among the Chinese and an illness that drove a Chinese crewman mad. Entries for January 19, February 11, 19, 20, 1869, Lucius A. Waterman, “Journal,” January 19–March 23, 1869, Waterman, Lucius A., misc. vol. 467, https://research.mysticseaport.org/item/l034982/3/, Waterman Family Collection, G. W. Blunt White Library, Mystic, Conn.

  Paradoxically, the Siyi: Immanuel C. Y. Hsu, The Rise of Modern China (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970), 248–50; and S. Wells Williams, The Middle Kingdom (New York: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1907), 555, 573–74.

  Huie Kin’s account is markedly: Huie, Reminiscences, 83. Also see Evelyn Hu-DeHart, “Chinese Labor Migrants to the Americas in the Nineteenth Century: An Inquiry into Who They Were and the World They Left Behind,” in The Chinese and the Iron Road: Building the Transcontinental Railroad, ed. Gordon H. Chang and Shelley Fisher Fishkin (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2019).

  One careful tabulation: “Statistics of Cuba,” Railroad Record, March 17, 1859, 37. Chinese knew the difference between conditions in Cuba and California. See Howland and Aspinwall to William O. Comstock, August 6, 1853, William Ogilvie Comstock Papers, folder August 1853, Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston.

  These tragic numbers: M. Foster Farley, “The Chinese Coolie Trade: 1845–1875,” Journal of Asian and African Studies (July–October 1968): 257–70.

  The Qing court: Tian Yuan, “Summary of Imperial Memorials Regarding Trafficking of Guangdong Men to Overseas Employment in the Late Nineteenth Century,” Chinese Railroad Workers in North America Project Archive, Stanford University.

  In 1852 the Connecticut ship: Jules Davids, ed., American Diplomatic and Public Papers: The United States and China, ser. 1, vol. 17 (Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources, 1973), xxxiii–xxxv, 312–16.

  Another American ship: Ibid., xxxv, 349–51.

  Other cases in the 1850s: Ibid., xxxvii, 349–51.

  American officials in Hong Kong: Ibid., xxxvii, 407–68; and Farley, “The Chinese Coolie Trade.” For more on the coolie trade and American involvement, see Sinn, Pacific Crossing, 50–55; and Watt Stewart, Chinese Bondage in Peru, 1849–1874 (Durham: Duke University Press, 1951).

  From the deck: D. L. Phillips, Letters from California: Its Mountains, Valleys, Plains, Rivers, Climate and Productions (Springfield: Illinois State Journal, 1877), 28–31. On the “coolie” controversy, see Mae Ngai, “Chinese Gold Miners and the ‘Chinese Question’ in Nineteenth-Century California and Victoria,” Journal of American History 101, no. 4 (March 2015): 1082–1105.

  Huie Kin recalled that: Huie Kin, Reminiscences, 24–25. After leaving the familiar terrain of San Francisco’s Chinatown, Huie Kin worked at various odd jobs, including household work, for whites in the Oakland area for years before he joined the local Chinese Christian community and his life changed forever. He became a Protestant minister and later settled in New York City, where he would become a prominent member of the Chinese community. In 1933 he returned to China, where he died the next year.

  2. GOLD MOUNTAIN

  Arriving in this unfamiliar: J. S. Look, August 13, 1924, Survey of Race Relations, box 27, no. 182, Hoover Archives, Hoover Institution, Stanford University.

  Reporting on the arrival: Albert S. Evans, “From the Orient Direct,” Atlantic Monthly, November 1869, 542–48. The article is reproduced in Evans’s 1873 volume À la California. Other descriptions of the arrival of Chinese appear in “Arrival of the ‘Japan,’” San Francisco Chronicle, November 23, 1869; and Otis Gibson, The Chinese in America (Cincinnati: Hitchcock & Walden, 1877), 45.

  Immigration processing in San Francisco: Decades later, after the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Acts, the experience would be very different. From 1910 to 1940, Chinese underwent harsh review and interrogation at the Angel Island immigration station in San Francisco Bay, which became notorious for mistreatment of arrivals.

  A bit later: Evans suggests that the unfortunate women were from the boat-dwelling population in the Canton region, the tanjia. Evans, “From the Orient Direct.”

  Evans wondered: Ibid.

  Though much has been made: Thomas Chinn, Him Mark Lai, and Philip Choy, A History of the Chinese in California: A Syllabus (San Francisco: Chinese Historical Society of America, 1969), 18, 30–36.

  The initial reception: Mary Roberts Coolidge, Chinese Immigration (New York: Henry Holt, 1909), 21–23.

  In April 1854: Daily California Chronicle, April 22, 1854.

  Charles Wolcott Brooks: Report of the Joint Special Committee to Investigate Chinese Immigration, 44th Cong., 2nd sess. (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1877), 10–12, 402, 459, 513, and 518. Though there is still a lack of clarity over the exact number of Chinese in America in the nineteenth century, it appears that at the height, Chinese numbered no more than 119,000 at the end of the century. U.S. Census, “Comparison of Asian Populations During the Exclusion Years,” http://www1.udel.edu/readhistory/resources/2005_2006/summer_06/hsu.pdf (accessed March 9, 2018); and see Chinn, Lai, and Choy, A History of the Chinese.

  Independent journalists, however: “Chinamen as Free Immigrants,” Massachusetts Spy, July 30, 1869, 2; “Indenture of Ahine, Chinaman,” “Indenture of Awye, Chinaman,” and “Indenture of Atu, Chinaman,” Jacob P. Leese Papers, California Historical Society Archive of California; and see Jacob P. Leese and Affon, “A California Businessman Contracts for Chinese Immigrant Labor,” HERB: Resources for Teachers, https://herb.ashp.cuny.edu/items/show/789 (accessed March 21, 2018.) A fascinating example of an 1852 loan agreement between a local association and a migrant and his family seeking funds to travel overseas is displayed in the Jiangmen Wuyi Museum of Overseas Chinese, Jiangmen, Guangdong, cited in Joseph Ng, “Entrepreneurial Capitalism: Th
e Making of Central Pacific Railroad, 1861–1899” (Ph.D. diss., Stanford University, 2018), 111–12.

  The news report described: “Chinamen as Free Immigrants.” One of the most knowledgeable persons about China in America at this time was S. Wells Williams, who had lived in China as a missionary and as a U.S. official for many years. He became a professor of Chinese language and literature at Yale in 1877. His book Chinese Immigration (New York: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1879) provided ample evidence and personal testimony which established that Chinese were free emigrants and should therefore be treated like any other newcomers to the country.

  At the center of it: Sue Fawn Chung, In Pursuit of Gold: Chinese American Miners and Merchants in the American West (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2011), 18–23. For the history of the huiguan and Six Companies, see Him Mark Lai, On Becoming Chinese American: A History of Communities and Institutions (Walnut Creek, Calif.: AltaMira Press, 2004), chap. 3.

  Merchant Cantonese often had formed: Judy Yung, Gordon H. Chang, and Him Mark Lai, eds., Chinese American Voices: From the Gold Rush to the Present (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), 17–25; Yucheng Qin, The Cultural Clash: Chinese Traditional Native-Place Sentiment and the Anti-Chinese Movement (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 2016), 35–55; and Richard Cole and Gabriel Chin, “Emerging from the Margins of Historical Consciousness: Chinese Immigrants and the History of American Law,” Law and History Review 17, no. 2 (Summer 1999): 325–64.

  Still, Americans who: In the 1960s, Gunther Barth resurrected the anti-Chinese slanders of the nineteenth century in his influential history Bitter Strength. For a substantive and well-informed discussion of the historical controversies, see Yucheng Qin, “A Century-Old ‘Puzzle’: The Six Companies’ Role in Chinese Labor Importation in the Nineteenth Century,” Journal of American–East Asian Relations 12, no. 3–4 (Fall–Winter 2003): 225–54.