The Chinese and the Iron Road

Gordon H. Chang and Shelley Fisher Fishkin are Co-Directors of the Chinese Railroad Workers in North America Project at Stanford; Hilton Obenzinger is Associate Director and Roland Hsu is Director of Research.

This landmark volume sheds light on the lives and experiences of the Chinese workers who made up 90% of the workforce that built the Central Pacific Railroad-but who have been little understood and largely invisible in traditional accounts of the building of the First Transcontinental Railroad.

Introduction—Gordon H. Chang, Shelley Fisher Fishkin, and Hilton Obenzinger1. Chinese Railroad Workers and the US Transcontinental Railroad in Global Perspective—Gordon H. Chang2. Chinese Labor Migrants to the Americas in the Nineteenth Century: An Inquiry into Who They Were and the World They Left Behind—Evelyn Hu-DeHart3. The View from Home: Dreams of Chinese Railroad Workers Across the Pacific—Zhang Guoxiong, with Roland Hsu4. Overseas Remittances of Chinese Railroad Workers in North America—Yuan Ding, with Roland Hsu5. Chinese Railroad Workers' Remittance Networks: Insights Based on Qiaoxiang Documents—Liu Jin, with Roland Hsu6. Archaeological Contributions to Research on Chinese Railroad Workers in North America—Barbara L. Voss7. Living between Misery and Triumph: The Material Practices of Chinese Railroad Workers in North America—Barbara L. Voss8. Landscapes of Change: Culture, Nature, and the Archaeological Heritage of Transcontinental Railroads in the North American West—Kelly J. Dixon, with contributions by Gary Weisz, Christopher Merritt, Robert Weaver, and James Bard9. The Health and Well-being of Chinese Railroad Workers—J. Ryan Kennedy, Sarah Heffner, Virginia Popper, Ryan P. Harrod, and John J. Crandall10. Religion on the Road: How Chinese Migrants Adapted Popular Religion to an American Context—Kathryn Gin Lum11. Tracking Memory: Encounters between Chinese Railroad Workers and Native Americans—Hsinya Huang12. Railroad Frames: Landscapes and the Chinese Railroad Worker in Photography, 18651869—Denise Khor13. 'Les fils du Ciel': European Travelers' Accounts of Chinese Railroad Workers—Greg Robinson14. The Chinese Railroad Worker in United States History Textbooks: A Historical Genealogy, 1849-1965—William Gow15. Representing Chinese Railroad Workers in North America: Chinese Historiography and Literature, 19492015—Yuan Shu16. History Lessons: Remembering Chinese Railroad Workers in Dragon's Gate and Donald Duk—Pin-chia Feng17. The Chinese as Railroad Builders after Promontory—Shelley Fisher Fishkin18. The Construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway and the Transpacific Chinese Diaspora, 18801885—Zhongping Chen19. Beyond Railroad Work: Chinese Contributions to the Development of Winnemucca and Elko, Nevada—Sue Fawn Chung20. The Remarkable Life of a Sometimes Railroad Worker: Chin Gee Hee, 18441929—Beth Lew-Williams21. The Chinese and the Stanfords: Nineteenth-Century America's Fraught Relationship with the China Men—Gordon H. Chang