Introduction
—Gordon H. Chang, Shelley Fisher Fishkin, and Hilton
Obenzinger
1. Chinese Railroad Workers and the US Transcontinental Railroad in
Global Perspective
—Gordon H. Chang
2. Chinese Labor Migrants to the Americas in the Nineteenth
Century: An Inquiry into Who They Were and the World They Left
Behind
—Evelyn Hu-DeHart
3. The View from Home: Dreams of Chinese Railroad Workers Across
the Pacific
—Zhang Guoxiong, with Roland Hsu
4. Overseas Remittances of Chinese Railroad Workers in North
America
—Yuan Ding, with Roland Hsu
5. Chinese Railroad Workers' Remittance Networks: Insights Based on
Qiaoxiang Documents
—Liu Jin, with Roland Hsu
6. Archaeological Contributions to Research on Chinese Railroad
Workers in North America
—Barbara L. Voss
7. Living between Misery and Triumph: The Material Practices of
Chinese Railroad Workers in North America
—Barbara L. Voss
8. 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 Bard
9. The Health and Well-being of Chinese Railroad Workers
—J. Ryan Kennedy, Sarah Heffner, Virginia Popper, Ryan P.
Harrod, and John J. Crandall
10. Religion on the Road: How Chinese Migrants Adapted Popular
Religion to an American Context
—Kathryn Gin Lum
11. Tracking Memory: Encounters between Chinese Railroad Workers
and Native Americans
—Hsinya Huang
12. Railroad Frames: Landscapes and the Chinese Railroad Worker in
Photography, 18651869
—Denise Khor
13. 'Les fils du Ciel': European Travelers' Accounts of Chinese
Railroad Workers
—Greg Robinson
14. The Chinese Railroad Worker in United States History Textbooks:
A Historical Genealogy, 1849-1965
—William Gow
15. Representing Chinese Railroad Workers in North America: Chinese
Historiography and Literature, 19492015
—Yuan Shu
16. History Lessons: Remembering Chinese Railroad Workers in
Dragon's Gate and Donald Duk
—Pin-chia Feng
17. The Chinese as Railroad Builders after Promontory
—Shelley Fisher Fishkin
18. The Construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway and the
Transpacific Chinese Diaspora, 18801885
—Zhongping Chen
19. Beyond Railroad Work: Chinese Contributions to the Development
of Winnemucca and Elko, Nevada
—Sue Fawn Chung
20. The Remarkable Life of a Sometimes Railroad Worker: Chin Gee
Hee, 18441929
—Beth Lew-Williams
21. The Chinese and the Stanfords: Nineteenth-Century America's
Fraught Relationship with the China Men
—Gordon H. Chang
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.
"The long-awaited The Chinese and the Iron Road makes visible the
previously invisible Chinese railroad workers who built America's
first transcontinental railroad. They are given names, family
lives, homes, spiritual beliefs, and agency. The research is
astounding. The wide variety of interdisciplinary, international,
and collaborative perspectives—from archaeology to family
history—is revelatory and a model for future collaborative
projects. This timely and essential volume preserves the humanity
of the often-ignored and forgotten immigrant worker, while also
uncovering just how important Chinese American railroad workers
were in the making of America and its place in the world."—Erika
Lee, author of The Making of Asian America
"Destined to become the go-to resource about Chinese railroad
workers in the American West. This anthology assembles an
international, interdisciplinary team of leading scholars to
conduct the most extensive and thoughtful exploration of these
near-mythic, yet heretofore scantly researched, historical subjects
producing insights not only into the material conditions of their
labor and lives but also the ideological implications of their
ubiquity contrasted against their individual
illegibility."–Madeline Hsu, author of The Good Immigrants: How the
Yellow Peril Became the Model Minority
"To understand the emergence of the United States as a major player
on the world stage, we must recognize the importance of its
two-ocean power, which the transcontinental railroad made possible.
Deeply researched and richly detailed, The Chinese and the Iron
Road brings to life the Chinese immigrants whose work was essential
to the railroad's construction."—Thomas Bender, author of A Nation
Among Nations: America's Place in World History
"When I wrote a play in the early 1980s about Chinese workers on
the American transcontinental railroad, information was scarce, and
often of questionable accuracy. Gordon H. Chang and Shelley Fisher
Fishkin's meticulously researched and beautifully written book
fills this critical gap in our nation's history. The Chinese and
the Iron Road brings to life the stories of workers who defied
incredible odds and gave their lives to unite these states into a
nation."—David Henry Hwang, Tony Award–winning playwright of The
Dance and the Railroad and M. Butterfly
"[An] eclectic and comprehensive study that brings visibility to
the monumental and very intimate human stories too long submerged
beneath the pageantry of the golden spike ceremony."—Timothy Dean
Draper, Journal of American Ethnic History
"Scholars Gordon Chang [and Shelley Fisher Fishkin] deserve praise
for this...memorial, a commemoration to the almost entirely
nameless thousands whose labor became the biographical [Stanford]
university itself."—William Deverell, Pacific Historical Review
"Gordon H. Chang and Shelley Fisher Fishkin's monumental edited
work The Chinese and the Iron Road is an impressive collection of
interdisciplinary essays....This collection is essential and
provides tools for scholars seeking to understand not only the
lives of Chinese railroad workers but also the U.S. West and any
other groups that left behind few written sources. Specialists and
lay readers alike are encouraged to read this engaging
work."—Stephanie Hinnershitz, Journal of American History
"[This] exciting collection of scholarly articles represents a
major contribution to labor history and to the new wave of
Chinese-American studies that is global in scope but intensely
focused on recovering and illuminating the lives of the ten- to
fifteen- thousand Chinese workers who constructed the Central
Pacific Railroad section of the Transcontinental Railroad."—Robert
Cliver, Technology and Culture
"[Detailed] and informative. The anthology shows the care that
these authors and scholars who are part of the Chinese Railroad
Workers in North America Project took in trying to piece together a
largely unknown narrative. The sheer attempt of such a project is
commendable."—Marimas Hosan Mostiller, China Review
International
"[A] generous and beautiful [offering] to the ghosts of
California's landscapes, necessary for the deep reckoning that is
sorely needed in that storied place."—Douglas Cazaux Sackman,
Reviews in American History
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