Sunday, February 09, 2014

Chinese workers of the Central Pacific Railroad

From: "Jennifer Chen" jennifersiyi@gmail.com

... I am doing a rather large-scale history project on the Chinese workers of the Central Pacific Railroad.

I visited the Sacramento Railroad Museum and library recently, and I examined some payrolls in 1866. They were very hard to read and interpret, but I tried my hardest to decipher with the librarian.

It is a wonder why all the Chinese workers were paid in a company, and do you know why the Chinese were called "Ah" and followed by a single syllable of their names? Were the Chinese not called by their real names? Does it in any way show that Americans didn't even bother to learn the Chinese immigrants' names? ...

—Jennifer Chen