Question: Chinese laborers
From: "Stephen Kneeshaw" kneeshaw@cofo.edu
I would like to put together some materials on "ordinary people" in American history and include Chinese laborers on the CPRR as one of the groups. I would like to use this information in an American history survey course that I teach at College of the Ozarks. Might you be able to direct me to information on specific individuals – as opposed to the entire group – including names, biographical sketches, and so forth? Thanks.
Stephen Kneeshaw
Professor of History
College of the Ozarks
Point Lookout, MO 65726
posted from CPRR Discussion Group at 4:36 PM
2 Comments:
For information about Chinese CPRR workers, see:
http://CPRR.org/Museum/Chinese.html
http://CPRR.org/Museum/index.html#Chinese
In attempting to focus on individual Chinese railroad workers, you have chosen a very difficult task. The Library of Congress states that: "No first-person memoirs of the Chinese experience in nineteenth-century California are known to survive. There is always hope that further research in the United States and the People's Republic of China will produce such a narrative, but for the time being, readers must content themselves with studies such as Robert McClellan's The Heathen Chinee: A Study of American Attitudes toward China, 1890-1905 (Columbus, Ohio: Ohio State University Press, 1971) or Betty Lee Sung's Mountain of Gold: The Story of the Chinese in America (New York: Macmillan, 1967)."
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/cbhtml/cbednote.html
Additionally there is considerable misinformation in the secondary literature. See:
http://CPRR.org/Museum/Chinese_Accuracy.html
While there is ongoing debate regarding the validity of some calculations, for a book looking at surviving payroll records that might prove helpful, see:
http://CPRR.org/Museum/Chinese.html#Chew
For Chinese railroad worker oral history relating to the CPRR, see,
Chinese Railroad Workers in North America Project at Stanford University
Ye Chun's paternal great-great-grandfather
Mock Chuck
Yuan Son
Eng Mun Dom (We Wen Tan)
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