"No first-person memoirs of the Chinese experience in nineteenth-century California are known to survive."
—Library of Congress
From: "John Shubert" [email protected]
Subject: Gold Mountain Chinese Workers 金山中国铁路工人
You have a wonderful site and I commend your work!
However, I was dumfounded by these quotes:
1. “Alas (and strangely), the events were not recorded by the Chinese at the time, so the details and their perspective consequently are likely long since lost to history”
2. “It's too bad that there are no known writings by Chinese memorializing their experiences in building the Central Pacific Railroad.”
May I courteously say: Someone has clearly overlooked that any number of worker’s memories exist in the Chinese language. It’s an elementary mistake to say “none of them wrote a book in English we can read”.
The careful researcher (or historian) would say “the reason we don’t have first-person accounts from Chinese workers is because we haven’t researched original Chinese sources that exist in China”.
These workers surely told everyone back home (in China) and elsewhere (in the USA) about their experiences in their own language: Chinese. A few minutes of research using Google translate confirms there is a whole other world out there of Chinese knowledge about the ‘Gold Mountain Chinese railroad workers’ 金山中国铁路工人‘Jīnshān zhōngguó tiělù gōngrén’.
For instance, this 20min video contains information and some pictures which may surprise you. ...
—John Shubert PE, Lake Forest, CA
—Library of Congress
From: "John Shubert" [email protected]
Subject: Gold Mountain Chinese Workers 金山中国铁路工人
You have a wonderful site and I commend your work!
However, I was dumfounded by these quotes:
1. “Alas (and strangely), the events were not recorded by the Chinese at the time, so the details and their perspective consequently are likely long since lost to history”
2. “It's too bad that there are no known writings by Chinese memorializing their experiences in building the Central Pacific Railroad.”
May I courteously say: Someone has clearly overlooked that any number of worker’s memories exist in the Chinese language. It’s an elementary mistake to say “none of them wrote a book in English we can read”.
The careful researcher (or historian) would say “the reason we don’t have first-person accounts from Chinese workers is because we haven’t researched original Chinese sources that exist in China”.
These workers surely told everyone back home (in China) and elsewhere (in the USA) about their experiences in their own language: Chinese. A few minutes of research using Google translate confirms there is a whole other world out there of Chinese knowledge about the ‘Gold Mountain Chinese railroad workers’ 金山中国铁路工人‘Jīnshān zhōngguó tiělù gōngrén’.
For instance, this 20min video contains information and some pictures which may surprise you. ...
—John Shubert PE, Lake Forest, CA
This post first appeared on CPRR Discussion Group - Central Pacific Railroad P, please read the originial post: here
