Rose Parade includes tribute to Chinese railroad workers

CHINESE AMERICAN HERITAGE SOCIETY

The float is being prepared before it gets covered with flowers for the Rose Parade.

By Ann Thuy Nguyen

ASAM NEWS

THE INCLUSION of a New Year's Day float in the  2019 Tournament of Roses Parade marking the contributions of Chinese American workers made in completing the transcontinental railroad is bringing attention to the near omission of Chinese Americans in that history-making event.

Nearly 150 years ago in Promontory Point, Utah, employees from the Central Pacific Railroad and Union Pacific Railroad companies gathered around two locomotives to celebrate the completion of the first transcontinental railroad. The photograph taken on that May 10, 1869 day has become iconic in U.S. history, but fails to represent the overwhelming majority of the railway’s workforce, the thousands of laborers brought from China.

Wilson Lee, the great-great-grandson of a transcontinental railroad worker, is determined to include Chinese laborers in the railroad’s 150th anniversary in 2019. He serves as co-founder of the Boston-based Chinese American Heritage Foundation (CAHF), a nonprofit “dedicated to celebrating the rich history of Chinese Americans’ contributions to the American spirit” according to its website.

Lee proposed a float for the 2019 Tournament of Roses Parade in Pasadena, California to commemorate the Chinese and ethnic immigrant laborers’ achievements and hardships.

“We wanted to celebrate the contributions of not just the Chinese immigrants, but all immigrants responsible for the building of America,” he said in a phone interview with AsAmNews. “Not just the ones from 150 years ago, but also the current immigrants today.”

RELATED: Chinese American railroad workers finally get their 'day'

Even though CAHF had zero funding and sponsors when the Rose committee accepted the organization’s application to showcase a float—projected to cost $300,000—Lee did not hesitate to pay the $5500 deposit for the event.

He asked Esther Zee Lee, board chair and president of CAHF—and his wife—to send in the check. She asked if he was sure, and he responded that he was as determined as the day he had asked her to marry him.

Thanks to community partnerships and a primary sponsorship from Union Pacific, CAHF will have the longest float on the 5.5-mile route New Year’s Day 2019.

The float will also be the first Rose Parade float to be sponsored by a Chinese American nonprofit organization.

The 95-foot-long “Harmony through Union” float will feature a one-to-one scale replica of the two train engines from the iconic photograph and large-scaled hands holding a hammer and the iconic golden spike.

What differentiates the “Harmony through Union” and the historic moment is it includes the faces of Chinese people.

Joining CAHF on the float will be retired Major General William (Bill) S. Chen, a descendant of a Chinese railroad worker and the son of a Chinese American veteran of World War II.

Chen, who is also the first Chinese American to achieve 2-star rank in the U.S. Army, is honored to be a part of a float that commemorates the Chinese American railroad workers.

The contributions that Chinese Americans and immigrants like Chen and his family have made to the United States’ economic and political infrastructure have not been fully told.

“For so long, all of my life and for many generations, Chinese Americans and Asian Americans are seen as foreigners. And that we’re visitors or newcomers, but certainly not truly an American,” said Rep. Karen Kwan, the first Chinese American to be elected to the Utah State House of Representatives.

“The thing is that the Chinese have been involved, but they’ve been overlooked like they’re not a true part of American history.” Kwan adds, “All of a sudden, to me, this [float] reminds me of what it’s like to be a part of America and not pushed aside as an other.”[It’s] an integration that doesn’t say we now belong, but we have been here since the beginning, and we have built America

Kwan, who will ride the float with her youngest daughter, also views this float as something larger than oneself—“an integration of American traditions.”

“[It’s] an integration that doesn’t say we now belong, but we have been here since the beginning, and we have built America, ” says Kwan.

Following the float’s debut in the Rose Parade, CAHF will continue to honor the 150th-anniversary of the transcontinental railroad with the “Rebuild America” educational initiative—raising funding to offer free books to various young students on stories about early Chinese pioneers in the United States.

“We want young people to know their stories and those of their ancestors,” says Lee. At the end of the conversation with Wilson Lee, he wanted to emphasize that this float is not for a single audience.

“This is not just a Chinese American float, this is an Asian American float, and this is an immigrant float. He says, “This is America’s float.”

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The Rose Parade begins at 8 a.m. PST on Tuesday, January 1, 2019, in Pasadena, California. Check local listings for detail.

150th Ann'y: Chinese railroad workers get their due in photo exhibit and in Hell on Wheels

One of the photos shows the Chinese workers laying down tracks for the transcontinental railroad.

YOU HAVE probably seen the historic 150-year old photo when the Golden Spike was driven into the ground completing America's first transcontinental railroad line: Two trains facing each other and hordes of men congratulating each other posing for the photograph. Looking at the original black-and-white photograph closely and you would think the engineering feat was done only by the Irish.

The last few rails completing the railroad were laid down by eight Chinese railroad workers. Where are the Chinese workers in the famous historical photograph?

This month, Asian American & Pacific Islander Heritage Month, a photo display opened up at the California State Railroad Museum in Sacramento. Mayor Kevin Johnson, former NBA star, welcomed a delegation from the Chinese consulate general in San Francisco to help celebrate and commemorate the 150th anniversary the transcontinental railroad and the contribution of thousands of Chinese workers who toiled, dug and blasted their way eastward over the Sierra Nevada and who worked for the Central Pacific Railroad. They eventually met up in Promontory Point, Utah with the work crews coming from the east made up mainly of the Irish and African American workers employed by the Union Pacific Railroad.

I don't know if this was planned five years ago, but this year, the 150th anniversary of the engineering feat, is also the 5th and final season of AMC's Hell On Wheels television series depicting the building of the railroad. The show will finally feature Chinese workers. Oh, the irony.

When the show first started, producers received a lot of flack about omitting the Chinese story. The producers' explanations about cost and limited budget didn't satisfy the critics but this next season, the producers hope to remedy that.

AMC's 'Hell on Wheels' focused on the Irish and African American work crews

"We have three new major characters," said the show's executive producer John Wirth in an interview with the "Calgary Herald." They are primarily coming into the story on the Central Pacific side of the story. There are two sides of the railroad and we’ve spent the last four years exploring exclusively the Union Pacific side of the railroad. 

"We have some Chinese characters and that is what is new this season. There were 15,000 Chinese workers working for the Central Pacific railroad. There were no Chinese labourers on the Union Pacific side of the railroad. But they were primarily responsible for building the California side. So we are going to meet three guys that represent three different type of characters that you would find in Chinese workforce."

Gee, thanks. 

Two of the three Chinese roles have been cast.

Byron Mann  play the role of Chang, an influential businessman and labor contractor who works for the Central Pacific. The Hong Kong-raised American actor and UCLA grad is best known for his role as Ryu in Street Fighter and Yao Fe in the TV serial Arrow.

Tzi Ma was born in Hong Kong and raised in New York City. The actor plays Tao, who comes from a village in Guangdong in Southern China, and is now “head man” for a group of Chinese railroad workers. A graduate of a British engineering school in China, his natural leadership abilities and facility with the English language make him essential to his white bosses.

The Sacramento exhibit includes 122 photos depicting the Chinese workers, their camps, stores and the engineering feats that they accomplished. Hundreds of them died laying the 690 miles of track from Sacramento through the Sierra Nevada to Utah’s Promontory Summit, a job that lasted from 1865 to 1869.

Stanford University  is putting together a bigger collection for the sake of historical accuracy with the Chinese Railroad Workers of North America Project. Besides photos, the project will include archeological artifacts and interviews with the railroad workers' descendants.

Not a Chinese worker in sight in this famous 1869 photo of the completion of the first transcontinental railroad at Promontory Point, Utah.