https://www.amazon.com/Ghosts-Gold-Mountain-Transcontinental-Railroad-ebook/dp/B07FKDLFP5/ref=sr_1_1?crid=284K6KFV29TWW&keywords=ghosts+of+gold+mountain&qid=1558153132&s=books&sprefix=Gosts%2Caps%2C188&sr=1-1
By Gordon H. Chang. The author, and I do pay a lot of attention to an author's credentials, is a PhD Professor of American History at Stanford University.
The book's focus is on the "Railroad Chinese" who were the primary labor for building the Central Pacific eastward from Sacramento over the Sierra Nevada mountains and across Nevada and Utah. He starts with where they mostly came from in China. He is very emphatic that they freely came to America looking for opportunity. He details the ruggedness of the tasks they faced and the mountains they literally overcame. He is also emphatic that they were in no way servile. I've read some people claim that they were slave labor. They were no such thing. They'd trade a honest, and very hard, day's work for decent pay. But there was plenty of work and they'd leave the railroad if a better opportunity arose. They did go on strike. The author is of Chinese heritage, and he often takes justifiable pride in what the Railroad Chinese did.
The "Ghosts" in the title comes from the Chinese belief that a deceased person must be honored (and fed) by his/her family or wander in hunger and torment. The Chinese who lost their lives in California could suffer this fate being far from their homes. Great effort was made by the living Chinese to return remains to the home villages in China to prevent this. "Gold Mountain" was the term for California in that part of China.
Overwhelmingly the Chinese imagrants who chose to come to America were young men who could earn their living by their sweat. A lot of them had good business sense and did well there too. They were free men in a free country. A few women did arrive, but they had a different fate.
At the end of the line, completion day, eight Chinese were selected to lay the last rail of the Central Pacific. Then they were invited to a meal in the private rail car of James Strobridge - the Superentendant of Construction for the CPRR. They were given three cheers and applause by the other guest.
I found it to be a very good, and very enlightening book, about how the railroad, and America, were built.
Thanks for the review Greyhounds!
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