ere is the most comprehensive account you are ever likely to find of the building of the western section of America's transcontinental railway. Gordon Chang has certainly set himself a difficult task, as he seeks to document the daily life of the roughly 20,000 Chinese who contributed to building the Central Pacific section of American's first transcontinental line in the late 1860s.
Chang begins his tale in the Toih Saan region of China's Guangdong Province, the source of the overwhelming majority the workers, describing the everyday life of those tempted to seek their fortunes in America. They were, almost to a man, peasant farmers who migrated or were recruited to California specifically to build the railway. How they were assigned to work gangs and the resulting inter-clan relations would be very interesting to understand, but this was apparently the province of the Chinese gang bosses and no source material has yet been found.
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