Members of New York City’s thriving Chinese community hope a recent City Council resolution will help educate New Yorkers about their ancestors’ contributions to the city and country as Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month draws to a close.
The City Council passed a resolution earlier this month sponsored by Councilmember Susan Zhuang, who represents Brooklyn’s newly formed Asian-majority district, that commemorates May 10 as “Chinese American Railroad Workers Memorial Day.”
It’s meant to highlight the Chinese workers who built railroad lines like the old Rockaway section of the Long Island Rail Road in the 1870s. It’s also intended to commemorate the community's lesser-known contributions to New York City over the centuries.
“We cannot erase the history” of the immigrants who have contributed to our country, Zhuang said at a press conference.
Descendants of Chinese railroad workers who live in New York City said they’re excited about the recognition, and see it as a way for more people to learn about the legacy of their families.
“I really think that immigrants are very, very important to this country, and the railroad workers show the value of immigrants to the nth degree,” said Lower East Side resident Larry Lee.
He said his family history in America dates back to his great-great-grandfather and great-grand-uncle, who both worked on the transcontinental railroad. His great-grand-uncle later moved to Brooklyn making Cuban cigars and was one of the largest employers of Chinese people.
Lee said Zhuang’s resolution comes at a pivotal time when Americans have to find a way to stand up for immigrants.
“To honor them is to really honor how America was built,” Lee said.
Ava Chin’s great-great-grandfather worked on the country’s first transcontinental railroad in the 1860s. But when she opened her school textbook and saw the historic photograph showing the completion of the railroad, “there wasn’t a single Chinese face staring back at me,” she said.
“I thought, what is this nonsense? What are they trying to tell us? Because that photograph did not square whatsoever with the stories that I heard when I was growing up,” she continued.
Descendants like Chin and Lee have been trying to reclaim that history. Lee is currently working on an Asian American history curriculum for New York City public schools. Chin, a fifth-generation New Yorker, is the author of “Mott Street: A Chinese American Family’s Story of Exclusion and Homecoming,” and said highlighting Asian American stories is one of her missions as a writer.
John Tan, who lives in Astoria, is currently traveling across the country to find more details on his great-great-grandfather, who visited America twice in the late 1800s.
His search is partially motivated by the way Asian-Americans are still seen as “perpetual foreigners.”
“There’s still this big question mark that leads to the big question mark about us being Americans,” Tan said. “I want to nail down these facts so there’s no question about it in the next generation of my family and where they came from.”
Jack Tchen, a professor at Rutgers University and co-founder of the Museum of Chinese in America, said he’s afraid of Zhuang’s resolution becoming a token effort that doesn’t lead to larger changes like incorporating more Asian American studies into public schools.
Chinese railroad workers can “become its own cardboard stereotype as if that’s the only thing that Chinese did,” he said. “It actually deeply distorts the history that’s been going on between Chinese people and ideas and its very large impact on the making of American culture.”
