Showing results for "Ghosts" in China

In 1922, Shanghai awoke to chilling news: a squadron had sailed into its harbor under the faded flag of a country that no longer existed, the Russian Empire. Thousands of refugees flooded into China and upended the old order. For decades, European and American colonists had lived in Shanghai like demigods—privileged, untouchable—simply because they were white. Then, almost overnight, a different kind of white foreigner appeared on the streets: penniless, paperless, and desperate. They would take any job and endure any humiliation just to survive.

From across the sea, they came by the thousands, escaping war and poverty in southern China to seek their fortunes in America. Converging on the enormous western worksite of the Transcontinental Railroad, the migrants spent years dynamiting tunnels through the snow-packed cliffs of the Sierra Nevada and laying tracks across the burning Utah desert. Their sweat and blood fueled the ascent of an interlinked, industrial United States. But those of them who survived this perilous effort would be pushed to the margins of American life and then to the fringes of public memory.