by Xinhua writers Yang Shilong, Shi Chun
SALT LAKE CITY, United States, Dec. 6 (Xinhua) -- On a quiet corner of downtown Evanston, Wyoming, a small wooden building painted in red and gold stands as a bridge between centuries.
The Chinese Joss House Museum -- rebuilt in 1990 after the original burned down in 1922 -- tells the story of a once-thriving Chinese community that helped shape the development in America's wild West and was then forgotten.
"This was built to honor what the Chinese did for us," said Carrie, a museum volunteer. "They helped build the railroad that made this a town."
BENEATH EVANSTON'S LOST CHINATOWN
Just a few blocks away, on the sagebrush flats once known as Chinatown, fragments of pottery and stone still protrude from the soil. Standing amid the excavation site, Pat Santee, a board member of the Chinese Railroad Workers Descendants Association (CRWDA), and his wife Chen Xiaolian reflected on what once stood here.
"This," he said quietly, "is what's left of Chinatown."
He pointed toward the faded outline of the old settlement built around 1870. "Every 10 or 15 miles (16-24 km) along this route there were small communities of workers who repaired and improved the line. Most of them were Chinese."
"They were major contributors to this country. They're still here, and still important. They can't be forgotten," Santee said.
"Our ancestors helped build the tracks that connected the whole nation," Chen said. "They worked hard, they suffered, and then they disappeared from the story. If we don't speak for them, who will?"
For both of them, every visit to the site feels like an act of reclamation. "Every time we come here," Santee said, "we see that even though the buildings are gone, the story is still here -- under the ground, waiting for people to listen."
FROM SILENCE TO RECOGNITION
That same impulse motivates Margaret Yee, chair of the CRWDA. Born in China in 1939 and raised in Utah, she is a fourth-generation descendant of the Chinese Central Pacific Railroad workers.
A turning point came in 2019, during the 150th anniversary of the Golden Spike -- the ceremony marking the completion of the transcontinental railroad -- when descendants were denied their scheduled speaking time.
"We were supposed to speak for five minutes, but at the last minute they didn't let us go on stage," Yee said. "We didn't want to go back to the same treatment our ancestors faced. So we decided our voices must be heard."
That moment sparked the founding of the CRWDA in 2017. Since then, Yee and her members have led a national campaign of education, exhibits and remembrance.
They organized lectures, school visits, and online archives to tell the story of the Chinese laborers who blasted tunnels through the Sierra Nevada and laid track across the Great Basin. They raised funds and petitioned for memorials in multiple states, culminating in a striking monument at the Utah State Capitol unveiled in 2023.
"We were very fortunate," Yee said. "The state allowed only two new monuments that year, and ours was one of them. It is the first monument in Utah with Chinese writing."
The monument's designer, a young Cambodian-Chinese architect, donated his time to bring it to life. "It's located where school buses stop," Yee said. "Children will see it and ask questions. This is how the story lives on."
"This monument shows that we've been here for a long time in Utah," Yee said. "It shows that Chinese Americans and other Asian Americans belong here -- part of the fabric of life."
A PLACE IN AMERICA'S STORY
More than 12,000 Chinese laborers helped build America's transcontinental railway. They carved tunnels through granite, laid tracks across deserts, and endured avalanches, frostbite and explosions. Paid less than their white counterparts and barred from citizenship, they were nonetheless indispensable. Yet when the last spike was driven at the Promontory Summit in 1869, none of them appeared in the celebratory photographs.
Their descendants have made sure that such an omission is not repeated.
"Our story doesn't end with the railroad," Yee said. "It continues with our children and grandchildren who now contribute to every field of American life. We stand on the same tracks our ancestors built."
TOWARD A NATIONAL MEMORY
Beyond monuments in Utah, Wyoming and California, descendants and advocates are pressing for a more ambitious form of recognition: a national museum in Washington D.C. dedicated to the Chinese American experience.
The Chinese American Museum Foundation acquired a historic building in 2018 to house the institution. "The Chinese American story is an American story," said David Uy, the museum's executive director. "It must be told."
For CRWDA members like Yee and Santee, the museum movement represents the next chapter of their advocacy -- a national platform to house the stories that began in railroad camps and mining towns. Their local commemorations now connect with a larger narrative arc that reaches the nation's capital.
"Building a museum in Washington is like laying the final track," Yee said. "It means our ancestors' journey is now part of America's journey."
The museum aims to chronicle both hardship and contribution -- from the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 to modern achievements in science, arts and public service. It promises to anchor Chinese American history not on the periphery, but at the symbolic center of the nation's memory.
From the Joss House Museum in Evanston to the buried Chinatown excavation site in Rock Springs, Wyoming, and the monument in Salt Lake City, these landmarks form a triangle of remembrance across the high desert. They are connected not only by geography but by a shared moral duty -- to reclaim the voices of those once erased from the nation's narrative.
In the words carved on the Utah monument, written in both English and Chinese, the message endures: "We are part of the past, the present and the future of this land." ■
