Goodmorning，everyone，I’m glad to be here to have a speech，titled “the contributions of the Chinese laborers to the western railroad of America”.

American Pacific Railroad, which is presented by the BBC as one of the seven industrial wanders of the world since the Industrial Revolution, is the first transcontinental railroad over the Sierras and into the interior plains. By linking with the existing railway network of the , the road thus connected the and coasts of the United States by rail. Opened for through traffic on May 10, 1869, with the driving of the at , the road established a mechanized transcontinental transportation network that revolutionized the population and economy of the .

Speaking of the Pacific Railroad, it can not fail to mention the contributions of the Chinese laborers. Without their efforts in the building of America's railroads, United States’ development and progress as a nation would have been delayed by years. Their toil in severe weather, cruel working conditions and for meager wages cannot be under appreciated. However, of the hundreds of people in that memorable photograph taken at Promontory Point in Utah, on May 10, 1869, the Chinese laborers were wholly invisible. Nowhere to be seen were the thirteen thousand railroad men from China who had dug the tunnels, built the roadbeds, and laid the track for half of the transcontinental line crossing the most precipitous mountains and torturous deserts of the West.

Of these working men it is said that most were the sons of farmers, but on the land of their fathers, near the coast, the traditions of the seas were as alive as the sea's winds. These were the lands where the seamen and adventurers of China had come from for centuries, and these young men were aggressive and pugnacious. Even more than the gold miners, they seemed to enjoy, to relish, to seek after the challenge of unknown and exotic foreign lands and the adventures they offered. They not only built the western half of the first transcontinental railroad, they built the whole or part of nearly every railroad line in the West. They helped build the Southern Pacific in the deserts of the southwest and the Northern Pacific in the forests of the northwest. They worked by the thousands upon the Canadian Pacific as well. They built the roadbeds and laid the track of almost every railroad from Texas to Alaska. In spite of that, or perhaps because of it, their labors were belittled and their heroism disparaged for a century afterward; the white workers on the western railroads were resentful of the skill and strength of the "little yellow men".

Thousands of these young men gave their lives in the building of the railroads. The dead were never counted, nor have they been memorialized. Some twenty thousand pounds of bones were gathered from shallow graves along the roadbeds and rights-of-way, according to a newspaper of 1870 quoted in The History of the Chinese in America. These bones of about twelve hundred Chinese who died in the building of the transcontinental line were eventually shipped home. But many others lie to this day in unmarked graves in every western state of America.

When I’m searching some useful materials in the Website of Central Pacific Railroad Company, I found the description of Chinese workingmen’s contribution and was deeply moved. As it says, Stan Steiner, the founder of Central Pacific Railroad Company, founded the famous Stanford University afterward. Today, there are many Chinese students traveling across the Pacific Ocean to Stanford to search for knowledge and dreams. They may not know that the wealth foundation of the university contains the sweat of their ancestors.

As a prospective railway person, after acquainting myself with this history, I rise to honor the Chinese and pay tribute to these Chinese railroad men who played such a significant role in building the railroad. They should not be forgotten. Here, let me end my speech with a historian of the railroad saying “The yellow man had proven his superiority by hard labor."