Strangers from a Different Shore

In the 1800s, many white Americans referred to Chinese people as “Celestials.” This term is a reference to China’s Emperor, who was known in Chinese as the “Son of Heaven.”

The Central Pacific Railway, or CPR, was a railroad company hired by the US government to build a railway from the California coast to Utah in the late 19th century. This company hired thousands of Asian laborers, mostly Chinese men, because they were excellent workers and they did not demand the wages that white American workers expected. Takaki presents the CPR as an exploitative employer which took advantage of Asian immigrants’ poverty and low status to overwork them in notoriously dangerous jobs while greatly profiting from their labor.

The Exclusion Act was an 1882 law passed by the US federal government. This law banned Chinese immigration to the US for 10 years. Takaki presents this law as a reaction to increased conflict between white workers and white employers, in which the white working class complained of Chinese laborers taking jobs and driving down wages, agitating the US government to resolve the matter by removing Chinese workers from the US.