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C onn ect i ng C u ltu r es T hrough F am i ly and F ood

manual labor. Many opened laundries. One Chinese woman recalls, “In China in the old days women thought that people came over to pick gold. Ai! Really! You think they knew that they were coming to work in the laundry?”Washing and ironing clothes by hand was back-breaking work, and most white Americans weren’t willing to do it. Other Chinese immi- grants worked in agriculture, doing the difficult labor of preparing fields, planting, or harvesting. Many more Chinese went to work building the Transcontinental Railroad, which connected the east and west coasts of the United States for the first time. The Chinese worked longer hours and received less pay than white men. An estimated 12,000 to 14,000 Chinese men worked on the railroad.

Chinese workers were among the thousands who labored in hot, desert conditions to complete the transcontinental railroad.