The Tacoma Art Museum (TAM) and the Chinese Reconciliation Project Foundation jointly presented a two-part commemorative program on November 4. The day began with a walk from the Chinese Reconciliation Park to the Tacoma Art Museum, following Pacific Avenue—the same road on which the Chinese of Tacoma were expelled from their homes, and then violently driven out of town on November 3, 1885.
The event then hosted a symposium about the Chinese, the railroads, and Tacoma with CRRW Project co-director Professor Shelley Fisher Fishkin (Stanford University), Professor Shawn Wong, (University of Washington), and Professor Zhi Lin (University of Washington), whose one-man show, “Zhi Lin: In Search of the Lost History of Chinese Migrants and the Transcontinental Railroads,” is featured at the museum.
More than 40 participants completed the walk, and more than 60 attended the symposium. One of the activities involved writing names of Chinese railroad workers on small rocks and placing them in the ballast of a piece in Zhi Lin’s exhibit, alongside rocks on which Zhi Lin had previously written many railroad workers’ names.
Shelley Fisher Fishkin wrote Chin Lin Sou’s name on a rock, and then with Zhi Lin, placed the rock in the ballast at the exhibit.
Zhi Lin had already incorporated into the ballast the names of Central Pacific Railroad Chinese railroad workers that the CRRW Project had sent to him, so Chin Lin Sou is represented more than once.
The photo of the four symposium participants includes Theresa Pan, creator of the Chinese Reconciliation Park, and Shawn Wong, Zhi Lin and Professor Fishkin.