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China Men by Maxine Hong Kingston

Last updated over 2 years ago
6 questions
Read the Exerpts from the novel China Men by Maxine Hong Kingston and answer the questions.
The Central Pacific hired him on sight; Chinamen had a natural talent for explosions. Also, there were not enough working men to do all the labor of building a new country. Some of the banging came from the war to decide whether or not black people would continue to work for nothing. …

He made a dollar a day salary. The lucky men gambled, but he was not good at remembering game rules. The work so far was endurable. “I could take it,” he said.

The days were sunny and blue, the wind exhilarating, the heights godlike. At night the stars were diamonds, crystals, silver, snow, ice. He had never seen diamonds. He had never seen snow and ice. As spring turned into summer, and he lay under that sky, he saw the order in the stars. He recognized constellations from China. There—not a cloud but the Silver River, and there, on either side of it—Altair and Vega, the Spinning Girl and the Cowboy, far, far apart. He felt his heart breaking of loneliness at so much blue-black space between star and star. The railroad he was building would not lead him to his family. He jumped out of his bedroll. “Look! Look!” Other China Men jumped awake. An accident? An avalanche? Injun demons? “The stars,” he said. “The stars are here.” …

Pretending that a little girl was listening, he told himself the story about the Spinning Girl and the Cowboy. A long time ago they had visited Earth, where they met, fell in love, and married. Instead of growing used to each other, they remained enchanted their entire lifetimes and beyond. They were too happy. They wanted to be doves or two branches of the same tree. When they returned to live in the sky, they were so engrossed in each other that they neglected their work. The Queen of the Sky scratched a river between them with one stroke of her silver hairpin—the river a galaxy in width. The lovers suffered, but she did devote her time to spinning now, and he herded his cow. The King of the Sky took pity on them and ordered that once each year, they be allowed to meet. On the seventh day of the seventh month (which is not the same as July 7th), magpies form a bridge for them to cross to each other. The lovers are together for one night of the year. On their parting, the Spinner cries the heavy summer rains. Ah Goong’s discovery of the two stars gave him something to look forward to besides meals and tea breaks. Every night he located Altair and Vega and gauged how much closer they had come since the night before. During the day he watched the magpies, big black and white birds with round bodies like balls with wings; they were a welcome sight, a promise of meetings. He had found two familiars in the wilderness: magpies and stars.

The Spinning Girl and the Cowboy met and parted six times before the railroad was finished.
1

What reasons does this passage suggest for why Chinese men were hired to work on the railroad?

1

What was their daily salary?

1

Considering the situation in America after the Civil War, what was the significance of building the Transcontinental Railroad?

When cliffs, sheer drops under impossible overhangs, ended the road, the workers filled the ravines or built bridges over them. They climbed above the site for tunnel or bridge and lowered one another down in wicker baskets made stronger by the lucky words they had painted on four sides. Ah Goong got to be a basketman because he was thin and light. Some basketmen were fifteen-year-old boys. He rode the basket barefoot, so his boots, the kind to stomp snakes with, would not break through the bottom. The basket swung and twirled, and he saw the world sweep underneath him; it was fun in a way, a cold new feeling of doing what had never been done before. Suspended in the quiet sky, he thought all kinds of crazy thoughts, that if a man didn’t want to live any more, he could just cut the ropes or, easier, tilt the basket, dip, and never have to worry again. He could spread his arms, and the air would momentarily hold him before he fell past the buzzards, hawks, and eagles, and landed impaled on the tips of a sequoia. This high and he didn’t see any gods, no Cowboy, no Spinner. He knelt in the basket though he was not bumping his head against the sky. Through the wickerwork, slivers of depths darted like needles, nothing between him and air but thin rattan. Gusts of wind spun the light basket. “Aiya,” said Ah Goong. Winds came up under the basket, bouncing it. Neighboring baskets swung together and parted. He and the man next to him looked at each other’s faces. They laughed. They might as well have gone to Malaysia to collect bird nests. Those who had done high work there said it had been worse. …

This time two men were blown up. One knocked out or killed by the explosion fell silently, the other screaming, his arms and legs struggling. A desire shot out of Ah Goong for an arm long enough to reach down and catch them. Much time passed as they fell like plummets. The shreds of baskets and a cowboy hat skimmed and tacked. The winds that pushed birds off course and against mountains did not carry men. Ah Goong also wished that the conscious man would fall faster and get it over with. His hand gripped the ropes and it was difficult to let go and get on with the work. “It can’t happen twice in a row,” the basketmen said the next trip down. “Our chances are very good. The trip after an accident is probably the safest one.” They raced to their favorite basket, checked and double-checked the four ropes, yanked the strands, tested the pulleys, oiled them, reminded the pulleymen about the signals and entered the sky again.

Another time, Ah Goong had been lowered to the bottom of a ravine, which had to be cleared for the base of a trestle, when a man fell and he saw his face. He had not died of shock before hitting bottom. His hands were grabbing at air. His stomach and groin must have felt the fall all the way down. At night, Ah Goong woke up falling, though he slept on the ground, and heard other men call out in their sleep. No warm women tweaked their ears and hugged them. “It was only a falling dream,” he reassured himself. Across a valley, a chain of men working on the next mountain, men like ants, changing the face of the world fell, but it was very far away.

Godlike, he watched men whose faces he could not see and whose screams he did not hear roll and bounce and slide like a handful of sprinkled gravel.

After a fall, the buzzards circled the spot and reminded the workers for days that a man was dead down there. The men threw piles of rocks and branches to cover bodies from sight.
1

What does this passage indicate about the geography and terrain where the men worked?

1

Briefly describe the tasks the men did in the mountains.

1

How does this passage help dispel the common stereotype of the weak Chinese man?