《美华史记 第一卷》

潘秋辰、焦凡

纪念亚太月 Historical Record of Chinese Americas Vol. 1 美华史记第一卷在Amazon 上架。 本书包括从美华史记170 多篇文章中精选出来的14 篇,中英文双语,图文并茂。特别适用于K-12 教授华裔历史及贡献。从主编到每一个作者编辑都是义工,谨以此书作为对2022 年亚太月的献礼。

摘要

美国华人历史并未记载或包含在美国公共教育系统的教科书里,多数后人对美华历史的了解只能来源于零星文章。直到今天,美国华人历史也没有系统性、连续性地被记录下来,甚至只是一知半解的某个故事、历史事件或历史人物,这为当今华人完整记录美国华人历史留下了需要填补的史料空白。

自2017年9月起,《美华史记》通过连续发表单篇文章的形式,回顾华人在美洲大陆的生活、人生及历史事件。“史记”顾名思义是指记录人类历史的文字,在很多重大美华历史事件流逝在人们记忆之前,完整地、真实地记录下来,并以广大读者喜闻乐见的方式总结、思考这段华人历史,已成为历史研究和发展的迫切需要。

众所周知,美国华人的历史是浸透着泪水和艰辛的奋斗史。在美国,华人历史约有237年之久,从史料记载可查,最早三或四名中国水手于1785年8月9日乘船抵达巴尔的摩开始,美国大陆上就留下了华人的足迹。他们曾是苦力,因不堪忍受家乡贫困的生活和连年的战乱,签下了赴美长期劳务合同,当时他们最大的愿望是能够挣到钱并活着回家。

19世纪中期,华工在美国淘金、修铁路、开发西部,为美国国家建设和经济发展做出了巨大贡献。后来,于19世纪末20世纪初,又出现长达六十年的排华法案,成千上万华工还被迫走上了迁往各地的悲惨之旅。无论是作为“华工”来到美国修筑太平洋铁路,参加西部淘金,因庚子赔款作为留学生派往美国,或者在二战期间加入美国军队、抗击法西斯,随着时代的变迁,美国大地上华人的身影随之增多,与此同时,中华民族也在苦难深重中日益发展强大起来。

今天,华裔在美国的人口约有500万之多,华人通过一代又一代人的努力,已经取得了应有的社会经济地位。美国华人在用自己的智慧和勤劳开辟出生存崛起之路时,并没有忘却对这个国家的荣誉、责任和奉献,他们身上一直流淌着中华民族克勤克俭、任劳任怨的性格基因。一路走来,如今的华裔中有国会议员、学界精英、政界领袖、财经大腕、艺体明星等,但还有许许多多为这个社会辛勤劳动、默默奉献的华人草根。那么,如何让华人历史在清晰的脉络中被记载下来,能为后人留下可查找、可追溯的族裔研究史料呢?

由此,这群来自美国各地的草根华人,包括专业作家、媒体记者、自由撰稿人、历史学家、工程师、科研人员、医生、律师、教师等等,纷纷加入到《美华史记》写作小组,在没有任何资金的支持下,凭借志愿者服务意识,由美华联盟为平台,开启了这一令人惊叹的美华历史写作工程,可谓千里之行始于足下。在这些来自不同职业、不同学历、不同年龄、不同祖籍的华裔美国人笔下,有华人先辈的生活历程,有不同时代的历史事件,有今昔对比的感悟体会……,读者的视野中开始有序出现一篇接一篇书写华人历史的文章。

这些单篇文章是信息汇集的过程,既可满足读者以兴趣为支点的阅读,又可达到点线面结合观察、研究、思考历史内容。当积累到一定数量时,历史将会随之慢慢连点成线,连线成面,在横向、纵向上形成一部真正宏观意义的史记,从而引领美国华人在历史中学会深刻、理性地看待华裔族群在美利坚民主政治之路上的成长历程。

《美华史记》的目标是回顾历史、警醒后人、教育同胞、思考未来,这是一项任重而道远的工作,意义不言而喻。大家秉承“书写历史,教育公众,捍卫法治,维护斯文”的理性态度,从客观公正,没有政治偏见的视角出发,再现华人在美国两百多年的历史,为后世子孙和史学研究留下一笔人文历史的丰厚精神文化财富。

Summary

The Chinese American history has not been written to be served for the textbooks for the American public education system, and later generations can only learn about Chinese American history from sporadic articles since the day the first Chinese landed in the U.S., two hundred and thirty-seven years ago in 1785. To this day, the history of Chinese Americans has not been systematically and continuously recorded; even just a piece of discrete story, a related historical event or a figure was not fully understood and recorded, leaving a historical gap that needs to be filled for Chinese Americans to record the Chinese History in the U.S. correctly and precisely throughout those 237 years.

Since September 2017, the “History of Chinese Americans “has carefully reviewed and written a series of individual articles of many lives, and historical events of the Chinese people in the American continent. “Historical record”, as the name suggests, refers to the text of human history, which has become an urgent need for historical research and development in a complete and truthful manner before many major historical events in the U.S. and China in this period being forgotten, and that has summarized and written eloquently about the Chinese American history in such way that is easily memorized by most readers who are Chinese or not, generations to come.

As we all know now, the history of Chinese Americans is a history of tears and hard struggles. In the United States, the history of the Chinese is about 237 years long, and it can be seen from historical records that the first three or four Chinese sailors arrived in Baltimore by boat on August 9, 1785, leaving a Chinese footprint on the American mainland. They had been “coolies” (hard labors) because they could not bear the poverty of their hometown and because of years of war, they signed a long-term labor contract to some companies in the U.S., with their greatest wish at that time was to earn money and return home alive.

In the mid-19th century, Chinese workers helped the U.S.’s tight labor market to pan for gold, build railways, and develop the western region, making great contributions to the construction of the United States and economic development. Later, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, there was another sixty-year-long Chinese exclusion law, and thousands of Chinese workers were forced to embark on a tragic journey to move to various places. Whether it was as a “Chinese worker” who came to the United States to build the Pacific Railway, participated in the gold rush in the west, was sent to the U.S. as a student because of Gengzi’s indemnity (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boxer_Indemnity_Scholarship), or joined U.S. army forces to fight in the WW2, the population of Chinese people in the United States has increased, and at the same time, the fatherland in the Far East has also developed and become stronger and stronger amid suffering.

Today, the population of Chinese Americans in the United States is about 5 million, and they have achieved their due socio-economic status through the efforts of generations. When the Chinese in the U.S. have opened the road to survival and rise with their wisdom and diligence, they have not forgotten the honor, family, responsibility, and dedication to this country, and they have always shown their traditions of being diligent and thrifty, working hard and without complaining. Along the way, there are members of Congress, academic elites, political leaders, financial giants, art, and sports stars, etc. among the Chinese people today, and yet, there are still many Chinese who work hard and silently dedicate to this society with low wages. So, how to make the history of the Chinese Americans recorded in a more precise context, so that future generations can trace through ethnic research historical materials to find out their ancestors’ contributions to the nation.

As the result, this group of grassroots Chinese Americans from all over the United States, including professional authors, media reporters, freelance writers, historians, engineers, researchers, doctors, lawyers, teachers, etc., have joined the “History of Chinese Americans” writing team, without any financial support, with the awareness of volunteer service, has been using “Chinese American For Social Justice” as the platform, that opened this amazing Chinese American historical writing project, which can be described as a journey of thousands of miles beginning with a single step. Under the pen of these Chinese Americans from different occupations, different educations, different ages, and different ancestral origins, there are the life courses of the Chinese ancestors, the historical events of different eras, and the perception of the contrast between the present and the past… The reader’s vision begins to appear one after another to write Chinese history in an orderly manner.

These individual articles are a process of information collection, which can not only meet the reader’s interest as the fulcrum of reading, but also achieve the combination of dots and lines to observe, study, and think about historical content. When accumulated to a certain number, history will slowly connect dots into lines and lines into surfaces, forming a historical record of real macro significance in the horizontal and vertical directions, thus leading the Chinese Americans to learn to view the growth process of the Chinese ethnic group deeply and rationally on the road of democratic politics in the U.S. in history.

The goal of “History of Chinese Americans” is to review history, warn future generations, educate compatriots, and think about the future, which is a long-term task and has a long way to go, and its significance is self-evident.

Adhering to the rational attitude of “writing history, educating the public, defending the rule of law, and self-restrained”, from the perspective of objectivity and fairness and no political prejudice, they reproduced the history of the Chinese in the United States for more than two hundred years, leaving a rich spiritual and cultural wealth of humanistic history for future generations and historical research.

Chinese American history is, in fact, American history.