On thanotourism, Chinese immigrant labors and history
After reading this week’s readings of “thanotourism”, I am wondering to ask myself that are there only special tourist sites or museums which bear historical trauma broadly discussed? In Karen Till’s “The New Berlin”, she implies that the new generations’ viewpoints of some memorial sites such as holocaust or concentration camp are different from the elder generations due to the history is far away from the new generation. Therefore, it seems that the historical sites or museums somehow are based on a certain time and space, but the meaning will fade out by time.
But it reminds me to think about that the history of Chinese immigrant labors in late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, particularly in the building of Central Pacific Railroad. For me, the Central Pacific Railroad is a living witness of the early bloody history of Chinese immigrant labors. They inscribe the traumatic memory of early immigrant labors in America with their bloods and lives. Therefore, I am wondering to think about that do people realized the history of immigration and economy trade while they taking the train or viewing some historical sites.
For more information of the central pacific railroad, please see,
http://cprr.org/Museum/Chinese.html
By the way, I found a paper of discussing the Chinese labors in building Pacific Railroads in Canada,
http://www.mining.ubc.ca/faculty/meech/Impactofasianmigrantworkers.pdf