Category Archives: Film

Tour Bus (376)

Egg Shen’s (Victor Wong) tour bus spiel:

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.

I am Mr Egg Shen, with this wonderful tour.

Sit back and enjoy yourselves, see?

Long time ago, Chinese men with

gold-rush fever flooded into California.

We call Gam Saan – Mountain of Gold, see?

Leaving behind their wives and children.

Working for years to complete

the transcontinental railroad,

saving all their pennies.

And then they sent for their families

to help build this beautiful Chinatown

you see outside your window

this fine warm day.

American Experience: The Gold Rush (376)

An excerpt from the transcript:

James Rawls, Historian: In Gold Rush California, men from the United States who had lived lives presumably as upright citizens, came to California with great avarice. They were coming here to get rich quick. And they were frustrated men, because they were not getting rich quick, and they’re looking for someone to blame. What is the cause of my own failure? It’s not me. It’s someone else’s fault.

Narrator: Ever since the first American miners had arrived in California, they had been trying to expel foreigners from the gold fields. But for every one driven out, it seemed, another had come to seek his fortune.

Now, in 1850, there were more than 80,000 Anglo American miners in California, competition was at a fever pitch and anti-foreign sentiment was on the rise.

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