Haoqing's Art Website
What relics Chinese might have kept from the day were lost to fires during the destruction of their communities in America, or perhaps just discarded over the years as the excitement of the day passed.
-- Gordon H. Chang, Ghosts of Gold Mountain, 2019, p. 146
Fire I
Size: 4096 x 1714px
Material: Apple Pencil, Procreate
Date: June 2024
Creator: Haoqing Yu
The opening shot of this war was fired in Los Angeles. In October 1871, a mob of five hundred attacked the Chinese quarter in Los Angles, then a small town. They ransacked and burned buildings occupied by Chinese and mutilated, shot, and lynched eighteen Chinese in the streets. Railroad Chinese who had traveled to southern California for railroad work there were likely among the victims. The massacre was the largest mass lynching in American history. Twenty-five rioters were indicted for murder, but none of them was ever convicted of the crime.
--- Gordon H. Chang, Ghosts of Gold Mountain, 2019, p. 168
Fire II
Size: 4096 x 1714px
Material: Apple Pencil, Procreate, Chinese Migrant Workers' Names on CPRR Patroll Records
Date: June 2024
Creator: Haoqing Yu
In June 1876, a heinous killing of a Chinese man occurred in Truckee in what is called the “Trout Creek Outrage.” The mood of the town had turned viciously against Chinese, and hundreds of whites coordinated efforts to drive them out. Six or seven white men, members of a secret group called the Caucasian League, descended, fully armed, on two cabins inhabited by Chinese woodcutters along Trout Creek, not far from Truckee, at 1:00 a.m. on the eighteenth. They poured kerosene on the cabins and set them afire. As Chinese fled the burning buildings, the vigilantes shot them, killing one and wounding others, who fled into the woods. Though seven men were brought to trial, none were convicted of any crime and all were set free. A local newspaper called the shootings “one of the most cold-blooded and unprovoked murders ever recorded.” During the next decade, white residents of Truckee used planned violence, arson, and mass intimidation to drive Chinese, many them former Railroad Chinese, out of the town. The 1900 census shows just two Chinese still living in Truckee.
--- Gordon H. Chang, Ghosts of Gold Mountain, 2019, p. 168
Fire III
Size: 4096 x 1714px
Material: Apple Pencil, Procreate
Date: June 2024
Creator: Haoqing Yu
In an incident, a dynamite misfire in a cave took the lives of ten or twenty Chinese; their bodies, Wong recalled, "flew from the cave as if shot from a cannon. Blood and flesh were mixed in a horrible mess" (Chang, 2019, p. 162).
In June 1876, a heinous killing of a Chinese man occurred in Truckee in what is called the “Trout Creek Outrage.” The mood of the town had turned viciously against Chinese, and hundreds of whites coordinated efforts to drive them out. Six or seven white men, members of a secret group called the Caucasian League, descended, fully armed, on two cabins inhabited by Chinese woodcutters along Trout Creek, not far from Truckee, at 1:00 a.m. on the eighteenth. They poured kerosene on the cabins and set them afire. As Chinese fled the burning buildings, the vigilantes shot them, killing one and wounding others, who fled into the woods. Though seven men were brought to trial, none were convicted of any crime and all were set free. A local newspaper called the shootings “one of the most cold-blooded and unprovoked murders ever recorded (Chang, 2019, p. 168).
Fire IV
Size: 4096 x 1714px
Material: Apple Pencil, Procreate
Date: June 2024
Creator: Haoqing Yu
Fire V
Size: 4096 x 1714px
Material & Media: Pattern brush, Apple Pencil, Procreate
Date: July 2024
Creator: Haoqing Yu
Fire VI
Size: 4096 x 1714px
Material & Media: Pattern brush, Apple Pencil, Procreate
Date: July 2024
Creator: Haoqing Yu
Fire VII
Size: 4096 x 1714px
Material & Media: Pattern brush, Apple Pencil, Procreate
Date: July 2024
Creator: Haoqing Yu