1871 Los Angeles was a dangerous place, especially for the refugees, migrants and troublemakers who lived on Calle De Los Negros, at the heart of Chinatown. Yut Ho, a beautiful young refugee, came to LA and fell in love, only to be drawn into a showdown between two of Chinatown's most notorious gangsters. Before long, the entire city was caught up in a life or death struggle where old-world values of kinship, honor and loyalty clashed with new-world issues of race, sex, and identity. The ensuing conflict would threaten the lives of Yut Ho and all the denizens of Chinatown– and would change the face of Los Angeles forever. This true but largely forgotten event from California's past is brought to you by the Holmes Performing Arts Fund of the Claremont Colleges, the Music Department of Scripps College, the Pacific Basin Institute of Pomona College, the Entrepreneurial Musicianship Department at The New England Conservatory, and the Public Events Office at Scripps College...
http://bloodongoldmountain.com
Gesamtlänge aller Episoden: 7 hours 3 minutes
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episode 1: Iron Horse Road: a Tale from Gold Mountain
Iron Horse Road: a Tale from Gold Mountain recounts one of the great untold epics of American history: The story of the Chinese laborers–neither truly enslaved nor truly free–who built the most rugged stretches of the Transcontinental Railroad.
More than 150 years ago, these Gold Mountain Men tunneled through mountains, dangled over cliffs, and dragged entire trains over alpine summits where other Americans feared to tread...
episode 1: Jianchi/ Perseverance
Act One of the play Jianchi/Perseverance is based on the outbreak of bubonic plague in 1900 in San Francisco Chinatown, which led to suspicion and demonization of Chinese who were identified with the “China plague,” a term used to describe the bubonic plague.
The history of Chinese in San Francisco is a fraught affair...
episode 10: Special Announcement!
Hi Everyone, Thank you for sharing the journey of Blood on Gold Mountain with us. This month, October, marks the 150th anniversary of the LA Chinatown Massacre. We couldn’t let this historic moment pass by quietly, so we’ve partnered with UCLA, The Chinese American Museum, and some of our favorite music and movement artists to create ‘A Chinatown Elegy...
episode 8: Heathens
In this episode, we are introduced to Christianity through the eyes of Yut-Ho’s Gwailo marriage to Lee Yong in a Christian church. Can you imagine being married in the holy place of a foreign religion without having any context for the iconography all around you? Understandably, Yut Ho is horrified by the sight of Jesus nailed to the cross, “his head hanging down in an attitude of infinite pain and weariness...
episode 7: The Underworld
Yut Ho and Lee Yong devise a plan to run away together, assisted by Chinatown’s most notorious gangster: Yo Hing.
episode 6: Beasts of Prey
Sam Yuen
Sam Yuen is one of the larger-than-life characters that drive the historical narrative of the LA Chinatown massacre. Historical sources paint a picture of a laconic, stoic-minded business leader whose traditional methods and lack of adaptability made him and his company vulnerable to disruption.
Sam Yuen was the leader of a conservative faction who thought that the Chinese community should restrict its contact with outsiders as much as possible...
episode 5: Empire of Orphans
No one knows just how the historical Yut Ho and Lee Yong met. Perhaps, as in our story, it was in the course of their daily routines. Yut Ho would almost certainly have lived a secluded life with her new husband. In Chinese immigrant society, most women worked alongside their menfolk. As a wealthy married woman Yut Ho had the uncommon luxury of staying home, but in practice, that luxury probably felt like a gilded cage...
episode 4: Bride Price
Life in California’s early Chinese communities was challenging and dangerous, particularly for women. Discriminatory laws made it harder for women to emigrate, leading to a severe gender imbalance in California’s Chinatowns.
Eve of Exclusion
Initially, the gender gap was a result of American employers’ perception that men were a more desirable form of cheap labor...
episode 3: The Widow
This episode addresses one of the most important and neglected aspects of early Chinese immigrants’ experience in California.
Relations between Chinese immigrants and their Anglo counterparts were not always hostile. Despite the fact that there were few women in California when Chinese men started arriving, sometimes relationships would form...
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