On May 6, 1882, the United States Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, which implemented a 10-year ban on Chinese immigrants to the country and marked the first significant restriction on a specific racial group. Its passage wasn’t arbitrary. 

Anti-Chinese sentiment had already been brewing throughout the 19th century as increasing waves of Chinese immigrants arrived in America for jobs during the California Gold Rush and the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad. When Chinese laborers flooded the mining or factory industries, European American laborers considered the Chinese a threat to their jobs. Resentful white laborers across the West looted and burned Chinatowns, expelled the Chinese from the cities, and massacred the Chinese people. 

Until the past few decades, this dark Chinese American history had remained hidden, erased from the school curriculum, and largely unaddressed by city governments. 

Now, monuments with the intent of apologizing for historic injustices against the Chinese have sprung up around the country. Preserved Chinatowns, statues honoring Chinese laborers, and rocks carved with the names of murdered Chinese residents — these monuments collectively bring awareness and recognition to history once obscured from nationwide attention. 

But how can a monument turn a site of violence into something contemplative and beautiful? Can monuments help a city understand and heal from historic injustices while also serving as relevant to today? Here are three monuments that reveal their city’s untold history of Chinese American exclusion and how they champion a more harmonious community. 

The Chinese Reconciliation Park, Tacoma, Washington 

The Tacoma Chinese Reconciliation Park, a gorgeous Chinese garden with swirled walking trails and stunning Chinese structures, peacefully sits on the shores of Puget Sound in Washington state facing Commencement Bay. Although serene, the park remembers the notorious “Tacoma Method,” the city’s deliberate expulsion of Chinese residents in 1885. A mob headed by Tacoma Mayor Weisbach and other city officials had marched to Chinatown, rounded up Chinese immigrants, and chased them to the railroad station, where they forced them on trains to nearby cities. Afterward, the mob set downtown Chinese settlements and businesses ablaze. None of the 27 arrested men were convicted — only treated like heroes during the anti-Chinese flare. 

Emerging consciousness of the “Tacoma Method” in the ’90s demanded a monument recognizing the appalling incident. Proposed by the city council and a newly formed Asian-led Citizens Committee (now the Chinese Reconciliation Project Foundation, or CRPF), the 1993 Resolution No. 32415 formally apologized for the Chinese expulsion and reserved $25,000 to build a reconciliation park a mile from Little Canton.  

Theresa Pan Hosley, the current president of the CRPF and a prominent Chinese American contributor to the park’s origins, remarked that the committee had “wanted something more meaningful for people to come back all the time.” 

Although it isn’t a museum, the park artistically illustrates the story of oppression. On the path, nine dark basalt rocks (the nine council members who led the expulsion) tower over three smaller rocks engraved with the Chinese laborers fleeing Tacoma. Signage on 27 wooden posts describes the rigged trial ensuing the arrests. In contrast, dazzling grottos, a Chinese bridge, and the Fuzhou Ting (a Chinese pavilion provided by Tacoma’s sister city, Fuzhou) present reflection and tranquility from the grim history. 

According to Pan Hosley, the park shares history in a wonderfully cultural way since it motivates education and mental healing. “To me, it is more meaningful than just a monument or a rock that says ‘this is what happened,’” she said. “[People can] enjoy the beautiful setting and learn something.”

“1871” Augmented Reality Memorial, Los Angeles, California  

“1871,” a temporary memorial created by Los Angeles-born artist Victoria Fu, commemorated the Los Angeles Chinese Massacre of 1871, cited as the largest mass lynchings in U.S. history. On Oct. 24, 1871, a clash between two Chinese clans and police officers on the Calle de Los Negros caused the death of a white civilian. Furious and fueled by festering jealousy of the Chinese, 500 white and Latino rioters stormed Chinatown. The mob dragged Chinese residents to makeshift gallows and brutally hanged 17, some as young as 18 years old. 

Different from the Chinese Reconciliation Park, “1871” acknowledged the bloody massacre through augmented reality (AR). For those unfamiliar with AR, participants can see and experience 3D computer-generated visuals superimposed on the real-world environment. Fu’s memorial joined dozens of other digital monuments under the “LACMA × Snapchat: Monumental Perspectives” collection (part of the National Mellon Foundation “Monuments Project”), which portrayed underrepresented stories, people, or events with Snapchat’s AR technology. 

When approached for her concept, Fu immediately chose the 1871 massacre because she had just read about the history, and there weren’t any pre-existing monuments for the horrible event. Despite growing up in Los Angeles, the artist noted, “I never learned about [the massacre] … it wasn’t really a well-known event despite it being Los Angeles’s most deadly lynching.” She continued, “The more I dug into it, the more appalled I was that this wasn’t well known.” 

“1871,” a two-minute looped program, resembled an inverted monument with shifting bases and moving clouds. A short audio (in English and Mandarin) recorded Fu recounting the 1871 massacre, the LACMA project, and her AR piece to her mother. Viewers peered down the digital hole and learned about the massacre through the conversation. “It explained to everyone there who was listening,” Fu mentioned. “That was my primary goal, to tell people about what happened.” 

Fu and LACMA placed “1871” in the Los Angeles State Historic Park near the massacre site. As Snapchat users jogged, picnicked, and toured the park, they could see the monument with a QR code or access it from anywhere on Snapchat’s Lens Explorer. “A lot of people don’t go to museums, but out in public, someone could just stumble upon something. People could [also] access it in their living rooms [on Snapchat],” Fu said. On Snapchat from September 2023 to June 2024, the AR monument effectively revealed its important history without being a physical memorial.

Requiem Sculpture, Rock Springs, Wyoming  

Tacoma built a tangible interactive park for reconciliation, while Fu’s digital monument utilized a platform appealing to the contemporary generation. Rock Springs, Wyoming, however, takes a more traditional path with a still-developing sculpture recognizing the vicious Rock Springs Chinese Massacre of 1885. On Sept. 2, 1885, a white coal miner killed a Chinese miner in a fight over employment resentment. Later that day, 150 white laborers surrounded the Rock Springs Chinatown armed with hatchets, guns, knives, and other weaponry. The crowd ambushed Chinese people in the streets, killing 28 Chinese miners and expelling 500 from Rock Springs. The mob pillaged and burnt Chinatown, leaving ashes and mutilated remains for the returning Chinese residents. 

A rock with the names of the 28 miners already honors the massacre victims. Yet, the memorial didn’t disclose the true history or details of the massacre. “People were not satisfied,” stated Jennifer Messer, the director of the Rock Springs Historical Museum. “It was good, but people say it wasn’t what they hoped for.” City bodies requested a better monument that would educate children and interested researchers about the massacre. 

Unlike the Chinese Reconciliation Park and Fu’s memorial, the new monument, named “Requiem,” would explicitly depict the formerly obscured, painful history. Wyoming artist David Alan Clark and his partner and researcher, MJ Clark, envision a 7-foot bronze sculpture of a Chinese miner holding a tattered dragon parade banner. Broken lanterns, shovels, and bottles — the desecrated possessions and homes of the Chinatown residents — litter the miner’s feet. MJ explained the piece’s imagery. “We wanted to portray the Chinese perspective,” she emphasized. “The concept behind this [monument] is this Chinese man. He is wearing borrowed clothes, he escaped to Evanston but returned to his burned city. He is trying to pick up the pieces and bury his friends and relatives.” 

The Clarks designed a monument that was neither too gory nor too abstract. “David Alan Clark’s piece seemed to strike a balance. It’s gritty and sad, but there are aspects of it that are clearly hopeful,” Messer commented. “Requiem” will stand on the historical spot of the massacre, a site where archaeologists had uncovered Chinatown artifacts. Remarking on the placement, MJ assured that “the memorial won’t be covering up history but it would be adjacent to history.” The monument would embody solidarity and rise from the ruins without replacing the stained territory.   

Remembrance, Reflection, and Reconciliation    

The Tacoma Chinese Reconciliation Park, the “1871” AR memorial, and the Rock Springs Chinese Massacre sculpture differently invite reflection and reparations for the past that also promote fresh pathways towards racial allyship. 

Remembering its historical exclusion and racism, Chinese Reconciliation Park has bloomed into a special community center for activism, cultural activities, and racial coexistence. Since Japanese, Thai, Cambodian, and Lao heritages now flourish in Tacoma, the park moves beyond just speaking about the 1885 Chinese expulsion. It remains an open venue for all immigrants, refugees, and diverse people to celebrate their culture. “The park serves as a welcoming place to learn the wrongs of the past and move forward together to create a better future for all of us,” Pan Hosley affirmed. “We welcome all ethnicities, all people together for their celebration.” 

CRPF-hosted programs like the Tacoma Moon Festival (featuring traditional Cambodian dance or Peking opera) and “Music in the Park” (ethnic bands playing their culture’s contemporary pop music) allow diverse groups to share cultural performances and feel belonging within the city. Pan Hosley discussed the Walk For Reconciliation Against Racism, when Tacoma residents (including Black, Latinx, and other POC groups) march from the train station to the park, as symbolically healing the past by “reversing what happened and inviting everyone back to Tacoma.” The walk allows POC groups to claim Tacoma as their city, too. 

Fu’s “1871” AR monument embodied the absence of a monument, fashioning an alternate concept of reconciliation. Fu recalled, “I didn’t do this project thinking it was going to make up for anything. Nothing could ever really address what happened, the violence of [the 1871 Chinese massacre], the loss, the grief. I wanted to address the fallacy of a monument.”  Fu further detailed that she “wanted to address the feeling of loss” and “the falling short of being able to monumentalize [the massacre]” through the monument’s rotating, never-fixed shapes, and negative space. “1871” expressed that no monument could fully atone for the brutal past; however, it encouraged awareness and contemplation of the massacre, evoking dialogue from the public so that it hopefully wouldn’t happen again.

Similarly to the emotions induced by “1871,” the Rock Springs memorial would create sympathy for the Chinese American victims with the sculpture of the Chinese miner and his destroyed village. “We wanted to show his humanity. The expression on his face is to show, ‘How could you do this?’ We want people to think about how it felt to be him coming back to the smoking remains of his village with his relatives needing to be buried,” MJ voiced. 

More on the pathos, David stated, “Often memorials seem to distance themselves from the human cost or human tragedy.” According to him, the memorial’s figurative style would incite horror at the massacre and bring viewers to study present structural racism. 

Education itself is reconciliation. “We try to have things be a textbook in bronze, where families can learn what is going on, why are we here,” David reasoned. Messer imagines tours from schools, senior citizens, colleges, and international students to the monument. “I would love for people to be traveling through and have the opportunity to stop [by the monument]. Just spend some time contemplating and connecting to what happened, and reflect on what they are already aware of,” she said, hoping that the monument would foster meditation and understanding of the Chinese American community and prevent future animosity. 

Representing Asian American History, Inspiring Hope 

While these monuments intended to heal from the historical injustices to the Chinese American community from the past, their reconciliation with past racial injustices is still pressing to Asian Americans today, especially with the recent anti-Asian hate crimes. 

Pan Hosley commented on the significance of Chinese Reconciliation Park and the positive change the CRPF advances. “With so much going on in our country and the Asian hate, we need to say something and do something,” she addressed. “My long-term goal is that this park continues to live as a landmark hope.” The CRPF, currently building another multicultural pavilion in Chinese Reconciliation Park, continues to validate communities who experience racism. The park itself transforms into an example of meaningful reconciliation and affinity.  

Fu’s monument also observed the current reality and the anti-Asian hate in the country. “When [“1871”] was up, it was connecting violence and bias against Asians in America to current sentiments. In a way, it was saying that not a lot has changed,” Fu declared. “One hundred and fifty years later, we are still experiencing racially motivated acts of violence. Awareness is the first step [to healing].” 

She mentioned the monument as being groundbreaking and relevant for many, not just Chinese Americans, because forgotten histories are imperative to remember. “I am not only speaking to Chinese or Asian Americans, but a crucial part of Los Angeles and American history. [Learning about the 1871 massacre] feels urgent because of what is going on. It feels like now is the time to start working on this and help others become aware,” she said. 

For the Rock Springs memorial, Messer noted its positive impact on the city’s Chinese American community. “I think people would like to have their history acknowledged, remembered, and marked,” she claimed. The bronze sculpture, a mold based on one of the massacre’s descendants, would poignantly respect and honor current Chinese Americans. “Lots of people would recognize that we don’t live in a monoculture and we are better together than creating differentiation and animosity,” David also remarked, emphasizing how the memorial would facilitate companionship between races and a unified fight against racism. 

Monuments, although scattered, generate storytelling through art, and reveal erased Chinese American history one by one — while placing history in a modern-day context and seeking to prevent further injustices. These three monuments grappling with the past can inspire other monuments, museums, parks, and preserved historic sites to raise awareness of Asian American histories and bring inclusivity. Monuments aren’t just stationary architecture; they are activism, creating dynamic change by recognizing and representing Asian American history and forging opportunities for diverse groups to thrive.

Cover: Illustration by Callie Ware