Death and Burial

Death & Burial

Chinese immigrants needed fortitude to endure the exhausting, dangerous work and racial hatred and violence they encountered in the US. At times, they also needed consolation. Especially with the threat of death ever-present.

Bone repatriation was a cultural practice that answered this need. Its adherents found peace in knowing that, should they die away from home, their bones, bearing their spirits, would be exhumed and returned to China. Reburied among family, their spirits would be cared for.

Anti-Chinese forces seized on this practice to label all Chinese immigrants as heathens and outsiders who could never belong. When California lawmakers imposed punitive rules on bone exhumation in 1878, Chinese Americans went to court. They argued that the new law was discriminatory and violated Chinese immigrants’ religious liberty. The court offered no relief, and the law stayed in place.

Politicians and newspapers accused Chinese immigrants of corrupting American morals and stealing jobs, setting the stage for Congress to pass the Chinese Exclusion Act. From 1882 to 1943, this law barred Chinese workers from entering the US. It also prevented all Chinese from naturalizing as American citizens. This was the first US immigration restriction based on race and class.

“On the Central Pacific Railroad,” Cassell’s History of the United States, 1874
Patricia D. Klingenstein Library, New-York Historical Society

“The dead were many, and their graves were scattered. Some of these places were on high mountains, and some were in deep valleys. Still, the team managed to carry out their mission. With such effort and dedication on the part of the living, surely the dead can rest in peace.”

Bone Repatriation

This rare book documents four bone repatriation campaigns conducted by San Francisco’s Chong Hou Tong benevolent society from 1863–1897.

The society’s exhumation teams scoured remote graveyards, mines, and railroad construction sites throughout the West. Their mission? Find and repatriate the bones of deceased Chinese workers so their spirits could return to their hometowns and be venerated by their families. One team spent 50 days on horseback along Idaho’s Salmon River searching for the bones of a worker named Wong Sei.

Chong Hou Tong bone repatriation book, 1903
Facsimile
China Alley Preservation Society, Hanford, CA. Restored and digitized by Tung Wah Museum, Hong Kong

"Cleaning the bones of the dead" The Graphic, 1879
Patricia D. Klingenstein Library, New-York Historical Society

Religious Liberty

Wong Yung Quy faced a dilemma when his cousin Wong Wai Toon died in San Francisco at age 36. Family obligation dictated that he exhume his cousin's bones and send them home to China. But California legislators had just made bone repatriation more difficult and expensive in the hope of discouraging Chinese immigration.

Intending to test the new law, Wong refused to pay the required permit fee and was arrested. His lawyers argued that the fee placed an undue burden on Wong, thus violating his right to equal protection under the law and his religious liberty. His cousin, Wong said, “was a worshipper of the Chinese religion. He believed that his eternal peace and happiness required that his remains be removed to China.”

The federal court denied Wong’s claim. The judges ruled the law was not discriminatory—despite its near exclusive application to Chinese immigrants—and did not unduly obstruct Wong from performing his religious duty.

Chinese American Christians also fought to protect their religious beliefs.
They challenged the Chinese Exclusion laws as an affront to Christian principles.

Sacred Ceremonies