Tacoma sculpture about Chinese railroad workers found after 19 years in storage

Forget Stradivarius violins gathering dust in attics.

The City of Tacoma has just rediscovered a large bronze sculpture by Chinese artist Hai Ying Wu that was made in 1996 for the Chinese Reconciliation Park but instead spent two decades in storage. Now, thanks to curator Joseph Govednik, it has been resurrected at the Foss Waterway Seaport, where it will be unveiled in a public event Sunday. The piece will remain on loan to the Foss for a few months before eventually finding a permanent home along Tacoma’s future Prairie Line Trail.

The work, called “Shipment to China,” consists of 10 feet of tracks and a 1909 railroad car made in Tacoma with dozens of bronze “boxes” stacked on top. About the size of bricks, they resemble urns for ashes, and are inscribed with the names of some of the Chinese laborers who helped build the Northern Pacific Railroad and died of the harsh conditions. An embossed “Tacoma” on the wheel is a powerful visual reminder of the sacrifices made for the city’s growth, as well as of the Tacoma expulsion of 1885, when the city’s Chinese population was driven out of town on the very railroad they helped build.

“It’s an amazing piece,” Govednik said. “It’s a very fitting piece for us to have in this exhibit, because the railroad was so important to Tacoma ... and this talks about the human component of that effort.”

“Shipment to China” was originally made by Wu for his master’s thesis in the sculpture program at the University of Washington, where he studied before completing other commissions such as the firefighter’s memorial in Seattle’s Pioneer Square and eventually moving back to China. Intended for placement in the planned Chinese Reconciliation Park (which was since built along Tacoma’s waterfront), the piece was essentially donated to the City of Tacoma, Arts Administrator Amy McBride said.

But “the evolution of the park design and safety concerns made siting at the park impractical,” and instead it was dismantled and stored in pieces at the old Cavanaugh’s sign shop — where it was recently noticed by Bud Thompson, who had guest-curated the Foss’ “Rails to Sails” exhibit.

“This 1909 rail truck was just sitting outside near a parking lot,” said Govednik, who approached the city to use the tracks and truck in the exhibit. When he was told about the rest of the sculpture, he knew he wanted it at the Foss. The rail truck was moved in by crane and restored, while the city brought the bronze boxes out of storage.

And so “Shipment to China” is a temporary part of the Seaport’s “Rails to Sails” exhibit, where it offers a somber counterpart to the model train sets and telegraph equipment, a reminder that the railroad (and the maritime industry it galvanized) was built on the backs — and bones — of cheap Chinese labor.

“This is a period of history that a lot of people want to overlook,” says Zhi Lin, a UW art professor who specializes in 19th-century Chinese immigrant history and has a solo exhibition coming to Tacoma Art Museum in 2017. “It was a very painful experience. Around 690 miles of railroad was built (largely) by Chinese workers, because they were very good, cheap and easy to work with.

“So many of them died, especially in the infamous snowstorm of 1867, when their bodies weren’t discovered until the following spring, crouched in backyards while they waited for sunrise to ask residents for help. … According to (historians), authorities picked up 20,000 pounds of bones by the tracks, which were never buried. The were put into 1,200 railcar boxes and shipped back to China.”

Lin, who has known Wu since 2000 and has discussed the work with him, admires the sculpture.

“It’s a wonderful piece, taking advantage of existing material,” Lin said. “Even the color of the bronze itself remembers the gold that (the Chinese) came for. They didn’t find it. Instead they found themselves — their bones — in boxes.”

Norman Taylor, a UW professor emeritus of art, was Wu’s advisor for the thesis and agrees it’s a good work.

“It’s a great idea — bold and yet personal,” he says. “He’s a very intelligent, very thoughtful man.”

Wu now runs a successful foundry and studio just outside Chengdu, China, where Taylor visited him several years ago. His other public art in the U.S. includes a flock of migrating birds in Bend, Oregon, and a memorial of the Auto-Lite Strike in Toledo, Ohio. His work is in the social-realist genre: figurative yet symbolic.

The unveiling Sunday will be preceded by a lecture on the “Rails to Sails” exhibit by Thompson, and the museum’s inaugural Maritime Yard Sale will continue all day in the parking lot.

“Our exhibit tells a more complete story now,” Govednik said. “It’s the story of these people who came across an ocean to do … back-breaking work, and paid the ultimate price for it.”

This story was originally published September 24, 2015 at 9:00 PM with the headline "Tacoma sculpture about Chinese railroad workers found after 19 years in storage."