China Grade
R.A. Hosler 2016 revised 2025 324 pages
In 2016 Ray Hosler sent the DSHS Heirloom offices an email about his new book, China Grade, about the Chinese transcontinental railroad workers. It was still a work in progress so he didn’t want to leave it for review in the Heirloom and on the DSHS website. Since then Ray has been updating, excising typos, improving the writing, and adding over one hundred pages. He also began selling his book through Amazon.
In June of 2025 Ray was ready and contacted our editorial offices again, this time with a request for a review in the Heirloom, the pre-eminent periodical about Donner Summit history, “I would be ecstatic to have China Grade mentioned in your newsletter,” said Ray. That, of course, shows his good taste. Since the Heirloom is always looking for books, at least tangentially connected to Donner Summit, we agreed to read and review the book and a few days later a hard copy appeared in our post office box.
We should first note that China Grade is volume one of a trilogy, “called ‘Broken Tools.’ ‘Wrights,’ volume 2, is about the South Pacific Coast Railroad, and the main character continues from ‘China Grade.’ ‘Powder Works,’ volume 3, is about the same-named blasting powder business in Santa Cruz. Again, same characters,” says Ray. The Heirloom, of course, will not be reviewing volumes two or three since our main character, Donner Summit, it not included. Clearly, Ray is having fun with his avocation given the amount of time he's given to the project and the research he's done.
The book starts with action. Rebels attack Chen’s village and abduct his sister. Chen is traded for his sister, the village is saved, and he is sent to America to work on building the new transcontinental railroad. Chen is valuable because of his knowledge of explosives and he speaks English. Chen’s father had asked him, “Do you realize how valuable that makes you?” It turns out Chen is the second son to go to America. His older brother, Shao, has been there for some time but no one knows where. Going along with Chen is one of the largest men in the area, Li Tang.
Chen and Li find Shao and head up to the end of track for work. They stay together as they work the railroad all the way to Promontory Point, Utah. They have their travel from China to pay for despite Chen’s and Tang’s having been kidnapped.
Chapter 3 introduces Lowen Tristain, his wife, Rozen, and their son. He is a Cornish miner aiming for a better life in America and heading to the railroad from the opposite direction. He can’t read but receiving the Principles of Mining as a gift will give him a “leg up” on other miners as he “can cipher them drawings” contained in the book. Lowen goes to work for the Central Pacific as well.
Chen and Rozen bump into each other which will be important later on.
In novel form, and mostly in conversation, the reader is treated to a lot of information about the building of the railroad and some things about mid-19th Century society.
James Strobridge, construction superintendent says, explaining why the work force was almost all Chinese, “We can’t find people here willing to lift a shovel and do a hard day’s work. They think they can get rich quick” in the mines.
Explaining what the reputation of the Chinese workers was, Lowen says, “Mr. Strobridge, them Chinamen are the hardest workers I ever seen. Some’s smart too.”
Elsewhere there are descriptios of the working conditions of the Chinese.
Lowen says to Rozen, “You’re right. It’s a mystery to me what makes them [Chinese] tick. They make five dollars a month less than the non-Asians, and they pay for their own food. They’re a resourceful people.”
Problems with snow are highlighted by James Strobridge, “This will never do. It just confirms what I’ve been telling Mr. Crocker. Only miles of snowshed will keep the snow from impeding operation,”
There’s also the procedure for making nitroglycerine described by James Howden the chemist. “Two men will mix ingredients inside a building near the tunnel… three ingredients of nitroglycerine - a sugar alcohol compound called glycerin, nitric acid, and sulfuric acid…”
Leland Stanford, swung the silver sledge at the culmination ceremony at Promontory Point, with wires attached so the world could know via telegraph when the railroad was done. He missed with his initial strike.
Those bits of information about the building of the railroad, and more, are good reasons to read the book if you don’t know much about the building of the transcontinental railroad.
Then there are the wider society bits of information. There is opium in California and even non-Asians partake. There is a book, Principles of Mining. There is a lot of prejudice against Chinese. In particular that is shown by one of the characters, Bill Carson, who pops up from time to time almost always with friends aiming at insulting or hurting the Chinese.
Those discrete facts become a theme of the book and maybe the prejudice against the Chinese is one of the bigger themes.
That's all good.
A good novel grabs the reader’s interest doing that with some important elements like a compelling plot; conflict of some kind; interesting and realistic characters who grow, change or solve problems; rich setting; important themes or morals; or important information new to the reader. China Grade includes a lot of information and that alone may be enough to keep a reader’s interest but there is little of the other elements. It is a book about the building of the railroad but not a book about the characters or other elements.
China Grade has no real plot beyond the building of the railroad which would enable characters to live and grow. It is a series of vignettes or episodes. Those are the Cornish vs. the Chinese, the snow plow and digging snow, the Black Goose, nitroglycerin, Rozen, and Rozen and Chen. Another subject is Carson and his actions as he pops up from time to time. There is nothing there that grabs the reader’s interest inducing him to keep reading to find out, for example, what happens next. It’s almost as if the author realized in his first version, that there was something missing and so he added various episodes which are episodes that don’t substitute for a plot. The episodes are not found wrapped in a plot or wrapped in believable interesting characters.
An author has control over everything in a book or story and whatever an author includes must have some importance in furthering the plot, developing a theme, etc., otherwise why go to the trouble of including an element? For example, Li Tang is the largest man in the area in which he lives in China. That must be important. Something later in the book must use that. It’s never followed up on. Lowen has the Principles of Mining book which he can’t read. What was the purpose of that element? We should expect that there is something in the book’s illustrations that will be useful in building the railroad. Nothing follows but it was a great opportunity.
Characters are an important element in a good novel also inducing a reader to keep reading to find out what happens to the character and why. How does the character overcome obstacles and develop as time goes on? There is no character development in China Grade. The characters are one-dimensional and we don’t know what their motivations are. For example, Rozen, Lowen’s wife, lives in San Francisco while Lowen is working on the railroad. She gets introduced to opium. That could be a life changing choice but we never find out the repercussions. Chen’s brother, Shao, was living in San Francisco before Chen arrived. He was dissolute using opium. Apparently he went “cold turkey” and it was never a problem. What was the point of bringing opium into the story if nothing comes from it or it doesn’t provide any motivation or opportunities for growth? Chen is the main character but there is nothing deeper in him than building the railroad.
There are errors in the book such as the Cornish food pasties (pronounced with a short a) but are referred to in the book as paddies (89) and patties (46) instead. There is an avalanche near Tunnel 8 which wipes out a cabin full of workers including Shao who was inexplicably delivering coffee to Irish workers. There is no way a cabin could be in the area. From the avalanche site Carson, a bad guy and racist, heads back right away to the west end of Tunnel 6 as if it’s just a hop and skip. In reality it’s a half mile or more going around Tunnel 6 which is being built (1659’), Tunnel 7 (a hundred feet or so), and Tunnel 8 (326’) and the spaces in between.)
The Chinese workers did not have one single cook. They were divided into small groups each with a cook.
Tunnel 6 did not take 12 months. It was closer to two years (247). It was not the holing through of two tunnels, it was four from the outside in, and from the inside out.
The book has the Cornish win the race but in reality it was the Chinese.
There is no evidence of Chinese hanging over the edge at Cape Horn in woven baskets.
When three locomotives were sent over the Summit to continue building in Nevada pending the completion of the tunnels, they did not all go over together. The first went over in the summer of 1867 and the next two in February 1868.
There are also geographic errors. Dutch Flat to Emigrant Gap is not 18 miles
A terminology error is calling the renamed Sacramento locomotive the Black Goose as it makes its way to Donner Summit to be a donkey engine. The correct name is Black Plucked Goose. One of various sources is https://amerisurv.com/?s=goose It is doubtful that the wheels on the wagon carrying the Goose to the Summit were made of giant sequoia rounds. Giant Sequoias grow in a few places in the Sierra but not near Gold Run where the trip to the summit started.
There are illogical things in the book. The captain of the ship didn’t know the ship was sinking. They’d only brought along exactly the amount of food necessary to feed the crew and the Chinese but Chen organized people into work parties to keep the bilge pumps going. Each of those people got double rations. Where did the extra food suddenly come from? Another example of illogic comes with Chen finding his brother Shao in San Francisco. Shao had skipped out on his job still owing money for his passage to America. The labor contractor to whom the money is owed wants Chen to find his brother but then it turns out the contractor knows where Shao is. Shao happens to visit an opium den regularly and will be coming by shortly, coincidentally, in one hour. That makes Shao easy to find in the whole state of California and the careful reader may wonder why the labor contractor hadn’t taken care of that business already. Later Chen is blindsided by a friend of Carson’s and left lying in the snow. No one knew he was not with the work crew. Chen spent the night in the snow after digging himself a snow cave.
How does Carson know a Chinese worker made the mistake that killed himself and Lowen? How does Chen know that the blast he heard from the other end of the tunnel might be a problem that means he must run over there in time for Lowen to tell him to take care of Rozen before dying? Then there is the episode of the race between the Cornish and the Chinese. It seems to go on forever with the numbers, the inches of progress, being kept secret. This is such a problem that Carson commissions the kidnapping of Shao to force Chen to give up the numbers.
A final example is the race between the Cornish workers and the Chinese, Bill Carson wanted Li Tang on his crew. That makes no sense. What kind of a race between the Cornish and the Chinese is it if there’s a Chinese worker on the Cornish crew?
When Chen goes to visit Rozen he sleeps at Rozen’s. Really? In 1868? And then in conversation with a friend, Rozen and Miss Benson consider that a match between races, between Chen and ozen could work. In 1868? That's more like injecting today's social norms onto 1868.
Then there is the episode sending Shao' body back to China. Shao was embalmed? In reality when the bodies of dead Chinese it was after they were just bones.
The characters can be inconsistent too. Shao is a dissolute fellow in San Francisco before Chen shows up. Then he’s suddenly a good worker, no more opium, and he’s offering advice. He stops a confrontation between Chen and Carson. He also counsels Chen to accept things as they are, “Accept your loss of wages and move on,” How, without motivation or reason, does a character make such a radical change?
Carson is an even bigger change. He’s anti-Chinese through most of the book even to the point of gathering up Irish workers from the Union Pacific to attack the Chinese. In the middle of the book, however, he’s suddenly a good friend to Chen, “Ok, we continue my friend.” At another point Strobridge and Carson are sharing a tent and Carson is suddenly so agreeable as he says to Strobridge about Strobridge’s wife, “She’ll be in seventh heaven. Lucky man. Don’t forget to give her some flowers and chocolates.” How can a character make such changes without apparent motivation? That brings up another question. The workers on Donner Summit occupied cabins not tents. It was the longest lasting and largest of the Chinese railroad worker camps. The amount of winter snow on the summit makes tents impossible.
Then there is a coincidence with Chen running into Missouri Bill in San Francisco as one of the people helping to rescue Rozen. Also the same captain Chen had coming to America is the captain of the boat going back and captain remembered Chen years later?
If you want to learn about Donner Summit and the building of the railroad then you may like this book.
R.A. Hosler 2016 revised 2025 324 pages
In 2016 Ray Hosler sent the DSHS Heirloom offices an email about his new book, China Grade, about the Chinese transcontinental railroad workers. It was still a work in progress so he didn’t want to leave it for review in the Heirloom and on the DSHS website. Since then Ray has been updating, excising typos, improving the writing, and adding over one hundred pages. He also began selling his book through Amazon.
In June of 2025 Ray was ready and contacted our editorial offices again, this time with a request for a review in the Heirloom, the pre-eminent periodical about Donner Summit history, “I would be ecstatic to have China Grade mentioned in your newsletter,” said Ray. That, of course, shows his good taste. Since the Heirloom is always looking for books, at least tangentially connected to Donner Summit, we agreed to read and review the book and a few days later a hard copy appeared in our post office box.
We should first note that China Grade is volume one of a trilogy, “called ‘Broken Tools.’ ‘Wrights,’ volume 2, is about the South Pacific Coast Railroad, and the main character continues from ‘China Grade.’ ‘Powder Works,’ volume 3, is about the same-named blasting powder business in Santa Cruz. Again, same characters,” says Ray. The Heirloom, of course, will not be reviewing volumes two or three since our main character, Donner Summit, it not included. Clearly, Ray is having fun with his avocation given the amount of time he's given to the project and the research he's done.
The book starts with action. Rebels attack Chen’s village and abduct his sister. Chen is traded for his sister, the village is saved, and he is sent to America to work on building the new transcontinental railroad. Chen is valuable because of his knowledge of explosives and he speaks English. Chen’s father had asked him, “Do you realize how valuable that makes you?” It turns out Chen is the second son to go to America. His older brother, Shao, has been there for some time but no one knows where. Going along with Chen is one of the largest men in the area, Li Tang.
Chen and Li find Shao and head up to the end of track for work. They stay together as they work the railroad all the way to Promontory Point, Utah. They have their travel from China to pay for despite Chen’s and Tang’s having been kidnapped.
Chapter 3 introduces Lowen Tristain, his wife, Rozen, and their son. He is a Cornish miner aiming for a better life in America and heading to the railroad from the opposite direction. He can’t read but receiving the Principles of Mining as a gift will give him a “leg up” on other miners as he “can cipher them drawings” contained in the book. Lowen goes to work for the Central Pacific as well.
Chen and Rozen bump into each other which will be important later on.
In novel form, and mostly in conversation, the reader is treated to a lot of information about the building of the railroad and some things about mid-19th Century society.
James Strobridge, construction superintendent says, explaining why the work force was almost all Chinese, “We can’t find people here willing to lift a shovel and do a hard day’s work. They think they can get rich quick” in the mines.
Explaining what the reputation of the Chinese workers was, Lowen says, “Mr. Strobridge, them Chinamen are the hardest workers I ever seen. Some’s smart too.”
Elsewhere there are descriptios of the working conditions of the Chinese.
Lowen says to Rozen, “You’re right. It’s a mystery to me what makes them [Chinese] tick. They make five dollars a month less than the non-Asians, and they pay for their own food. They’re a resourceful people.”
Problems with snow are highlighted by James Strobridge, “This will never do. It just confirms what I’ve been telling Mr. Crocker. Only miles of snowshed will keep the snow from impeding operation,”
There’s also the procedure for making nitroglycerine described by James Howden the chemist. “Two men will mix ingredients inside a building near the tunnel… three ingredients of nitroglycerine - a sugar alcohol compound called glycerin, nitric acid, and sulfuric acid…”
Leland Stanford, swung the silver sledge at the culmination ceremony at Promontory Point, with wires attached so the world could know via telegraph when the railroad was done. He missed with his initial strike.
Those bits of information about the building of the railroad, and more, are good reasons to read the book if you don’t know much about the building of the transcontinental railroad.
Then there are the wider society bits of information. There is opium in California and even non-Asians partake. There is a book, Principles of Mining. There is a lot of prejudice against Chinese. In particular that is shown by one of the characters, Bill Carson, who pops up from time to time almost always with friends aiming at insulting or hurting the Chinese.
Those discrete facts become a theme of the book and maybe the prejudice against the Chinese is one of the bigger themes.
That's all good.
A good novel grabs the reader’s interest doing that with some important elements like a compelling plot; conflict of some kind; interesting and realistic characters who grow, change or solve problems; rich setting; important themes or morals; or important information new to the reader. China Grade includes a lot of information and that alone may be enough to keep a reader’s interest but there is little of the other elements. It is a book about the building of the railroad but not a book about the characters or other elements.
China Grade has no real plot beyond the building of the railroad which would enable characters to live and grow. It is a series of vignettes or episodes. Those are the Cornish vs. the Chinese, the snow plow and digging snow, the Black Goose, nitroglycerin, Rozen, and Rozen and Chen. Another subject is Carson and his actions as he pops up from time to time. There is nothing there that grabs the reader’s interest inducing him to keep reading to find out, for example, what happens next. It’s almost as if the author realized in his first version, that there was something missing and so he added various episodes which are episodes that don’t substitute for a plot. The episodes are not found wrapped in a plot or wrapped in believable interesting characters.
An author has control over everything in a book or story and whatever an author includes must have some importance in furthering the plot, developing a theme, etc., otherwise why go to the trouble of including an element? For example, Li Tang is the largest man in the area in which he lives in China. That must be important. Something later in the book must use that. It’s never followed up on. Lowen has the Principles of Mining book which he can’t read. What was the purpose of that element? We should expect that there is something in the book’s illustrations that will be useful in building the railroad. Nothing follows but it was a great opportunity.
Characters are an important element in a good novel also inducing a reader to keep reading to find out what happens to the character and why. How does the character overcome obstacles and develop as time goes on? There is no character development in China Grade. The characters are one-dimensional and we don’t know what their motivations are. For example, Rozen, Lowen’s wife, lives in San Francisco while Lowen is working on the railroad. She gets introduced to opium. That could be a life changing choice but we never find out the repercussions. Chen’s brother, Shao, was living in San Francisco before Chen arrived. He was dissolute using opium. Apparently he went “cold turkey” and it was never a problem. What was the point of bringing opium into the story if nothing comes from it or it doesn’t provide any motivation or opportunities for growth? Chen is the main character but there is nothing deeper in him than building the railroad.
There are errors in the book such as the Cornish food pasties (pronounced with a short a) but are referred to in the book as paddies (89) and patties (46) instead. There is an avalanche near Tunnel 8 which wipes out a cabin full of workers including Shao who was inexplicably delivering coffee to Irish workers. There is no way a cabin could be in the area. From the avalanche site Carson, a bad guy and racist, heads back right away to the west end of Tunnel 6 as if it’s just a hop and skip. In reality it’s a half mile or more going around Tunnel 6 which is being built (1659’), Tunnel 7 (a hundred feet or so), and Tunnel 8 (326’) and the spaces in between.)
The Chinese workers did not have one single cook. They were divided into small groups each with a cook.
Tunnel 6 did not take 12 months. It was closer to two years (247). It was not the holing through of two tunnels, it was four from the outside in, and from the inside out.
The book has the Cornish win the race but in reality it was the Chinese.
There is no evidence of Chinese hanging over the edge at Cape Horn in woven baskets.
When three locomotives were sent over the Summit to continue building in Nevada pending the completion of the tunnels, they did not all go over together. The first went over in the summer of 1867 and the next two in February 1868.
There are also geographic errors. Dutch Flat to Emigrant Gap is not 18 miles
A terminology error is calling the renamed Sacramento locomotive the Black Goose as it makes its way to Donner Summit to be a donkey engine. The correct name is Black Plucked Goose. One of various sources is https://amerisurv.com/?s=goose It is doubtful that the wheels on the wagon carrying the Goose to the Summit were made of giant sequoia rounds. Giant Sequoias grow in a few places in the Sierra but not near Gold Run where the trip to the summit started.
There are illogical things in the book. The captain of the ship didn’t know the ship was sinking. They’d only brought along exactly the amount of food necessary to feed the crew and the Chinese but Chen organized people into work parties to keep the bilge pumps going. Each of those people got double rations. Where did the extra food suddenly come from? Another example of illogic comes with Chen finding his brother Shao in San Francisco. Shao had skipped out on his job still owing money for his passage to America. The labor contractor to whom the money is owed wants Chen to find his brother but then it turns out the contractor knows where Shao is. Shao happens to visit an opium den regularly and will be coming by shortly, coincidentally, in one hour. That makes Shao easy to find in the whole state of California and the careful reader may wonder why the labor contractor hadn’t taken care of that business already. Later Chen is blindsided by a friend of Carson’s and left lying in the snow. No one knew he was not with the work crew. Chen spent the night in the snow after digging himself a snow cave.
How does Carson know a Chinese worker made the mistake that killed himself and Lowen? How does Chen know that the blast he heard from the other end of the tunnel might be a problem that means he must run over there in time for Lowen to tell him to take care of Rozen before dying? Then there is the episode of the race between the Cornish and the Chinese. It seems to go on forever with the numbers, the inches of progress, being kept secret. This is such a problem that Carson commissions the kidnapping of Shao to force Chen to give up the numbers.
A final example is the race between the Cornish workers and the Chinese, Bill Carson wanted Li Tang on his crew. That makes no sense. What kind of a race between the Cornish and the Chinese is it if there’s a Chinese worker on the Cornish crew?
When Chen goes to visit Rozen he sleeps at Rozen’s. Really? In 1868? And then in conversation with a friend, Rozen and Miss Benson consider that a match between races, between Chen and ozen could work. In 1868? That's more like injecting today's social norms onto 1868.
Then there is the episode sending Shao' body back to China. Shao was embalmed? In reality when the bodies of dead Chinese it was after they were just bones.
The characters can be inconsistent too. Shao is a dissolute fellow in San Francisco before Chen shows up. Then he’s suddenly a good worker, no more opium, and he’s offering advice. He stops a confrontation between Chen and Carson. He also counsels Chen to accept things as they are, “Accept your loss of wages and move on,” How, without motivation or reason, does a character make such a radical change?
Carson is an even bigger change. He’s anti-Chinese through most of the book even to the point of gathering up Irish workers from the Union Pacific to attack the Chinese. In the middle of the book, however, he’s suddenly a good friend to Chen, “Ok, we continue my friend.” At another point Strobridge and Carson are sharing a tent and Carson is suddenly so agreeable as he says to Strobridge about Strobridge’s wife, “She’ll be in seventh heaven. Lucky man. Don’t forget to give her some flowers and chocolates.” How can a character make such changes without apparent motivation? That brings up another question. The workers on Donner Summit occupied cabins not tents. It was the longest lasting and largest of the Chinese railroad worker camps. The amount of winter snow on the summit makes tents impossible.
Then there is a coincidence with Chen running into Missouri Bill in San Francisco as one of the people helping to rescue Rozen. Also the same captain Chen had coming to America is the captain of the boat going back and captain remembered Chen years later?
If you want to learn about Donner Summit and the building of the railroad then you may like this book.