Category: Anti-Chinese Panics

• The "Chinese" Underground Railway

  This theory claimed that San Francisco’s Chinatown was connected to an elaborate underground railway or tunnel network that ultimately reached ships, coastal escape routes, or, in its most fantastic version, a route “to China.” The theory emerged from anti-Chinese prejudice, tourism mythmaking, and longstanding fascination with hidden tunnel lore. It attached itself to the fact that San Francisco’s Chinatown was widely exoticized by outsiders and repeatedly misrepresented as a secret city beneath the visible one.