50s: Starting with a storage ring

Chapter 597 Bones Under the Sleepers
While these are considered remaining assets, projects like the JFK Airport, which cost over $10 billion to build, still generate substantial profits annually.

But it depends on who runs it. If the New York and New Jersey Port Authority continues to operate it, it won't make any money even in 100 years.

This is essentially Governor Cuomo handing money to everyone, which makes the capitalists very happy, but there are still some who are unhappy, such as Union Pacific Railroad.

Union Pacific Railroad was founded in the 1860s and is a large conglomerate primarily engaged in rail transport.

This Pacific Railroad is the miraculous railway where "under every sleeper lies the remains of a Chinese laborer".

Today, Union Pacific Railroad is one of the largest privately owned railroad companies in the United States, with operations spanning the central and western regions.

It leads the U.S. transportation industry along 36000 miles of railroads in the western United States and Canada and Mexico.

Union Pacific Railroad was very interested in the New York subway project, but now that the New York subway has been divided up by the state government, they are naturally unhappy.

However, no matter how powerful Union Pacific was in the railroad industry, it had no influence over the New York State government, so the state government naturally ignored them.

At the third auction, the auction process was in full swing. Sun Zhiwei was naturally watching from backstage at the venue to prevent any unexpected events from occurring and to handle them promptly.

For example, right now, a young man in a suit and tie insisted on finding him, and the staff maintaining order at the scene had to come and report it.

Sun Zhiwei didn't know what the young man wanted to do, so he had someone bring him over to ask him about the situation.

It turned out that this guy was actually a representative of Union Pacific Railroad. He came to question Sun Zhiwei about why the New York railroad project had been removed from the auction list.

Sun Zhiwei thought this guy probably hadn't experienced the harsh realities of society, and that's why he came to their door looking for a scolding.

There were so many people today that he couldn't really start a fight, so he had the security guards drag him out.

The Union Pacific Railroad Company was never a good company, and they bear an undeniable responsibility for the deaths of so many Chinese laborers during the construction of the Pacific Railroad.

Now their representative has actually come to Sun Zhiwei and made outrageous remarks, which makes him very unhappy.

He was even more upset that, to this day, the contributions of Chinese laborers in the construction of the Pacific Railroad have not been recognized by mainstream American society.

Since they were so unpopular, let's give them something to do. He didn't wait decades before the contributions of Chinese laborers were brought up again by a book called "Chinese in America: A Narrative History".

After the auction, he left his finance staff to summarize the results while he returned home to begin writing a plan.

The main purpose of the plan was to expose the incompetent practices of the Union Pacific Railroad Company during the construction of the Pacific Railroad.

This requires traveling to many places to collect a lot of information, as well as searching for the descendants of the Chinese laborers from that time and the relics along the railway line.

Actually, this matter has been mentioned before. On June 30, 1870, The Sacramento Reporter published a news report entitled "Transporting Remains".

The report stated that the total weight of the remains of Chinese laborers transported from along the Central Pacific Railroad was approximately 2 pounds.

Based on the fact that an adult's bones account for about 14% of their body weight, 2 pounds can be converted into 1200 skeletons.

In 1869, the two railroad armies from the east and west were connected in Promontory, Utah. It was eight Chinese who paved the final section of the railroad connection.

However, not a single Chinese laborer can be found in that historical photograph celebrating the completion of the railway. Similar evidence is readily available everywhere, but this was a systematic project that required a vast amount of manpower and financial resources. He could provide the money, but he truly lacked the manpower.

Therefore, he needs to write a plan and submit it so that the higher-ups can organize manpower to handle this matter. As for funding, it can be done through donations from charitable organizations.

Jiajia Austin's (Tong Jiajia) Maria Foundation has been established for several months, and it's time to make its first splash in the publicity.

On August 8th, the settlement of payments for the third auction was completed.

The auction featured 18 large assets, and even without the New York railroad, the proceeds reached a staggering $2750 billion.

To avoid any unforeseen complications, he transferred the money to the state government's account that same day.

Including the two previous auctions and the recovery of embezzled funds, this action against the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey ultimately brought the state government an additional $2890.1 billion in revenue.

This is roughly equivalent to half of New York State’s total annual GDP, and it’s all in cash.

It's foreseeable that such a large piece of meat will attract many greedy hands, but that's a problem for Cuomo and his staff to worry about.

Sun Zhiwei will focus his main efforts on the newly established Transportation Bureau. When he recovered the embezzled funds last time, he left $10 billion in fines for the Transportation Bureau as operating funds.

The current Transportation Bureau is just a shell; although it has a considerable number of staff and sufficient funds, its effective operation still requires continuous integration.

Three days later, a report drafted by Sun Zhiwei about the Chinese laborers of the Pacific Railroad was delivered to Lao Han's desk.

Such an opportunity to boost national confidence is rare, and Sun Zhiwei's report immediately received attention from higher authorities.

For this reason, Lao Han also specifically summoned Ms. Jiajiali Austin to inquire about the funding for this operation.

Funding is certainly not a problem. Sun Zhiwei has already donated $1 million to the Maria Foundation specifically to support this historical declassification campaign.

Sun Zhiwei didn't let Tong Jiajia sit idle either. He planned to have Tong Jiajia write a reportage based on the existing materials.

The content uses the same framework as the article "Chinese in America: A Narrative History", but the information is much richer than the original.

With relations between the two countries currently on a good side, such things will not be rejected or obstructed.

Soon, a team was assembled in Washington, and the accountant from the Maria Foundation quickly took over and began disbursing funds for the operation.

Tong Jiajia took charge of the investigation from Washington, D.C., and because everyone involved was on her side, the reimbursement process for the operation was very lenient.

With sufficient funding, the investigation was not difficult, and soon countless materials were gathered in the Washington investigation team's office, where a dedicated group of historians were assigned to summarize and organize the materials.

After the news spread, even more Chinese Americans began contributing to the investigation at their own expense.

During this period, Tong Jiajia used these materials to write her first reportage, "The Pacific Railroad - Under Every Sleeper Lies the Bones of a Chinese Laborer".

(End of this chapter)