From auspicious horse-themed phrases and couplets to whether your luck is in, check out our Year of the Horse 2026 series to discover all you need to know about the coming Lunar New Year.
In the American imagination, the cowboy is a lone, stoic sentinel, silhouetted against a burning horizon as he guides his horse through the dust of the Western frontier. He is the mythic hero of a thousand sun-drenched films defined by his wide-brimmed hat, silver-spurred boots and leather chaps, and who fiercely defends his independence.
But who gets to be a part of the Old West narrative? Studies estimate that 10,000 to 20,000 Chinese immigrants moved to the United States between 1865 and 1869 to work on the first transcontinental railroad, performing gruelling physical labour to form the country’s transport backbone.
Chinese immigrants were largely railroad workers or laundrymen, but they were integral to life in the Old West. Some even report the existence of Chinese cowboys, most famously Jim Sam, a rancher and cattle worker in late 19th-century California. Buckaroo Sam, according to the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association, was a ranch foreman in the northern part of the state of Oregon.
