At Texas’ dusty Concordia Cemetery, grass grows over graves in a 140-year-old Chinese burial ground. Some headstones have been stolen or vandalised; others have been marked by flat concrete slabs etched with names in Chinese and English. The slabs were harder to steal than traditional headstones. Still other graves have no visible markers.
“I don’t think many people go out there,” says Linda Chew, a retired judge in El Paso, the state’s sixth-largest city.
Yet interest in the history of the Chinese community in the Lone Star State is growing. “There’s a real resurrection in understanding the influence of the Chinese in Texas,” Chew adds.