Hello, everyone. And welcome to America under the Microscope advanced episode. Hi, Lulu.

Hi James.

We're gonna continue our conversation about the Wild West.

Yes. We talked about all these basics, but what really confuses me is why is Western still a movie genre or TV genre? What is the real charm?

That's a good question. Because you're right, we have a lot of programming available now, especially like recently the TV show Westworld. Even some movies, they still make Western movies now. A lot of it has to do with the romanticism of freedom.

So the Wild West was a chance that you could do pretty much what you wanted. You could start a whole new life. People who are living in the East at that time, a lot more competition, the land was more expensive. Things were established. They're already there for a while. And people wanted to make a better life for themselves and their family. And the West was the place they could do that.

Is it like to reinvent yourself almost?

Yeah, it's like reinventing yourself. It’s like I come down on my luck farmer in the East. As I moved West and I can get more land.

Maybe I’ll dig up some gold or silver whatever.

Yeah, they'll just be able to have that. And also on top of that is not just the opportunity, people also like the simplicity.

Simplicity, you mean lacking resources ?

Well, yes, but the simplicity of life out there, because time in the Wild West, there weren't as many social things to worry about. Your goals were…okay, provided for my family, make money, do this. There wasn't as much of the intricacies that we get now.

True. The goals in your life are sort of very simplified. But what you have been describing, it sounds more a dream for dudes, for guys. I don't really have ever seen women find that to be very charming, lacking resources in the middle of nowhere town, lots of shoot-outs and then lawlessness.

Yeah, throughout history there weren’t women in the Wild West and some women became very successful businesspeople, opening general stores, some of them open saloons something like that. But in general, it was fairly man's world because it was a hard life. A lot of the men that moved out there were unmarried. There was a very much a skew towards men in the Wild West than they were women.

Would you say it's something to do with like the macho side of it? Would you use macho to describe it?

I wouldn't use macho. America would use more the word grit.

So like hardship makes the man.

Because you don't have to be like what we think of that's a manly man to be successful in the Wild West but you do need grit. You do need that perseverance, being able to do with the adversity, the difficulty of the environment that you're going to be in.

To be able to tough it out.

Yeah, which doesn't mean you need to be the biggest, strongest, but intelligence helps resourcefulness.

To persevere, but how does that part of the history, the whole Wild West period, how does that affect America? The general American psyche.

Nowadays I would say that for a lot of people maybe not as much anymore, but there is definitely a group of people, a sizable amount of people that already live in the West that really enjoy the openness and the simplicity of it still. That would be the biggest thing is.

But nowadays the modern cities in that part in that region, they are just the same as anywhere else.

Yeah, they'll have roots to the Wild West like the names of them or the origins of the city themselves started as whether it was a mining town or a cattle ranch or a stop on the railroad.

I see. But what about the effect on America or on American history?

The effect on American history would be the rapid growth of the country. This is the time period of rapid expansion because it just ended up after the Civil War. So America was reunified, reconstructing. Yet all these soldiers that they needed something to go West. so new technology came in the railroad. People were able to build that up and make money, mining and more mining and more mining. People were able to build money, get money. So this is the time of rapid expansion, rapid growth in American wealth, so these were big effects of the Wild West.

Many of these towns or cities in the West, they we built in that period?

Yeah, a lot. So almost every big city in the West that's not in California can trace its origins to the Wild West.

I see, like in the basic episodes we did talk about the native people, native Americans. And then you also mentioned that being a period of a lot of bad things, a lot of blood-shed.

Sadly, yes.

And last time we talked about they relocated, they basically moved to the settlement, but I'm sure a lot of them also were killed.

Yeah, what we call them is the Native American wars in American history and this was a time period where the US government had wars with these different native tribes in order to basically take their land and we wanted to take their land for settlers for the people moving West.

But it wasn't just the native people. The Native Americans that were exploited, it was also…

A lot of people and one of the most surprising groups of people at least here in China, find is Chinese. A big part of how the Wild West was One was through Chinese labor.

And there's a lot of exploitation going on then in that period of time.

Yeah, sadly there was. This is also the end of slavery, so they couldn't use slaves to do a lot of this work. They used a lot of people who were very easy to exploit.

So they basically were people who moved to America in search of work.

Right, in Chinese this would be part of the coolie labor period. 苦力So this would be a lot of the people from Guangdong and Fujian province and they couldn't get work or were unable to provide a living inside China. So people offer them chances to go to other countries. A lot of them went to America. In America, they mostly work on the railroads and in mines.

A lot of hard work.

Yeah, but they also started businesses. They were integral to parts of communities. They had their own things, opened their own salons, general stores and they did have their own communities and they were part of the economy.

I mean, they were a lot of the complex part of the history that we're not going to go into. But gradually after everything, gradually these people they did settle in America.

Yeah, a lot of them stayed. That's a lot of like modern ethnic Chinese in America. A lot of them that can trace their ancestors back to those days when their families came to America for work.

Nowadays in the towns and cities in that part that was originally the Wild West, can you see any Chinese traces?

Yes, so they may not still have their original China towns, but they might still have Chinese population. They'll still be hints of the China town. Even the town I was born in, I was born in a town of 3, 000 people. It had a China town. And you could go into the local museum and you can see the relics of the time of the Chinese labors. There are still families that live in the town till today.

I see.

It's still there.

We’ve talked a lot about the Wild West was like back then, what happened. But how did it end?

It ended in a few ways. The biggest cause I'd probably say would be technology.

Technology how? like machines?

Cars and railroad. People were able to move more quickly.

Increase mobility.

Increase mobility. So things didn't seem so far away anymore.

I see, the basically the railroad connected the East and the West.

And by the end of it, it connected a whole lot more, so the cities were much more interconnected. The world got smaller.

Is it also because they run out of things to dig?

No, there are still plenty of mining at that time, although some of the mines did dry out, another big end of the Wild West was the crackdown on lawlessness. They were getting a lot better finding criminals and catching them. It was getting more difficult for criminals to hide.

It became like any other town.

Yeah, just like that. And then lastly would be the fact that a lot of these places in the West used to be just T\territory. They weren't states yet.

And they were made into states.

And they were made into states. And when place becomes a state, that leads to more enforcement of laws.

More regulations, more regulated. So that actually is a very complex part of American history. If you are interested, if you have read anything about it or have anything to share with us, leave us a comment in the comment section. Thank you. James.

Thank you for having me. Bye everyone.

I'll see you next time, bye.

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