Prof Robert Lee from the American Studies of the Brown University has been invited to deliver a talk on “Carving History on Our Backs”: Violence, Memory and the History of Chinese Workingmen in America organized by our Institute. In this lecture, Prof Lee shares three “hidden transcripts”, a Taoist temple in northern California, a Hongmen initiation catechism, and a scripture dedicated to Guandi to reconstruct a subaltern narrative of social conflict that extended from Guangdong to California in the mid-19th Century. Temple inscriptions, secret society ritual, and the practices of martial arts inscribed a collective memory of violence and shaped an alternative diaspora imaginary. Prof To Wing Kai, a visiting scholar at the Department of History, CUHK, serves as the moderator who also shares his views on the topic with the audience.