This article shows how social violence among Chinese in the mining districts of California during the 1850s was an extension of the Red Turban Rebellion and subsequent ethnic civil war between “local” and “guest peoples” in the Pearl River Delta of South China.  In that context, I read a popular religious text, a secret society manual, and temple carvings to argue that Chinese workingmen in the Gold Rush imagined a moral economy that enabled the construction of a heroic diasporic identity.