chinese-family-history-group-142712

Tootsie Rolls and Pig Toes

Sat, 04 Oct 2025 23:45:56 GMT

Prompt: Write about your favorite snacks when you were a child.

By Shirley Chu Ng

I was born and raised in Memphis, Tennessee. My family lived behind our grocery store in rooms attached to the back of store. We ate simple home cooked Chinese food, mostly rice, meat, vegetables that were steamed, stewed, or boiled. We didn’t go out much and spoke Chinese at home.

So, when I began school in first grade, I was suddenly thrust into a totally foreign all White, all English environment. Contributing to the culture shock was having to eat the lunches in the school cafeteria. The food offerings looked strange and tasted worse. I dreaded lunchtime every day. The teacher sat with us to make sure we cleaned our plates before we were allowed to leave for recess. So, I would sit fiddling with my food waiting for the teacher to leave and trying to stuff food into my milk carton when she wasn’t looking.

In those days, school lunches included over-cooked vegetables like turnip greens, spinach, hominy, rutabaga, and sauerkraut. Sometimes a scoop of gooey white rice was plopped onto my plate with a side of white sugar. The worst food of all was the dreaded liver! School lunches weren’t all bad though. On Fridays we had either chili or vegetable soup, made from with leftover vegetables that we had had during the week. It was served with buttery toasted bread and that was yummy.

However, there was one amazing lunch that stands out in my mind – the Southern BBQ pork sandwich. Yep, the first time I ever had a BBQ pork sandwich was at a school lunch. They were made from scratch by the kitchen staff. Shredded tender morsels of pulled pork drenched in the not too sweet, not too tangy BBQ sauce… It was like a flavor bomb exploding in my mouth. The pillowy white buns served as a soft but sturdy vessel to my open mouth. That sandwich became the high point of my food experience as a child and for me, it set the standard for BBQ pork sandwiches. From this point on, I will refer to it as The Standard, a lowly school lunch food but so indescribably delicious! I have been on the lookout for this sandwich ever since graduating Jr High. I have sampled BBQ sandwiches all over the South -Tennessee,Texas and California but to no avail.

Back in the day , BBQ pork sandwich chains were popular in the South and for 15 cents, as cheap as McDonalds. We bought sackfuls of Loeb’s BBQ and Tops BBQ sandwiches. Those sandwiches were made with chopped up bits of roasted pork topped with creamy cole slaw. They were good, but not comparable to the Standard.

Fast forward to 2021…The last time I was in Memphis, most of these BBQ shops had closed. Looking for something I could eat on the plane, I persuaded my friend to drive me to a Tops BBQ on the way to the airport. It was one of the few Tops BBQ remaining in the city. Big mistake! That sandwich was nothing like the 15 cents version of the bygone days. It had morphed into an oversized, messy soggy bun. The cheap bread literally fell apart when I tried to eat it on the plane. The flavor of the meat and sauce was bland. And it was expensive. My hopes of enjoying a good Memphis BBQ sandwich had simple gone with the wind! The Standard has got to have the perfect BBQ sauce, a soft bun with the right proportion of succulent smoked pork.

As a child, my taste in food was impacted by growing up in a grocery store. I was surrounded by all kinds of snackable munchies …from crackers, chips, ice cream, soda drinks, to treats and regional delights like fried pork skins and cracklings, moon pies, and cheese straws.

Our grocery store was situated in a low to middle class colored neighborhood about a mile from Hollywood Jr High. During this time period the white and black folk or colored (as they preferred to be called back then) lived separately…in segregated communities, next to each other and divided by a street or a neutral boundary.

I think because there were so few Chinese in Memphis, we were not considered colored or white. We weren’t segregated like the Colored people. The Chinese were allowed to go to white schools and generally treated with respect but we endured taunts from the “red necks” and the ignorant biased. In Memphis, Chinese were not expected to use the “Colored” restrooms or drinking fountains. But, in school or college we were socially excluded from joining the white fraternities or sororities. We were edged out of jobs in the white business world. Throughout the 50s & 60s, we experienced covert discrimination.

Sometimes I would help my dad at the counter bagging groceries. School children would stop in to buy penny cookies from the large cookie jars. We had oatmeal raisin and vanilla cookies. I happily ate my fill of those penny cookies not to mention the penny candies like Kit Kats, gum drops, bubble gum, and Tootsie Rolls.

But my most memorable snacks were not found on the aisles of cakes, cookies, chips, and other delectable goodies. For me, it was from the butcher shop.

Our neighborhood store served the needs and tastes of the colored clientele. The colored people gravitated towards the Chinese owned grocery stores over white owned businesses mainly because number 1 - the Chinese offered them credit and number 2 -they were treated nicer and could avoid being harassed by white people. We sold groceries, meats, sundries, cold drinks, and beer.

In addition, we had a full-service meat counter and butcher shop. I used to watch my dad break down a side of beef hacking, sawing and cutting it into steaks, short ribs and other cuts. He also descaled large buffalo fish and made ground beef and pork sausage. We sold all parts of the animal.

My parents allowed us to snack on a variety of cold cuts from the meat case. My Mom preferred for us to eat the simple boiled ham loaf, but I loved the King Cotton brand of bologna, weiners and braunschweiger. I ate them with saltine crackers and washed it down with Coca Cola.

My favorite cold cut was hogshead cheese. It was not a cheese but was a mixture of parts of the pig’s head that was encased inside of a pig’s stomach. Everything was cut up and mushed together – the skin, snout, tongue, jowls, ears and all. It was seasoned and processed inside of a pig’s stomach. I can’t actually describe the taste but it was pleasantly mild, with a slightly pickled flavor. Texturally, it was a toothy gelatinous bite. The slices were great eaten on top of crunchy saltine crackers when my mom wasn’t looking. Today, the head cheese in delis no longer use the stomach for the casing.

In the butcher shop, we sold large pickles swimming in pickle juice and pickled pigs feet from glass jars for 5 & 15 cents. Mouthwatering sour and dill and pickles! Pickled pigs feet were a popular item that my mom made. Our regular customers would order whole jarfuls of them to take home. They loved chewing on the gristle, sucking and gnawing on the bones. They would ask Mom for her recipe. She never told them, but I knew. Mom’s secret recipe was simply adding copious amounts of salt to the leftover pickle juice from the pickle jars.

I recall my childhood snacks fondly and it churns up a longing or craving for hogshead cheese and pickled pigs feet. These days, my husband makes a more upscale version of pickled pigs feet. He removes the large bones so it’s easier to get to the good chewy parts. Then, he adds a lot of fresh ginger, fresh lemons slices, and sugar to the brine, which elevates the flavor. I wonder now...could this also be a healthy snack?

Here’s a fun fact: Did you know that pigs feet are considered low in fat and very high in collagen protein? In a 3oz pig foot there are19 grams of collagen. Collagen is known to improve skin health, bones, and joints. With all the current hype about taking collagen as a health supplement, could eating pigs feet actually be good for you? It’s not your average junk food. Overlooking the salt, sugar, and cholesterol content, pickled pigs feet can be viewed as an occasional nutritious treat.

In concluding, these were my unique childhood food memories. They take me back to where I have been and how times have changed. Food gives us a glimpse into the past, the history of people and places and more importantly, cultural understanding. As part of a minority immigrant group, we have all encountered degrees of challenges, isolation, prejudices, and failures, but we also experienced kindness, friendships, and successes, sometimes discovering a common bond in food.

And, as I strive for future food discoveries, I am still on the lookout for The Standard.

Shirley Chu Ng grew up during the 1950’s in Memphis, Tennessee.

She moved to Los Angeles in 1971 and currently lives in Monterey Park, CA with her husband, Dean.

She is a retired pharmacist.

Growing Up with PauPau

Sun, 22 Oct 2023 09:30:30 GMT

Prompt: Write about the person that raised you. Write about the things he/she did that annoyed you or things that you are grateful for. Write about the things you realized as an adult but didn’t understand as a child.

Growing Up With Paupau

By Vicky Lowe

Hall Shee was born on March 18, 1896 to Hall Jew Yuey and Jung Shee of Jung Kai Village, Guangdong, China. The family had three sons, and she was the only daughter. She was married to Wong Lin Dong on March 2, 1919 and lived with his family in Yuen Fung village. The following year, she gave birth to my mother, Wan Ah Dai. A year later, she strapped my one-year-old mother onto her back and boarded the S.S. Nile in Hong Kong bound for America. She arrived in San Francisco on the 21st day of February, 1921.

According to the inspectors at Angel Island, Hall Shee was 5’3”, had natural feet, and carried no known diseases. After satisfying the interrogator’s questions, she was considered a trustworthy person, not a threat to the country and was permitted to land on American soil in mid-March. She lived here for the next 40 years without having the opportunity to visit China or to see her parents again.

Here is my story about Hall Shee, my grandmother whom I lived with until she passed away in 1961.

My grandmother, Hall Shee, whom I call Paupau, was a significant person in my life. As far as I could remember she was always there from sunrise to sunset, every minute of the day, and every day of the year. When I wasn’t at school, I was the one who took her food shopping. The English speakers and walking through the Italian section of town to Chinatown was a daunting trip by herself. As a bonus, I helped carry some of her groceries. At the end of the trip, I got an ice cream or a toy from Woolworth or a Hersey’s chocolate bar. It was a win-win situation for both of us.

On occasions, we went to visit her mahjong friends who lived in one of the narrow alleys at the base of Coit Tower. She didn’t know how to play mahjong, but she was intrigued watching them strategize while chit chatting with the ah paus. Two of the women were old and wrinkly and walked with an unsteady wobble. Their feet were tiny, smaller than my feet, and they wore red or blue silk pointy slippers embroidered with red, blue and yellow flowers. Their clothes were dark brown under a layer of knitted vest and puffy black jackets. Paupau had wide feet and walked with quick steps. Her hands and face were smooth with the help of Pond’s Cream. She wore flowered dresses and smelled like Ivory soap.

The walls were painted dull yellow. The shades were drawn, and the house took on a gloomy air, void of bright lights and colors. It smelled moldy and old, almost medicinal, with burning incense in the room. I sat alone eating red and white coconut balls from Hawaii or playing jacks by myself.

For us kids, Paupau stretched frog skins over opened cans for drums. At dinner time she insisted we were eating skinny chicken legs for dinner. We played with rabbits in the backyard, and then one day they disappeared. She made a large pot of soup that evening, and we slurped up every last drop of sweet tasting broth and meat in our bowl.

“Paupau, where are the rabbits?” we asked.

“They ran away,” she replied.

Our worn-out clothes were cut up and sewn into quilts. We loved searching for our fabrics and counted whose clothes were repeated the most. She took us shopping for peaches and pears at the orchard farms. We returned with bags and preserved them in jars of salt and vinegar. We were delighted when she made telephones out of cans and strings. We swore we heard each other as we shouted into the cans at the top of our lungs. She built wooden benches to sit outside the restaurant and smaller ones for the grandkids. She hammered out a shoe shine box for Uncle to earn a few quarters shining shoes. She always employed the old bachelors living at the run-down opium cottage to clean this, paint that, and gave them food and money in return.

Her English vocabulary was limited but she knew when to use the phrases, “son no beech,” “no can do” and “tanqu la.” She didn’t read or write Chinese but she knew numbers and their value, enough to make change for the dining customers, and to play baak gup bil, the Chinese Keno. At the English-speaking hardware store her conversations always began with “how mud-che” which always followed with “du mud-che.”

I loved to visit Paupau’s friends especially if they had a bunch of kids my age to play with. She always brought the family a bag of fruits, cha siew, a chicken, or something she cooked. I would give them to the mother of the family, and they always exchanged the same polite formalities, “No, take it home, we have plenty; It’s fresh, I got it especially for you; stay for dinner; no, I’m cooking a pot of soup.” After a few minutes of courteous exchanges, we either stayed for a meal or brought back something homecooked, like a chicken pot pie from Mr. Low who worked at a hotel on Market St., or big round crispy jeen dui hot from the wok.

I had to accompany her to the Chinese opera at the Great Star Theatre on Jackson Street because no one else would go with her. The actors were dressed in long sweeping embroidered costumes with elaborate headdresses, long beards, and braids. They sang and took wide strides across one end of the stage to the other, carrying a sword, book, or sometimes a fan. Their headdresses were adorned with long feathers protruding from each side of their heads. As they walked, their heads wobbled and the feathers swayed and bobbled as the actors sang and swaggered across the stage. The guohu, a stringed instrument was played in high C sharp, the percussions and cymbals clanged, “dok dok, dok, dok chang” while the actors sang in diva high pitched voices repeating “ah, ah, ah, ah, ahhh” up and down the Pentatonic scales. Their faces were ridiculously painted white. accentuated with dark brows and eyes and bright red lips.

Paupau loved every minute of the opera but I questioned whether she understood the lyrics. I most certainly didn’t. I dimed and nickeled her throughout the show running out to the concession stand to buy paper wrapped plums and prunes, gnaw yuk gon, and dried bow yee. The opera was a colorful sweep of costumes with fascinating characters but I was bored. Paupau loved every scene, every song, every movement, and laughed as their ostrich feathers bounced up and down over their heads.

I grew up learning traditions of China. I learned how to crochet, knit, sew, embroider, wrap won tons, and peel water chestnuts. I swept the floor at a very young age as if preparing for matrimony like in China. I was taught filial piety, the power of the patriarch, and the strength of the matriarch.

“Listen to your husband,” I heard Paupau teach her daughters. “Put money aside but don’t let him know about it.”

When I sprained my arm, she brewed the most obnoxious smelly concoction of twigs and leaves with Chinese herbs. She wrapped them around my arm which made me smell like a cow out to pasture all day and night. When I cried nightmarish dreams, she scared the ghosts out of my body as she cradled me over a pile of hot ashes arranged in a tin bucket.

Once, she dragged me to the North Beach project houses to scold Providence in Chinese and broken English for kicking me in the groin.

“You don do dat. You bat gur,” she said as she gestured with hands in the area below her belly button.

She spoke Chinese and innovated English about the importance of the female organ for child bearing. I was embarrassed as the kids stood in awe of the Asian grandma in fury because she held the authority of a dragon roaring with fire.

The next day the kids asked me, “Wow, your grandma is scary. What did she say?”

I replied, “She will come after you if you kick my private part again.”

One morning, I woke up, got dressed and Mom said go upstairs and say good morning to Paupau.

What? I never did that before, so I did.

“Good morning Paupau. I’m going now. See you after school,” I said.

“Um, good girl,” as she always replied whenever I greeted her the first time of the day. “Study well at school.”

The room smelled of Tiger Balm, and she had a cloth wrapped around her head. I knew she had a headache.

During my mid-morning Geometry class, the counselor summoned me to the office to tell me that my mom wanted me to walk to my parent’s grocery store a couple of blocks away from the high school.

“Why did you call me to the store?” I asked Papa.

“Mama is home with Paupau because she is sick,” he answered.

Another call came in the evening, and Papa said, “We have to close the store.”

“Why, so early? It’s not 8 o’clock, yet,” I asked, puzzled.

“We’re going to the hospital,” he replied quietly. He knew why we were going there but I didn’t.

Paupau was sleeping. She looked rested. Her eyes were closed, skin smooth, not a frown, knitted brow or a towel wrapped around her head. Mama told me to kiss her goodbye.

“Why do I have to say goodbye? She’s asleep. When is she going to wake up?” I asked.

“Maybe,” said Mom.

Maybe? That was a puzzling answer. I waited in the room with my uncles and aunts at Chinese Hospital. The doctor came in after his rounds, took out his stethoscope, listened to her heart, and spoke to Uncle who immediately burst into loud sobs. His sobs were infectious, and it started a chain of sobbing while they hung on to each other.

“What happened?” I asked.

My aunt blurted out between sobs, “She’s dead.”

I ran to her bed and said loudly, “Paupau, he sun.” Wake up, Paupau.

I shook her until someone pulled me away. I wailed in sobs. I felt limp, my empty stomach was starving without an appetite. My feet crumbled beneath me. I was dragged away. I had a strange feeling of emptiness, my heart ripping apart, a heaviness, a coldness creeping over me. I shivered in the warm room. I never felt my body responding like this. In movies people hung on tightly to each other as they wailed over the dead. I didn’t have the strength to hold onto anyone or anything, least of all myself. I couldn’t comprehend that Paupau would never, never wake up again. How is it that we will never walk to Chinatown again. I didn’t understand death. I only saw it in the movies.

At the funeral, Paupau was made up with dark red lipstick. We were shocked because she never wore lipstick, not even blush on her cheeks. Her black hair was smoothed back without curls. She wore her cheong sam over a black silk qua with dragons embroidered in gold-colored threads on both sides of the jacket. I saw her move and insisted she was coming back to life. They had to take me out of the funeral parlor. I trembled as large drops of grief washed over my face, my hands, my clothes. I didn’t remember when I stopped crying. Mama would not let me go to the cemetery. This was the first death I experienced.

I mourned for an entire year. The bathroom light was turned on at night because I was afraid Paupau would visit me wearing red lipstick and hair slicked back. Gong Gong said she came to him last night and told him she was fine. My club leader told me to let her go, start having fun again, and not be so sad. I hated him and never spoke to him again.

Her room was slowly taken apart. My aunts found a box under a pile of clothes in the closet. The box was filled with bills and jewelry. My aunts and uncle each took an equal share of the three thousand dollars hidden alongside jade pieces, gold necklaces and bracelets.

Paupau was illiterate but I taught her how to write her name in English. She drew her name, Hall Shee across the signature line after she told the immigration officer there were 50 stars on the U.S. flag. After 40 years of residing in America as a foreigner, she became a naturalized U.S. citizen. She beamed from cheek to cheek when she received her first Social Security check of $35.00. She was proud of herself and deemed herself just as worthy as a man. She died several months later and did not enjoy anymore of her well-earned benefits.

I miss our walks up and down the hills to Chinatown. I miss her firm hand of discipline, her gentle teachings, her wisdom, her curiosity, her laughter, her joy of living. I love her forever.

Vicky Lowe was born In San Francisco and lived with her grandparents who owned a restaurant along the Sacramento River. When her grandfather sold the restaurant, they moved to San Francisco. Most of what she learned about China and the Chinese American community was listening to her grandma’s stories around the kitchen table.

My Ritual

Thu, 27 Jul 2023 09:47:01 GMT

Prompt: Write about an activity or ritual that grounds you or comforts you. Write about what makes you feel certain about your identity or sense of self or makes you feel “normal.”

My Ritual

By Linda Louie

“What on earth did I get myself into?” I questioned myself as I settled into my brown, vinyl covered rolling chair, put on my headphones, and watched as the array of rectangular boxes on my computer screen filled with the faces of fifteen strangers. It was my first writing workshop with the Chinese Family History Group in June 2022!

We were given five-minute writing prompts. It created a lot of internal anxiety and angst, “in-the-moment”, for me. “That’s not enough time? Five minutes to write something?? She wants us to share it? Out loud?! Oh My God!! I can’t think of anything!!” Of course, if I had focused on the prompt instead of my racing thoughts, I probably could have done a better job.

But Cynthia knew what she was doing, and over the next two hours as she guided us through several prompts, I heard her praise the snippets we read, and heard her provide thoughtful feedback focusing on points that could be developed further. Her voice was soft and gentle, even in admonishment, when telling us to silence our own inner critic prior to a reading!

I returned for more, finding a desire to record my family’s story using the monthly writing assignments asking us to write about our kitchens, recounting stories we were told by our elders, the person who raised us, a moment of surprise in the family history, someone who comforted us, or how our families arrived in the United States.

Under Cynthia’s tutelage, and the group members’ encouragement, our stories came alive. We learned to weave in dialogue that captured the voice of a young child’s experience as she eavesdropped on the elders’ gossip after the family meal. Descriptions of platters of steamed fish, glistening pink shrimp and shiny green vegetables made our mouths water. Tears welled in our eyes, as we heard the poignant stories of despair and sadness at the loss of a loved one. We smiled at the moment of discovery, when a previously unknown connection was made with one of the other writers in the group!

Recently, my friend, Mimi, recounted that she had chided her sister by saying, “You shouldn’t dwell in the past. What’s done is done, you should move on and live in the present. That’s what’s important now!”. My comment to her was, “Maybe she just wants affirmation as to why she is the way she is.”

This incident made me reflect on why I enjoy writing to these monthly prompts. They give me affirmation: as to who I am, and to how I have been shaped by my past and family. It’s a record, a subjective one I admit, but one that would be lost if not recorded.

I so enjoy logging in to hear each of the group members’ unique lived stories which have evolved from the journeys taken by their families. The paths taken are different, but the decisions to begin the journeys are similar. Stories to escape poverty and war. Stories of separation from loved ones for decades in foreign lands. Stories of decisions made for love. Stories of hard work and resilience. In the end, it is always a desire to improve the lives of our loved ones.

I still worry that my story is not good enough after hearing all of the other fascinating stories. And, yes, I still feel the warm adrenaline flush throughout my body when called upon to read, but it’s all good! The Chinese Family History Group has created a space for us to share our stories and our lived histories.

Linda Louie lives near Boston, MA and has been a member of CFHG since 2020. Her ancestors migrated to southern Africa, settling in Mozambique and Southern Rhodesia in the early 1900s. Her family arrived in the United States in the late 1970’s to escape the political turmoil in Rhodesia and has lived here ever since.

My Father Was My Gateway To American Life. Then I Found Out He Lied To Get Into This Country.

Sat, 04 Jun 2022 09:53:06 GMT

Originally published in the Huffington Post, May 28, 2022

“Reading their files made me uneasy. Their claim to citizenship was based on a lie. Were they ‘illegal immigrants’? Did that mean I wasn’t a true American?”

Mow Lim, in Tulare, California, in 1946.

COURTESY OF CYNTHIA LIM

The one thing I thought I knew for certain was that my Chinese father, Mow Lim, was allowed to immigrate in the 1940s because my grandfather was a U.S. citizen. I never questioned that fact or found out how Grandfather Sam, himself an immigrant, earned his citizenship. Nor could I ask my father these questions. He was killed in a plane crash in 1964, when I was 7.

I adored my father and loved the stories my mother told me. He arrived on a steamship alone when he was 12, then moved from San Francisco to Tulare in the Central Valley in his teens. Butchering in a meat market during the day, he rode a bicycle to night school to learn English. He adopted the American name “Don” and, at 19, served in the U.S. Army in World War II. On a visit to China, he was matched to my mother. After they married, they had five children and he entered the grocery business. Before his death at 36, he owned a store in Castroville, California, and had a share of a larger one in Salinas.

His photos in our albums comforted me for years after his death. He looked handsome and debonair with his arched eyebrows and easy smile. My eyes were always drawn to the picture of him in his teens, with a white T-shirt and rolled-up chinos.

He had been my gateway to American life. He bought my sister a portable record player and dozens of 45s, and we listened to Barbara Lewis’ “Hello Stranger” and Lesley Gore’s “It’s My Party” long after his death. He enrolled us in music and dance lessons. On his rare days off, he took us to the Santa Cruz boardwalk or to Pacific Grove to collect shells. As the baby in the family, I got to sit on his lap in the evening and I would try to synchronize my breathing with his.

After his death, my widowed mother was left with five children, aged 7 to 15, two grocery businesses and limited English. Cantonese became the primary language at home and Chinese instrumental music replaced the soundtrack to “Oklahoma” on the stereo. I wasn’t interested in my native culture. I wanted meatloaf with mashed potatoes or Taco Bell instead of the ground pork with salted fish and spare ribs with black bean sauce my grandmother made. I longed to go to summer camp and learn to canoe or vacation in Cape Cod and eat blueberries straight off the vines like the girls I read about in the books at the public library. Instead, my childhood and adolescence were spent working at the grocery store.

“Are you going to marry Chinese?” my grandmother used to ask me. I always said yes because I wanted a partner who saw the importance of family, of saving face and being modest. In college, I met my Jewish boyfriend who embodied those traits and valued me. We married and settled in Los Angeles, where I pursued a career in social work and education. We raised two sons who were proud of their mixed heritage. I was confident of my citizenship and place in this country.

It wasn’t until 2017 that I researched our history and realized how little I knew about my father’s life before he came to America. He’d left China during the Chinese Exclusion Act, which banned the entry of laborers from 1882 to 1943. It was the only piece of legislation that barred a specific ethnic group from entering this nation and from becoming naturalized citizens. There was an exemption for sons of native-born U.S. citizens. Was that how my father was able to come?

Some Chinese evaded the ban by claiming to be sons of native-born citizens. Men would testify that they were born in the U.S. and then provide witnesses affirming that fact. Once declared citizens by the government, they’d visit China, then report the birth of sons when they came back. Those offspring were eligible to immigrate due to birthright citizenship. Thousands of Chinese entered the U.S. during the exclusion act using false papers. They were called “paper sons.”

Mow Lim, in San Francisco, California, 1941.

COURTESY OF CYNTHIA LIM

In 1906, all birth records in San Francisco burned in fires after the earthquake, leading to a flood of false papers. Chinese already in the U.S. declared under oath that they were born here and had sons in China. We knew of families with “paper” names and real clan names and brothers with different last names because of assumed identities. But I didn’t think that was the case with my father or grandfather.

What I found at the National Archives in San Bruno proved otherwise. My father’s case file contained transcripts and photos that documented his arrival. He was detained for 43 days before being interviewed by three inspectors. Barely 14 at the time, with cheeks still chubby with baby fat, they asked him 155 questions about his kinship and village life, trying to catch him in a lie.

“Were your paternal grandmother’s feet ever bound?”

“Has your village a fish pond?”

“Were the tables and chairs the property of the school or individuals?”

The interrogation took two days, each question and answer translated through an interpreter. There were some lies in his testimony. He said that his grandfather, my great-grandfather, was born in the United States, but I knew that wasn’t true. The grandfather was really his great-uncle Ock Jit, born in the Guangdong province, according to relatives.

I requested files for Grandfather Sam, as well as Ock Jit, from the National Archives, where I discovered our clan’s path to the United States. In 1894, Ock Jit arrived in San Francisco via steamship. Wearing a black skull cap and black shirt, he told authorities he’d been born in Chinatown but went back to Guangdong for a visit and was now re-entering.

He was detained but filed a writ of habeas corpus with the federal courts. His testimony, and that of two witnesses, convinced the judge he was from San Francisco and he was declared a native-born citizen. In subsequent visits to China, he returned to San Francisco and declared the birth of sons (one was my grandfather though he was really a nephew). Ock Jit had one son but said he had four. In total, seven men were let into America as his sons and grandsons.

The author’s great-great-uncle, Ock Jit, in 1894.

COURTESY OF CYNTHIA LIM

Reading their files made me uneasy. Their claim to citizenship was based on a lie. Were they “illegal immigrants”? Did that mean I wasn’t a true American? After the 2016 presidential election, the new administration railed against foreigners, documented and undocumented. There was talk of a Muslim ban. Would Chinese be singled out again? Would our status as citizens undergo scrutiny after the fact?

But as I studied the story Ock Jit’s descendants told when they arrived, I couldn’t fault them for lying. Like all immigrants, they were seeking a better life for themselves and future generations. I was impressed by how they educated themselves on the exemptions in the exclusion act and used the government’s legal processes in their favor. They retained white attorneys knowledgeable of the judicial system to file the necessary paperwork for hearings. They took their cases to federal courts.

I wondered if my father had any qualms about the deception. For many that entered during the exclusion era, there were fears of deportation if real relationships or names were revealed. My brother remembered my parents hiding the Chinese writing on a framed picture in case there was a surprise inspection from immigration.

Fears of intimidation lurked in my mind with the rise of anti-Asian sentiment during the onset of COVID. Nearly a third of Asian-Americans in the San Gabriel Valley experienced hate during the pandemic, according to the LA Times. I thought back to what my ancestors did in the face of harsher times when they were clearly not welcomed here. I felt renewed gratitude for their efforts and reminded myself that this was my home. This was where I was born. And I am a true American.

Don’t Trust Everything You Read: the Importance of Verifying Source Material

duda@neonone.com — Mon, 17 Jan 2022 11:56:19 GMT

Michael Ho
President of Chinese Family History Group 2018-2020

I have been researching my family history for over thirty years. This is absolutely true, but it does raise an interesting question:

Aren’t you done yet?

Let’s flashback to when I got started. I was interested in hearing family stories at an early age, and I might have asked about family members, but these actions don’t constitute family history research in itself. In the early 1990s, I was an undergraduate at the University of California, Irvine, and taking an introductory Asian American studies course taught by Professor John Liu. I was majoring in a technical field, so this class was elective. I was (and still am) a history buff, so this class certainly looked appealing.

The class had a term assignment: interview an older family member or create a family tree. It wasn’t convenient for me to interview family members like my surviving grandparents, so I opted for the family tree. Rather than just turning in a family tree diagram, I compiled a report that detailed the four family branches of my respective grandparents. I included copies of documents and photos (photocopied, because I didn’t have a scanner or laser printer back then). I proudly received an ‘A’ grade for that report. And you know what? While most of my report was correct, I got some things totally wrong.

In the following years, I learned more about genealogy, Chinese American history, immigration, the Chinese case files at the National Archives, and much more. Technology has made more information accessible. The more that you know, the more that you can discover. Had I had stopped researching my family history after that classroom assignment, I wouldn’t have told the full or fully-correct story.

In general, people tend to trust printed or published works. The idiom “wrote the book on” often refers to someone who is an expert on a particular subject. Traditionally, it was widely accepted that people who wrote books and got them published were most likely experts. Printed content was assumed to be peer-reviewed, fact-checked, fully-vetted, et cetera. However, when you find a published or printed resource for your family’s history, you should review the contents for veracity. For example, if you attend a family reunion, there’s a good chance that someone has prepared and shared a family tree. These are definitely great resources, but by all means, check out the contents and try to verify. People make mistakes.

Here’s another example: not long after I earned that ‘A’ on the paper, my grandfather passed away. After the funeral in Honolulu, someone with the Ho surname approached me. He heard that I was interested in genealogy, and he told me that he had a book that explained the entire Ho family genealogy. I didn’t connect with him again during that trip and later wasn’t able to get a copy of the book. I proceeded with my research and made my first visit to my Ho family’s ancestral village in China in 1996. I was the first in my immediate family to visit there since 1930. The ancestral home was gone, but the ancestral plaque with my great-grandfather’s name survived. In 2000, I took my dad to visit the village, and I made a more recent visit in 2019.

Years after my first visit, I learned that the aforementioned book was titled Genealogy of the Ho family, 892 A.D.-1982 A.D., which had been compiled by members of the Ho Society of Hawaii, a family association based in Honolulu.

My grandfather served as president of the Ho Society of Hawaii during the 1950s. Because he worked as a commercial artist, I think that it’s highly likely that he designed the group’s logo at the time, which appears on a T-shirt that he wore in a family photo.

When I got a chance to take a look at the genealogy book, I discovered that my family was not included. Why not? By the time that the book was being compiled, my grandfather was no longer an active member in the group. Either the group did not reach out beyond their active membership, or my grandfather chose not to participate. Still, I wanted to see if the book could help fill in some missing information from my family tree. Apparently, the Ho Society of Hawaii’s members in the mid- to late-1970s were asked to complete family group sheets. The project then sought to connect these members’ family trees with an extensive genealogy previously compiled for a prominent member’s family. The latter tracked his family history to 892 A.D.

Sounds great! Right?

There were two primary assumptions made by the book’s compilers: (1) all of the participating Ho families shared the same ancestral village with the prominent member (they didn’t), and (2) the prominent member’s genealogy was 100% correct (it wasn’t). Looking at the book, there is a glaring absence of Chinese characters for individual’s names and place names. It appears that the participating members’ families might have been linked to the prominent member’s family tree by matching up Romanized names rather than names using Chinese characters. This is problematic with homophones in the Chinese language. It’s possible that Chinese names were matched with Chinese names before they were Romanized, but it’s impossible to tell from what was printed in the book. Putting that aside, the book appears to link all of the participating families to a village in Zhongshan called Chu T’ou Wei. This was a Wade Giles Romanization, and the Pinyin spelling would be Zhu Tou Wei. But my ancestral village’s name (and that of many, but not all, Ho families in Hawaii) is Zhu Tou Yuan.

found the source material of the prominent member’s genealogy and found a possible explanation. The original Chinese text shows the village name as:

The first two characters are clear: Zhu 竹 (meaning “bamboo) and Tou 頭 (“head”).

The third character is unclear, so I surmise that the translator decided that it was the character Wei 圍. Thus, he spelled the village name as Chu T’ou Wei (Pinyin: Zhu Tou Wei).

But the character should have been Yuan 園, meaning “garden.” The correct village name is Zhu Tou Yuan 竹頭園 (or Chu T’ou Yüan using Wade Giles).

(reference: https://villagedb.friendsofroots.org/display.cgi/village/6913 )

The translator made a judgment call on which character to use, just as someone reading a handwritten record in English might need to choose between the letters ‘f’ or ‘t’ in a document. You can’t blame the translator, especially if additional background or context wasn’t provided. But had the prominent member or his family checked with Ho family “old-timers” in Hawaii, they could have corrected the error. Similarly, if the Ho Society book compilers had done the same, the error could have been caught. And even if the “old-timers” were not around (they were—I corresponded with and visited one in the early 1990s), the correct Chinese characters of the village name were etched on a number of gravestones in Honolulu cemeteries.

Back to my original point: published works are great reference tools, but you should try to verify details wherever possible. We want to share our family histories with others. It’s a good idea to include a date or version number with any history or summary that you share. That way, your family members will know if they are reading the latest and greatest version. The compiler of Genealogy of the Ho family, 892 A.D.-1982 A.D. indicated that it was a first edition, so perhaps it was intended to have further editions. However, the Ho Society of Hawaii did not survive. I’m still searching for sources to fill in gaps in my Ho family history. Even for parts of my family history that are more complete, I want to clarify more details. And for brick walls, the information may be out there, just waiting to be discovered.

Am I done yet? No, not yet.

Linking Family Stories to National and Global Historical Trends

duda@neonone.com — Fri, 19 Nov 2021 12:08:30 GMT

As a Professor of History at California State University Fullerton (CSUF), I have benefited tremendously from attending the meetings of the Chinese Family History Group of Southern California. In fact, meeting the members online and hearing the various speakers has been one of the highlights of this past year for me. While my training is primarily in the field of modern Japanese history (UCLA Ph.D., 2002), since about 2008, I have also been involved in projects related to Asian American history, primarily through an oral history project I was a part of, where we interviewed second-generation (Nisei) Japanese American veterans who had served as translators and interpreters in the Allied Occupation of Japan from 1945-1952. Since my research focuses on the ethnic Korean community in postwar Japan, I have also branched out in recent years to connect with various Korean American organizations in the Los Angeles region. In particular, I was part of a couple of events that commemorated the 100th anniversary of the March 1st 1919 Independence Movement in Korea during the era of colonial rule. So, this foray into Chinese and Chinese American history is a relatively new venture for me, and I would like to share some of the highlights here.

When I worked on the Nisei veterans oral history project mentioned above, part of my job was to clarify various terms in Japanese that were relevant to the work these soldiers had performed during the Occupation. For instance, some of them had served as interpreters during the International Military Tribunal for the Far East and they talked about the difficulties of interpreting literally and trying to convey the cultural nuances of the speaker. While we were conducting these oral history interviews, the veterans were often accompanied by their third-generation children who usually did not speak or read Japanese. We often joked about my role in communicating with their fathers (now in their 80s and 90s) in Japanese, even though I am not of Japanese descent. I’ve thought about those encounters often when I hear younger participants in the Chinese Family History Group talk about needing help to read Chinese or communicate in Chinese with extended family members. To me, this speaks to the ongoing need for a wider network of collaboration where people with various skills can bring those talents to the table and work together in the process of digging through family records and other sources. I didn’t start learning Japanese until I was in high school and I always try to encourage my students at Cal State Fullerton to think about learning a new language, even if it’s only for one semester. I introduce Chinese characters into my lectures and students like getting a bonus point if they write a word like “history” (歴史) on their blue book at the end of their exam!

One of the most important things I’ve learned from the online meetings of the Chinese Family History Group has to do with the challenges of working with immigration records and the ins and outs of the archives and various documents. While I knew the basics of the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, I didn’t know about the details of the immigration interviews and what kinds of information could be elicited from such documents. I often talk to my students about reading evidence “against the grain” to try to ascertain the perspective of someone who may not have written a particular document, but whose life story may be revealed in the process of combing through it very carefully. Coming from a family who traces our roots back to Ireland, I was struck on a few occasions by the Irish sounding names of the immigration officers and have found myself wondering what their life history is, and how they ended up in that particular job. Over the years, I’ve had many students who are interested in reading and writing historical fiction and I think that such records could lend themselves to serve as the basis for a work of fiction that explores multiple American families whose lives intersect in places like Angel Island or San Francisco.

Although I currently teach in a History Department, my academic background is more interdisciplinary, as my undergraduate major was Japanese language and my Master’s degree was in Asian Studies. In fact, I haven’t formally studied American history since high school (Class of 1984 in Norwalk, Ct.) so most of my knowledge of my own country’s history has been through self-study and conversations with colleagues as an adult. In fact, it wasn’t until this year that I learned in a detailed way about the trajectory of Chinese laborers coming to the U.S. in the wake of the end of slavery in the mid-19th century. This point has come up in several CFHGSC presentations and has made me think how important it is to connect national history with global historical trends like Chinese emigration. In addition to teaching Japanese and Korean history, I also serve as the CSUF History Dept. Teaching Credential Adviser and I help students who want to be junior high and high school teachers choose their classes to prepare for such a career. While the secondary school curriculum divides national and world history into separate subjects, my increased familiarity with Chinese family history has reinforced for me the importance of bridging this artificial divide if students are to appreciate global and national trends and events in all their complexity. We’re lucky at Cal State Fullerton to have several specialists in the field of Asian history, so our future teachers can take classes in Japanese, Korean, modern and ancient Chinese history, as well as SE Asian history. My participation in the CFHGSC workshops has made me appreciate this range of offerings for our students, knowing that there are so many connections to be made across time periods and artificially drawn geographic boundaries.

About ten years ago, I got connected with a group of historians based in Osaka Japan who were looking to rethink the world history curriculum and go beyond the limiting framework of nation-state centered history. I’ve attended many international conferences in places like Singapore, Shanghai and Seoul that highlighted research related to topics like maritime trade and focused on people who defy easy categorization as members of one country. As I’ve been learning about Chinese family history, it occurs to me that this topic lends itself to these newer research trends and global collaborations among scholars and graduate students. One of the unique features of this Osaka-led group is their concern with the curriculum at the secondary level and the ways that junior high and high school teachers can incorporate more current world history research into their classroom lessons. For instance, one historian presented research on the history of Chinatown in Yokohama in the 19th century and encouraged teachers to incorporate this aspect of urban history into a world history class that often tends to emphasize the role of Westerners in these treaty port cities. Over the last year, I’ve been struck by the geographic range of the online CFHGSC participants and it’s always so exciting to see that people are tuning in from places as far away as Malaysia, Australia and Indonesia. Seeing this global scope of participation makes me think of this long history of the establishment of Chinatowns around the world and the varied demographics and spread of residents of Chinese descent in the intervening centuries.

For me, one of the most intriguing aspects of Chinese family genealogical research are the human faces and personal family stories that go along with an investigation of these kinds of global trends. By participating in these online forums, I also feel a kind of personal connection to the more abstract political, social and economic trends and structures that inform these family histories. Since coming to Fullerton in 2002, I’ve found that students are much more engaged with the study of history if they can put a face and personal story to the larger narrative. This kind of approach provides an entrée to the subject matter first as a human being, and then the analytical mind and critical thinking can follow once that interest and engagement is there. These forums have reaffirmed my commitment to taking this approach with my students as a way to expand their horizons and think about history beyond a bland kind of memorization of dates and names of so-called “Great Men.” In the Fall 2021 semester I will be teaching a graduate seminar and we will be reading the novel Pachinko by Min Jin Lee about a Korean family who emigrated to Japan during the colonial period. My interest in Chinese genealogy informed my choice of this required reading, since I now see how I can use a fictional story like Pachinko to explore various aspects of family history and urge students to use the novel as a jumping off point to think about more conventional historical issues like wartime labor conscription, etc. Many of our Master’s students take classes at night after teaching History during the day in secondary schools around Orange County, so I hope this approach will have a trickle down kind of effect as well. In this way, I like to think that the Chinese Family History Group of Southern California will continue to have a ripple effect for many years to come!

The Chinese in Cuba

duda@neonone.com — Fri, 18 Jun 2021 12:08:31 GMT

A Friends of Roots (FOR) cohort traveled to Cuba in March 2020 to explore the Chinese presence which dates back to the 1830s and 1840s.

Cuba was occupied by the Spanish empire for some 400 years. By the 1830s some Chinese arrived in Cuba from the Philippines (another Spanish colony) by way of the Manila galleon trade. Large numbers of Chinese from the mainland arrived beginning in 1847, some tricked or kidnapped (“selling pigs”), under onerous eight-year contracts for indentured labor, to work alongside enslaved Africans on Cuba’s sugar plantations and other industries. Around 125,000 Chinese arrived in Cuba from 1847 to 1874, the period of the “coolie trade.” Over 90,000 Chinese arrived in Peru under similarly onerous indentured labor contracts from 1849 to 1874. Some Chinese in Cuba had ancestral roots in Fujian (mainly the Amoy/Xiamen region), but the majority were from Guangdong’s Pearl River Delta.

Chinese who survived their eight-year contracts often remained in Cuba, either by choice or because they could not pay for passage back to China. Many started small businesses in Cuba’s cities and towns and cities. The Cuban Chinese community grew in the late 1800s with the arrival of the “Californios,” Chinese who left the United States because of discrimination and racism there; many of the Californios were merchants, and they provided an infusion of capital to the community.

There were very few women among the Chinese in Cuba, and relationships with non-Chinese Cuban women, especially Black Cubans, resulted in many mixed race descendants. Race relations in Cuba were relatively relaxed in comparison to the United States, although the US exported its anti-Chinese policies to Cuba during its occupation of Cuba after the Spanish-American War. Scholar Evelyn Hu-DeHart has noted a Black and Chinese “intimacy” in Cuba that is missing in North America.

Cuba once had the largest Chinese population in the Caribbean and Latin America. There were Chinese communities across the country, from Santiago de Cuba at the far eastern end of the island to Havana in the west, and in the cities and towns in between. As in other Chinese communities around the world, the Chinese in Cuba established many clan, regional, fraternal, commercial, and political organizations. The Casino Chung Wah (known in Chinese as the zhonghua huiguan) in Havana, served as an umbrella organization, not unlike the Chinese Six Companies in San Francisco. Our group met with community leaders at the Min Chih Tang (minzhidang), which has its roots in early 20th century anti-Qing societies in China.

Cuba was the last Spanish colony in the Americas to gain independence from Spain, which came only after three wars in the mid- and late-19th century. Thousands of Chinese were among the rebels that fought against the Spanish in those wars. A monument to the Chinese independence fighters stands in the Vedado area of Havana, with the inscription, “No hubo un chino cubano desertor. No hubo un chino cubano traidor” (There was not one Chinese Cuban deserter. There was not one Chinese Cuban traitor). Independence from Spain was finally achieved after the Spanish-American War of 1898, only to be replaced by American influence through military occupation, treaties that gave the United States naval bases (of which Guantanamo remains) and the right to intervene in Cuban affairs, American business interests, and the mafia. American influence continued until the Cuban revolution of 1959, and Cuba soon sided with the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

A second period of large scale Chinese emigration occurred after World War I, when some 120,000 arrived in Cuba, during a brief period when Cuba’s immigration policies were relaxed due to labor shortages. A final wave of immigration took place in the late 1940s and early 1950s, when Chinese fled the Kuomintang-Communist civil war and the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949.

Chinese Cubans fought on both sides of the rebellion that resulted in the 1959 victory by Fidel Castro’s forces. In one of the last and decisive engagements of the war (December 1958) Captain Alfredo Abón Lee of the Cuban army held off rebel forces under the command of Camilo Cienfuegos at the Battle of Yaguajay until his troops ran out of ammunition and Lee was forced to surrender. Seeing the writing on the wall, President Batista (who was himself of part Chinese descent) fled Cuba the following day, opening the way for the rebels to take Havana on January 1, 1959. On the other side, commanders Armando Choy, Gustavo Chui and Moisés Sío Wong fought with the rebels and remain honored veterans of the revolution.

Many Chinese fled Cuba for Florida, New York, Puerto Rico, and elsewhere after the 1959 revolution, as their businesses and property were under threat of seizure. Other Chinese were supportive of the revolution or had no option to leave, and stayed. There has been very little Chinese emigration to Cuba since the revolution. Our group, however, had a Chinese banquet at the Tigre Amarillo restaurant in Barrio Chino, which is owned by a Chinese entrepreneur from Sichuan(!) who arrived in the 1980s. We also met with a woman from Enping who arrived in Cienfuegos in the 1990s and has become a leading member of the Chinese community there.

Our group walked through colonial Old Havana (Habana Vieja) and Chinatown (Barrio Chino), which is immediately adjacent to Old Havana and the former national capitol building (the Capitolio). The entrance to Barrio Chino is marked by a gate similar to that in San Francisco Chinatown and many other Chinatowns around the world. There are very few China-born residents left in Cuba, at this point probably no more than 100. Those that remain are quite elderly, in their 80s and 90s. There are hundreds of thousands of Cubans across the country, however, who have some Chinese blood. Many Cubans proudly claim a Chinese grandparent or great-grandparent.

The expression luodi shenggen “grow roots where you land,” aptly describes the Chinese experience throughout the diaspora. The Chinese in Cuba, despite exploitation and discrimination, eventually became an integral part of Cuban society, culture, cuisine, and Cubanidad (Cuban identity). Painters Wilfredo Lam and Flora Fong and singer Ibrahim Ferrer (of Buena Vista Social Club fame) are examples of this legacy. Our group visited Fong at her home and studio; her paintings are noted as “arte cubano con raíces china” (Cuban art with Chinese roots). In a fascinating example of transculturation in the realm of music, the Chinese double-reeded suona (aka laba) has been incorporated as a principal instrument in the Afro-Cuban comparsa religious processions of eastern Cuba. The instrument is known in Cuba as the trompeta china and corneta china. In an example of religious syncretism, Chinese folk deity Guan Gong is known in Cuba as San Fancon, and is associated with the god Changó of Afro-Cuban Yoruba religion and Santa Barbara of the Catholic tradition.

In the past 20 years or so, efforts have been made to preserve and revive Chinese institutions in Cuba. Wushu, lion dancing, taiqi, and Mandarin language courses are popular with Cubans whether or not they have Chinese ancestry. The Kwong Wah Po newspaper has been revived; it is printed on a handset press from the mid-19th century. We visited the Chinese cemetery in Havana, established because Chinese were excluded from the gigantic Necrópolis de Cristóbal Colón across the street. The gravestones at the Chinese cemetery record Chinese ancestral village information, which greatly assists genealogical research. The People’s Republic of China has good relations with the Cuban government, and the Chinese embassy supports cultural activities in Barrio Chino.

While the Chinese legacy in Cuba is an important part of the national fabric, the lack of ongoing Chinese immigration and the incorporation of Chinese descendants into the general Cuban population has resulted in the gradual fading away of a distinct Chinese community. We were fortunate to be able to travel to Cuba and meet some of the remaining old-timers.

Steven Owyang, Friends of Roots

Steve is a fourth generation Chinese American who holds a strong interest in Chinese American history. Through Friends of Roots and its Roots: Him Mark Lai Family History Project , Steve has led program participants in researching their own family history and genealogy, learning about China and Chinese American history, and visiting their ancestral villages in China.

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Michael Ho President of Chinese Family History Group 2018-2020

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The Chinese in Cuba

Michael Ho
President of Chinese Family History Group 2018-2020