Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month 2023 - Day 15

On the 15th of May, 1971 Mr. Lui Kai Wing passed away in Queens, New York.?He was my maternal grandfather.?Today is the 52nd anniversary of his death. I want to share what I know of his life.

He was born on February 25, 1887, in Sunning, now known as Taishan, a county in Guangdong, China.?Taishan calls itself the "First Home of the Overseas Chinese".?Off the coast in the south of Guangdong province, the location of Taishan made it the most ideal immigrant origin from China to the US.?The first wave of Chinese immigrants from Taishan started in 1848, with the pursuit of the California Gold Rush and later the building of the First Transcontinental Railroad. Until the 1960s, Taishanese was the main dialect spoken across America’s Chinatowns.?The Taishan region was a major source of Chinese immigrants in the Americas from the mid-19th and late-20th centuries.?An estimated half a million?Chinese Americans ?are of Taishanese descent.?Taishan is generally accepted as the county with the most overseas Chinese.?Up to and until the early 1970's its dialect, Taishanese, was the de facto Chinese language of North America's Chinatowns.

Due to crowded living conditions and a lack of agrarian land, the Chinese began to migrate.?At first, a small number headed to the South Pacific.?Since the 1850's an increasingly large number had crossed the Pacific and Indian Oceans in search of work.?This was not a true migration in that they seldom settled in their new locations due to cultural and?political ?reasons.?This, however, began to change in the latter half of the 20th century as the Western nations amended their immigration.?This coupled with events in China made many decide to have their families join them and settled in the foreign land.?The Taishanese immigrants journeyed worldwide through the Taishan diaspora.?The Taishan region became a major source of Chinese immigrants in the Americas in the mid-19th and late 20th centuries.?

While Taishan itself has a population of about 1 million, there are around 1.3 million Taishanese people overseas, distributed in 91 countries and regions.?It is estimated that, up to the mid-to late-20th century, over 75% of all overseas Chinese in North America claimed origin in Taishan, so Taishan has been named the "Home of Overseas Chinese".

My grandfather grew up while China was in decline: the?Boxer Rebellion ?in 1900, the decline and fall of the Manchu government in 1911 and the rise and fall of the Sun Yat-sen as President of the United Provinces of China in 1913.?Spurred on by civil war, floods, droughts, and few opportunities in their own homeland, many Chinese hoped to seek their fortunes in the US.?The Chinese had nicknamed US Gold Mountain.

My grandfather had dealt with hardship at his home front.?He was an only son and had the responsibility to take care of his parents and his own family – his wife and 1-year-old daughter.?His father was a squander.?It was difficult making a living because of the political instabilities that were going on in China at the time.?To escape the economic chaos in China, his parents decided to send their only son to America to make money to send home to support the family.?With the Chinese Exclusion Act which prohibited Chinese from entering the US, one way to get around the law was to masquerade as a merchant.?His family paid a fee to be listed as?a partner to an established merchant ?in New York’s Chinatown, hence he became a merchant.

After a three weeks journey across the Pacific Ocean, he arrived in North America.?Most likely he had traveled from China to Vancouver, and then onward to Nova Scotia by train.?This is the first record I found among his steamship passenger manifests - he was on board the SS Prince George which sailed from Yarmouth, Nova Scotia on December 30, 1916, and arrived in Boston on December 31, 1916.?He was granted his US Certificate of Identity (something all Chinese have to carry with them at all times) on January 12, 1917.?His destination was Sun Kwong On & Co at 28 Mott Street, a Chinese herbal shop according to my mom.?He was 30 years old.?

“Thanks” to the Chinese Exclusion Act, my grandfather has a file at the New York National Archive and Records Administration.?His case file no. is 2500/1597.?This public record is a folder of documents in which portions of his life were written down, assembled, and preserved with bureaucratic thoroughness.?The file is filled with memorandums from immigration officials, letters from lawfirms that represented him, and interview records with the Immigration Service for?reentries .?Among the papers, I noticed he listed 2 paper sons .?That is a common practice - my grandfather claimed the birth of a son after his trip back to China.?The document could then be used by a real son or sold to a relative, friend, or a total stranger.?This is interesting as my uncle, his own son was not listed as a son.?My uncle was a paper son himself and came to the US as a son of Tse.?He later reclaimed his name under the?Chinese Confession Program .

The Chinese Exclusion Act separated families.?It started with the Page Act of 1875 which effectively prohibited the entry of Chinese women to the US.?This exclusion of Chinese women was meant to curb the influx of Chinese immigrants as well as limit the population of Chinese.?My grandfather, like so many from that era, lived in a bachelor society as the men were unable to bring their wives and families to the US.

During his time in the US, proposals to be matched with women was rejected by my grandfather.?It is very important in Chinese culture to have a son to carry on the family name and to do the hard labor (on the farms).?My uncle was adopted – my great-grandmother brought a toddler home one day and told my grandmother “he is now your son” (while my grandfather was in NY).?Polygamy was common especially if the current wife did not produce a son.?It was also legal in Hong Kong until 1971.?It would have been acceptable if my grandfather took another wife in the US and build a new family, a chance to get a biological male heir.

My grandfather chose to stay loyal and true to his family.?He worked hard to support his family back in China/Hong Kong.?At one point he owned a laundromat, working long hours and sleeping in the same space.?According to steamship passenger manifests, my grandfather took trips to back to China in 1925, 1929 and 1936: each trip resulted in the birth of a daughter.?My grandmother took care of the family, including her in-laws, her children, and her grandchildren, as a single parent in China with money her husband would send back to China.?The family suffered when Japan invaded China, unable to receive any money wires from the US nor could my grandfather visit China.?They also suffered under the Communist regime.?During 1949-1953, the Chinese Communist Party?confiscated properties from landowners , often violently, in the name of the masses.?As many as two million people ?were killed.?Those not executed were sent to special camps to be re-educated.?As a landowner, my grandmother was tortured by the CCP.?As a result, fearing for their safety, my grandmother migrated the family from China to Hong Kong in 1955.

In the meantime, my grandfather was alone, with his family more than 8,000 miles away and living under the Chinese Exclusive Act, risking?refusal of reentry ?each time he left the US.?Imagine how desolate it must have been for him not being able to see his own children growing up.?It must have been a very lonely and scary experience living in this foreign country while seeking to build a better life for his family in his homeland.

Even after the Chinese Exclusion Act was repealed and my grandfather became a US citizen, my grandmother never joined her husband in the US.?For almost 20 years, between 1917 and 1936, he only visited his family/homeland 3 times.?Due to war and political unrest, he was separated from his family for another 19 years.?My grandfather retired in 1955 and chose to join his family in Hong Kong while my uncle stayed in NY.?Husband and wife, father and daughters, father-in-law and son-in-law, grandfather and grandchildren were separated for a total of almost 40 years.?

My mother met her father for the first time upon his return to Hong Kong.?She was 18 years old.?

In the 60’s my grandfather left his wife and family once again, returning to Queens, New York to care for his grandson.?He never saw his family in Hong Kong and China again.?He lived with his son, daughter-in-law, granddaughter, and grandson in New York until his passing on May 15, 1971.?

My grandfather took care of everybody but himself.?He supported 3-4 generations of his family working long hours.?He was loving, loyal, honorable, responsible, and filial piety.?He was also brave, courageous, and resilient and had the fortitude, and tenacity to endure hardship and discrimination.

My grandfather’s story was ordinary and yet it wasn’t.?Such are the stories of immigrants, of the sacrifices our ancestors made so we can have a better life.

Where are the roots of your family??

How and when did they arrive in America??Tell us your stories.