A Child's Death, A Family's Grief: Three Poetic Couplets for Jimmy Bo-Gar Chin

This story is a follow-up to a previous post about my translation of a Chin family gravestone at the Mountain View Cemetery in Oakland, California.

The grave is shared by my mother’s baby brother, Jimmy Bo‑Gar Chin; newborn twin brothers who died within weeks of birth in 1924; and three adult siblings who died in old age. The emotional core of the family’s mourning, however, is focused on Jimmy’s sudden death in 1954, and that grief survives most clearly in three handwritten inscriptions on two photographs.

On January 10, 1954, Jimmy was hit by a car and died in front of the family home at 326 7th Street in Oakland, California's Chinatown. He was five years and seven months old. His death was a crushing blow to the entire family especially his mother, Tso Mee Shew.

Tucked into my mother's collection of early family photographs are two images that together tell the story of that grief. One shows Jimmy as a young child with his mother on Christmas morning. The other is a photograph with his siblings two days later. Written on the margins of each photo are poetic couplets — pressed heavily into the paper in blue ballpoint ink by Jimmy's father Chin Pak Yick. Taken together with the couplet carved on the gravestone, they form a remarkable triad of grief: public sorrow, private anger, and, finally, reflective acceptance.

The photo below shows Jimmy with his mother on Christmas Day 1953, 16 days before his tragic death.

Jimmy with his mother, Tso Mee Shew
December 25, 1953, Oakland, CA

Brother Fu: Chu Nieng Fu and the Last P-40s

Chu Nieng Fu 趙仰富, known in the family as "Brother Fu", was the son of Chu Tui Goon's brother. Before and during World War II, Hong Hock How and Tui Goon adopted him into their family, hoping to give him the opportunity to one day emigrate to the United States. Hock How treated him as a son, and to their children he was simply "Fu Goh" 富哥 — "Elder Brother Fu."

A photograph from around 1938 captures this bond: on the rooftop of the family home in Canton, Fu Goh stands with Larry — the eldest of the Hong children — and a young Jack, the three practicing kung fu together in easy camaraderie, the clouds of war still somewhere on the horizon.

Rooftop, Canton, c. 1938: Fu Goh (Chu Nieng Fu) with his younger cousins Larry and Jack Hong, practicing gung fu on the rooftop of the Hong family home in Canton.

Canton, c. 1938: Fu Goh and cousin Larry (Back)
cousins Jack, Lily, and Paul (Front)

Later that year, the Second Sino-Japanese War forced the family from Canton. Tui Goon and the children first relocated to Hong Kong, then joined Hock How in Rangoon, Burma. In December 1941, Japan expanded the war — striking Pearl Harbor to the east and driving southwest into Indochina. The family escaped Rangoon in late February 1942, just weeks before it fell. They spent a month traversing the treacherous Burma Road to Kunming, a vital wartime hub in southwest China. 

Kunming c1943: Larry and Fu Goh (Back); Lily, Aunt Tui Goon
 holding cousin Mary, Uncle Hock How, Jack and Paul (Front)

Fu Goh attended boarding school there alongside Larry. Food was scarce; meals from huge communal pots offered little more than rice with preserved vegetables and chili oil. In 1945, Fu Goh had the chance to accompany Larry to the United States, but chose instead to remain and join in the Chinese Nationalist Air Force, flying in the final years of the war against Japan and into the Chinese Civil War that followed.

A photograph sent to Jack from Hong Kong in December 1948 shows Fu Goh in his aviator helmet, half-seated on the fuselage of a Flying Tiger Curtiss P-40 Warhawk with its distinctive shark toothed maw. The inscription on the back reads: 連卓表弟，仰富表兄 卅七年十二月於香港 — "[To] younger cousin Jack, [from] older cousin Nieng Fu, December 1948, Hong Kong."  [In the 37th year of the Chinese Republic.]

Rose Chin Hong (1939-2026)

Rose Chin Hong

Rose Chin Hong was born on May 17, 1939, in Oakland, California, to Chin Pak Yick 陳伯釴 and Tso Mee Shew 曹美秀. Her Chinese name was Chin Joong Sen 陳仲仙. She died on April 23, 2026, at age 86, from complications following surgery, surrounded by loved ones. She is interred with her husband, Jack L. Hong, at Skylawn Memorial Park in San Mateo, California.

Oakland Beginnings

Rose grew up in a small Oakland Chinatown house filled with family: an older sister, four younger brothers, and nine older half‑siblings from her widowed father’s first marriage. Money was tight, her father was strict, and there were no after‑school activities or extras. Rose went to school and then came straight home.

May 16, 1941, Oakland, CA: Rose, brother Allen, mother Tso Mee She, and older sister Mabel

There were, however, backyard chickens, a small garden, simple celebrations, and a pair of roller skates. She often recalled skating around the block “around and around and around,” happy just to move. She was the quiet thoughtful one in a family that wasn't shy about being loud in house where you couldn't help but be on top of each other. Those early years in Oakland shaped her lifelong unflappable calm and practicality.

Rose in her own words:

On August 2, 2009, Rose recorded her memories of the past 70 years. About her parents she said:

“My mom came over not knowing any English, marrying my father after his first wife passed away. So she came over being the stepmother of nine children.

"The house was always crowded. I have four younger brothers. They all came within almost a year of each other. I don't know how my mother did it, but she did. She had a very hard life actually.”

“My father’s calligraphy was beautiful. He had really good writing. He wrote poems… My mom kept a lot of his writings. I just don’t know how to read them.”

She also reflected on what it was like growing up:

"Oh, I can’t remember very many [happy memories]… It just seemed like we were always so busy just trying to survive. I remember not having very much. We wore hand‑me‑down clothes. Shoes that had holes in them, patched with cardboard.

“I remember one birthday— I don’t remember which one—when we went out and got an ice cream cone. That was it.”

1945 -  Nephew Edward, Rose, Siblings Dennis, Fred, Mabel and Allen

“They were very strict, old‑fashioned. We were never allowed to stay after school to play or join clubs. We had to come home and learn how to cook and sew, learn Chinese, which I didn’t do very well at.

“One thing we did have freedom to do was ride our roller skates around the block. I just went around and around and around. It was just like being free and having all the air flying through your face."

"[The roller skates were] something that we bought at the thrift shop across the street. And to this day, I love shopping at the thrift shops.

1950 - Front: Dinnes, Fred, Pak Yick, Jimmy, Allen
Back: Edward W., Morris, William, Edward K., Henry, Bruce

1950 - Front: Rose, Mee Shew, Mabel, Diane 
Back: Else, Elsie, Edith, Helene

“Once my sister Else took me on my first train trip to San Francisco. We went shopping, and she bought me a coat for my birthday. It must have made me happy because I remember the trip and don’t remember much else.”

1957 - Rose Senior Prom

Rose attended Lincoln Elementary School and Westlake Junior High before graduating from Oakland Technical High School in 1957. She recalled:

“I remember thinking in high school, how was I going to tell them I wanted to go to the prom, because I didn’t even know how to explain what a prom was.”

After high school, she studied executive secretarial skills at Oakland Community College and took tailoring classes, proudly sewing many of her own clothes. She later attended San Francisco State for a semester of general education courses before the sudden death of her father in 1958 led her to leave school and begin full‑time clerical work for Alameda County, first at the Health Department and then at the Public Defender’s Office, helping support her mother and younger brothers.

Angel Island Voices: John HONG Hock How

The Angel Island Immigration Station, often called the 'Ellis Island of the West,' was a major entry point for immigrants from Asia between 1910 and 1940. But unlike Ellis Island, Angel Island was designed not just as an entry point but as a gatekeeper to enforce restrictive immigration laws like the Chinese Exclusion Act. It was primarily used to examine, interrogate and detain undesirable Asian immigrants barred from the U.S. by law.

Three of my four grandparents were detained at the Angel Island Immigration Station in 1912, 1915, and 1937. They were held there for a few weeks to several months.

Inspired by the Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation (AIISF) Immigrant Voices project, I created this video to share the Angel Island story of my paternal grandfather, John Hong Hock How. Because of the Chinese Exclusion Act (1882-1943), his immigration story became part of a multi-generational journey stretching from his father to his children.

This video is also posted on the Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation website here: https://www.immigrant-voices.aiisf.org/angel-island-voices-john-hong-hock-how/

A Chin Family Gravestone

I've been visiting this gravesite at the Mountain View Cemetery in Oakland, California, for as long as I can remember, well over fifty years, once or twice a year when I was younger for Ching Ming and other occasions, less as I've gotten older. So, I know this tombstone, but I never really read it until my Aunt Millie asked me to help translate the Chinese words.

I know the names of my Uncles and Aunts etched here in granite, in both English and Chinese. If I had bothered, I would have seen the name of our family village in Chinese (Toisan, Luk Chun, Char Jew Village) and that they were members of the 25th generation (to live in Luk Chun). I had completely overlooked the poetic couplet between their English and Chinese names or perhaps ignored them as indecipherable. Yet a poem like this is rare on both Chinese and English gravestones. 

A rough poetic translation might be:

Precious bones tragically remain in the ancient earth for a thousand years  寶骨悲留千古地
The family's sadness hangs over the grave for ten thousand years               家身慘掛萬年墳

Here is the word by word translation with the Hoisanese pronunciation/Mandarin Pinyin in parentheses:

寶 (bo/bao) - treasure, precious 骨 (goot/gu) - bones 悲 (bi/bei) - sorrow, sadness 留 (lau/liu) - to leave behind, remain 千 (tein/qian) - thousand 古 (gu/gu)- ancient times 地 (ee/di) - earth, land 家 (gaa/jia) - family, home 身 (seen/shen) - body 慘 (taam/can) - tragic 掛 (kaa/gua) - to hang, suspend 萬 (maan/wan) - ten thousand 年 (nein/nian) - year 墳 (foon/fen) - grave

A more literary translation might be:

     Precious bones tragically linger in the ground for a thousand years
     The living family mourns at the grave for ten thousand years

This couplet was almost certainly written for Jimmy, probably by his father Pak Yick Chin, as the first character of each line are taken from the characters of Jimmy’s name "Bo Gar". Though the twin brothers’ deaths shorty after birth also haunt the family story, the poem’s emotional center is Jimmy’s sudden, violent death. It expresses the sorrow at his untimely deaths with his physical remains staying in the earth, and the family’s grief lingering for an eternity. The contrast of "thousand years" and "ten thousand years" poetically expresses that eternity.

Chin Pak Yick and his son Jimmy Bo-Gar Chin
1950, Oakland, CA (Colorized)

Jack Lan Hong (1933 - 2013)

Jack Lan Hong - 1953

Jack Lan Hong 曾連卓 was born in China, Guangdong Province, Toishan County, Ong On Village 中國廣東省台山縣東安村, on October 15, 1933, and pass away a month after his 80th birthday, on November 20, 2013 in Redwood City, California. He was the second son of John Hong Hock How, a Stanford-trained electrical engineer, educator, and business man, and Tui Goon Chu Hong.

Shortly after he was born, Jack, his parents and older brother Larry moved to Guangzhou, where his brother Paul and sister Lily were born. During China’s war with Japan, the family moved frequently and ended up in Kunming, China. There Jack's youngest sister, Mary, was born and Jack acquired his taste for spicy food. After the war, the family moved to Rangoon, Burma, where the children attended the Wah Sha School.

In Jack's Own Words

On September 7, 2009, a few weeks before his 76th birthday, Jack recorded his memories of the past 75 years, including:

Growing up in Kunming, China, and Rangoon, Burma

"My earliest memory is in Kunming because that’s where I grew up. I had a classmate who owned a restaurant. Oh maybe, they were Muslim. They didn’t eat pork. When I would show up at their restaurant, they would give me nong. You know the [rice] crust from the big pot. So they also served me beef. I never knew if it was horse meat, because in Kunming they ate a lot of horse meat too.

The Heavy Weight of a Trip to the National Archives

by Kenneth Hong
July 16, 2023

As I wind my way up Interstate 280, I take in the golden hills of California and glimpses of the Bay through the cool fog of an ordinary San Francisco summer morning. Exiting the highway, I drive by the rows of regimented white tombstones of the Golden Gate National Cemetery and up to the gray concrete bunker that is the National Archives. The usual feelings of anticipation build, a mixture of excitement and dread--excitement that I might find something new and dread that I end up with empty folders.

Entrance to the National Archives in San Bruno, CA
July 3, 2023

The Angel Island Files: Mysteries Solved and Found

By Kenneth Hong
July 16, 2023

Over the last 4th of July week, I spent a day and a half at the U.S. National Archives in San Bruno, CA, where many of the Chinese Exclusion Era immigration files from the Angel Island Immigration Station are kept. The archivist had located the files for my maternal grandfather (Chin Pak Yick), his father (Chin Gay Bin), his wives (Lee Moon Yee and Tso Mee Shew), and his prominent first cousin (Chin Lain).

   

Lee Moon Yee, 1918
An "entirely respectable Chinese woman"

   

Chin Pak Yick, 1918
"Well-dressed in American Clothes"

I had previously written about all five of these relatives. All but my grandmother Tso Mee Shew had died long before I was born, and in the case of my great-grandfather, Lee Moon Yee, and Chin Lain, before my mother was born. When I asked her or other relatives, "What do you know about your grandfather, father, or his first wife?" I would get only vague recollections about their father, and nothing about the other two.