Remembering Fred Chin (1943 - 2022)

Fred CHIN Bo Hing 陳寶興 was born in Oakland, California, on August 17, 1943 to CHIN Pak Yick and TSO Mee Shew, the sixteenth of his father Pak Yick's seventeen children, and the fifth of Mee Shew's six. Fred passed away on Tuesday, December 27, 2022 at age 79 at his home in Danville, California where he lived with his partner Lee Chen.

Fred Chin and Lee Chen, December 23, 2022

Fred grew-up in the family's home on 7th Street in Oakland Chinatown. Although his family did not have a lot of money, their home was filled with a lot of love and the Chin’s all worked together to get through lean times. Throughout his school years, Fred enjoyed playing basketball, football, and many other sports.

Fred (Center) in 1945 
with siblings (L-R) Rose, Dennis, Mabel and Allen

Looking back, his brother Dennis recalls that Fred was a good student, getting all A’s and B’s, especially in Math and Science. Freddie wanted to take a Chemistry class, but it was full so he ended up having to take a laboratory tech class instead.

Fred (bottom 2nd from left)
Lincoln Junior High School
6th Grade Photo

William S. Chin (1931 - ) Memories of Growing Up in Oakland, California

William S. Chin, 1959

My maternal uncle William Bo Shang Chin 陳寶瑺 was born in the Oakland, California on January 5, 1931, to Chin Pak Yick 陳伯釴 and Lee Moon Yee 李滿意. He was the youngest of their 11 children. Moon Yee died in 1933 a month before William's 3rd birthday. Pak Yick re-married in 1936, and William has two half-sisters (including my mother) and four half-brothers from that marriage.

Uncle Bill made the following submission for a project called "Memories of Growing Up in Oakland, California: Lincoln School Alumni". The project, published on September 24, 2010, encapsulates both family and school photos, individual memories, newspaper clippings and more covering 1370 pages. William's brothers Morris and Allen and sister-in-law Diane Lee (Chin) also had individual submissions.

* The Lincoln School is one of the oldest schools in the Oakland Unified School District. The first Lincoln School was created in 1874 when the Harrison Primary School at 10th and Alice Streets was renamed. It was the main primary school for generations of students from Oakland Chinatown and the surrounding area. It has had several incarnations and occupied different buildings. It was a 1-8th grade school during the time William's father attended in the 1910's and a K-9th grade school by the time William attended in the 1930s and 40s. The current Lincoln Elementary School teaches kindergarten through 5th grade students, and is located at 225 11th Street in Oakland, California.

Morris D. Chin (1927-2018): In His Own Words

My material Uncle Morris Bo Doong Chin 陳寶琮 was born in the San Francisco, California on September 14, 1927, to Chin Pak Yick 陳伯釴 and Lee Moon Yee 李滿意. He passed away at the age of 90 on June 29, 2018, in Oakland, California.

He made the following submission for a project called "Memories of Growing Up in Oakland, California: Lincoln School Alumni". The project has over 1300 photos and entries starting from around 1920.

Asian American History is American History

Why I started this blog?

In 2001, I started researching my family's roots in the US and China, trying to uncover the stories of my ancestors. The post below is my first attempt to connect my family's story directly to the broader history of the United States. It focuses on how American laws and institutions have shaped the lives of my forbearers and continue to shape the lives of my family today. It's content was excerpted from the October 21, 2021, panel discussion on "Asian Perspectives on Race & Equity" presented to the public in Tredyffrin and Easttown Townships, Pennsylvania.

This is the history that I wish I had learned growing up, and that my children and all of our children should learn. It is only by learning about all aspects of our history that we can create a better future together.

You can read the transcript that follows or watch the 13 minute video on YouTube.

[The following transcript has been edited for concision and clarity.]

Chin Bok Lain (1869-1938) - Unofficial Mayor SF Chinatown

View from a Hang Far Low Restaurant balcony above Grant Street look toward
the corner of Sacramento Street and St. Mary's Cathedral on the left (Lee Rashall)

"Down the Street of Bazaars in San Francisco's Chinatown on July 31[, 1938], more than 1,300 mourners followed the body of Chin Lain to its last resting place. Son of Cantonese immigrants, the late Chin Lain lived to become a millionaire merchant, philanthropist and unofficial mayor of the greatest Chinese colony in the Western Hemisphere. Because the Chin family embraces the ranks of Chen and Chan, "relatives" of Chin Lain stretched in grieving files for six blocks behind the flower-filled phaeton which bore his picture at the procession's head (below). Observers said his funeral was the biggest, most dignified, Chinatown had ever staged." -- Life Magazine, August 15, 1938, page 14

Phaeton bearing portrait of Chin Lain (Lee Rashall)

The Chin Family's Greatest Generation

My grandfather CHIN Pak Yick, his first wife LEE Moon Yee, and my grandmother TSO Mee Shew raised what is arguably our family's greatest generation. This generation, the third generation of Chin's in the United States, all born in America, includes twelve of my mother's brothers and sisters who have over 190 years of combined U.S. Military and U.S. Government service. They served in Europe and the Pacific during World War II, in Korea, and in Vietnam. They also served with distinction at many levels of the U.S. civil service. All U.S. military service was completed with honorable discharges, and U.S. government service with retirement after many years of service.

Like most people, the Chin brothers and sisters were a product of their times. They came of age when many young men and women heeded the call to serve their country and fight fascism and authoritarianism abroad. They also grew-up at a time of segregation and exclusion in the United States when the federal civil service provided one of the best (and often only) opportunities for hard-working, dedicated minorities to make a good middle-class life for themselves and their families.

The Chin Family in the U.S. Military

My mother's eldest brother, Bruce Chin (1919-1988) served in the US Army during the invasion of Europe in World War II. He served three years with tours in Paris and Germany while both were under the boot of the Nazis. He was later assigned to General Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Bruce, Paris, 1946

Cover and Page from "Paris Under the Boot of the Nazis"
(From Collection of William Chin)

[Note: Willam Chin compiled this record of service to the United States for his generation with the help of his brothers and sisters and their children.]

The Gateway to Guangdong: Pearl Alley and the Plum Mountain Pass

The Pearl Alley or Zhujixiang 珠璣巷, Nanxiong is in Northeastern Guangdong province was a wealthy town across the border from Jiangxi province. As Han Chinese families migrated from the Central China to Guangdong, for many Pearl Alley was the first stop after traversing the Plum Mountain Pass or Meiguan Pass 梅關 through the Nanling Mountains 南嶺山. As such it could be consider to be the Ellis Island of Guangdong.

The Nanling mountains separate the Yangtse and Pearl River watersheds and are located at the junction of Guangdong, Guangxi, Hunan, and Jiangxi provinces. The mountain range elevation averages 3,000 feet with peaks as high as 6,000 feet. The ancient Meiguan road was first built in the Tang dynasty (618-907 CE) and covered the more than 75 miles between Ganzhou, Jiangxi 贛州江西, in the north and Nanxiong in the south. The road quickly became the main north-south trade artery and accelerated the shift of China’s economic center of gravity away from the central plains and toward the south. The pass was named after the numerous plum trees planted along the road.

North gate of Meiguan Pass with "South Guangdong Xiongguan" engraved over the arch, and "Plum Ridge or Plum Mountain Range" on the stone tablet. [Credit: Zhangzhugang – own work, CC BY-SA 3.0 https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=33050221]

Oops! Mistakes in the Book

Oops!

History is not the study of cold facts but the interpretation of the past through available evidence. This evidence may include records of events (like a newspaper's recitation of who, what, where and when) or interpretations and analysis of those events (how and why). Both of those are subject to mistakes and bias. Many genealogies were lost in mass wartime migrations. With the social and financial importance of genealogies in traditional Chinese society, it also would not be surprising for some people to claim a more influential lineages to move up in society. Some genealogies were completely made up, with professionals going around using templates then fill in more information supplied by the clients. Other times overrun indigenous tribes in north and west of China wanted to blend in with Chinese society.

The Chin family genealogy, which was given to me by my maternal grandmother, has the following note on page 8:

Mistakes in the Book: According to the Book to avoid the Jin 金 chaos, the family's southern migration started with the move to Nanxiong 南雄 then to Gu Gang Zhou 古岡州. As the early migration was so long, there was no record of the exact time. According to legend, it was around 1266AD 咸淳二年. However, this was hearsay and not support by historical records. To find out the truth, the village elders were asked and they remembered the migration was about 1131 紹興元年. Between 1130 and 1266 is a difference of more than 140 years. Such a mistake! Therefore, the Book contains inaccurate information. [Source: (穎川源記略 page 8, translation by Fonny Lau.]

These discrepancy may be attributed to poor record keeping or lost records during the times of war, chaos, and mass migration that occurred throughout Chinese history. But the self-acknowledge mistakes in the Chin book also points to the important aspect of historical records, which is that they may have conflicting facts and are not always reliable.

Our Ancestral Village Family Registries

In China, clans or kinship ties are based patrilineal groups of related people with a common surname sharing a common ancestor. In southern China, these ties were often strengthened by a common ancestral village or home, where clans had common property and a common spoken patois that was unintelligible to outsiders. Following Confucian tradition, each family maintained a registry, called a Zupu 族譜 in Mandarin, that contained the clan's origin stories and its male lineage.

The background image for this website is a composite of three pages from the Hong and Chin family registries. The left and center pages were hand copied by my paternal grandfather, Hong Hock How, from our ancestral village registry in Dong On 東安, China (Taishan County, Guangdong). Hock How used a booklet made of thin, translucent paper with a hand-stitched, stab binding. The page on the right is from the introduction to my mother's Chin family registry for our ancestral village Chazhou 槎州 (Taishan County, Guangdong). My copy appears to have been photocopied several times. It also had a hand-stitched, stab binding, which I removed in order to digitize the book, then re-stitched myself. It was given to us by my grandmother, but its author is unknown.

In Chinese tradition, the eldest person in the clan was giving the very important task of maintaining the clan's registry. When families settled in a new area, they would take a copy of the registry from their old village to use as the starting registry for their new branch of the family. As a result, family lineages in China can be traced back dozens of generations and thousands of years, at a minimum going back a clan's first ancestor to settle in a county or province, and often going all the way back to a China's mythical past.

Hock How was following in this tradition when he made a copy of of the Zeng Family Registry prior to his voyage to the United States in 1915. During the Chinese Cultural Revolution, many family registries were destroyed as relics of China's feudal past. Since China opened up in the 1980's, there has been a renewed interest in family genealogies as both local and overseas Chinese try to reconnect with their past. In some cases, family registries have been recreated from copies secretly hidden by village elders or preserved by the Chinese diaspora.

The Southern Chen Dynasty (557-589)

Northern & Southern Dynasties – Chen Dynasty南陳朝(557-589)

The Chen dynasty was the fourth and last of the Southern dynasties in China. Following the Liang dynasty, it was founded by Chen Baxian, an 18th generation descendant of Ying Chuan Chen Clan founder Chen Shi. The Chen dynasty covered most of China South of the Yangtse River 長江

According to Al Chinn and Philip Tan, my mother's family descended from the second and third Chen Emperors, Chen Qian and Chen Bozong. Other's like Hanson Chan dispute this claim. For more information see: Oops! Mistakes in the Book.

Chen Emperor	Personal Name	Posthumous	Birth – Death	Reign
First	Ba Xian霸先	Wu Di武帝	503-559	557-559
Second	Qian蒨	Wen Di 文帝	522-566	559-566
Third	Bo Zong 伯宗	Fei Di 癈帝	554-570	566-568
Fourth	Xu 頊	Xuan Di 宣帝	530-582	568-582
Last	Shu Bao 叔寶	Hou Zhu 後主	553-604	582-589

Chin Pak Yick (1893-1958) & Lee Moon Yee (1893-1933) - Depression Era Struggles

Chin Pak Yick

My grandfather Chin Pak Yick 陳伯釴 was born in the Chazhou Liu Cun in Taishan County, Guangdong, China, 廣東省台山縣六村槎州 on June 18, 1893 to Chin Gay Bin 陳基彬 and Fung Shee 馮氏.

Chazhou village was founded by a father and son pair of imperial scholars, Chen Yu Fu and Chen Ben Shen, who placed first in provincial-level imperial exams in 1690 and 1714, respectively.

During his youth in China, Pak Yick spent most of his time studying. In 1911, Pak Yick received money from his father who was in the United States to pay for his marriage, and on April 4, 1911, he married Lee Moon Yee 李滿意. She was born on April 22, 1893 in Leong How village a bit more than one Po* away from Pak Yick’s home. The marriage was arranged by their parents, and the first time they met was in Pak Yick’s home the day they were married. Pak Yick married name was Oon Sik or Don Ing 敦鼐.

During their first years of their marriage, Moon Yee stayed in the Chin family home in Chazhou. Meanwhile Pak Yick stayed at the Sung Sin school in Lok Mee village 乐美 (about 2 li away) only coming home on Sundays and during school holidays. He attended the Sung Sin school for all of 1911 then attend the Ming Yung high school in Taishan City for six months before stopping to leave for the United States.

Chin Pak Yick Application to Land as minor son of Merchant, Chin Gay Bin
October 26, 1912

Chin Pak Yick Certificate of Identity, November 19, 1912

Chin Gay Bin - First Generation American

Chin Gay Bin 陳基彬 (1864-1916) and Fung Shee 馮氏 (b.1869)

My Great-grandfather Chin Gay Bin (Kee Ben, Ghee Ben, pinyin: Ji Bin) was born in Cha Zhou Liu Cun in Taishan, Guangdong, China, 廣東省台山縣六村槎洲. Gay Bin was married to Leong Shee 梁氏 then married Fung Shee (b.1869) 馮氏 on January 7, 1887 (Guangxu 12-12-14). According to immigration records they had six sons and a daughter, Long Ngook, who died when she was 8 months old. However, family ancestral  records only name five sons, Pak Tou 伯陶 also known as Don Born 敦本,  my Grandfather Pak Yick 伯釴, Pak Hong 伯衡, Pak Ho 伯侯, and Pak Hei 伯喜.

Chin Gay Bin, 1912

Gay Bin's Wife, Fung Shee

According to Gay Bin’s grandson William Chin, “Grandpa Ghee Ben may have immigrated with Uncle Chin Bok Lain in 1896. Uncle Bok Lain returned to China in 1905 to visit and then returned to San Francisco in 1906. So grandpa could have come in 1896 or 1906.” According to immigration records, Gay Bin first arrived in the United States on November 26, 1910 on the S.S. China. These records also give alternative spellings for his name as Chen/Chan Ki Pun.

Two months after arriving, Gay Bin became a new partner at Wah Chong Co. which was located at 311 8th Street in Oakland, California. He contributed $500 to the partnership and worked as a salemsman at the store which sold watches, jewelry, and other merchandise.

He later brought two of his sons with him including Pak Yick and Don Born. Don Born died in the United States and is buried at the Hoy Sun Ning Yung Cemetery in South San Francisco, CA. His descendants ended up in Hong Kong, along with the descendants of Pak Hong. Pak Ho and his descendants remained in China. We do not know what happened to Pak Hei, or if he had any descendants.

According immigration records for Pak Yick and Pak Yick's wives, Gay Bin had one daughter who died as a baby and six sons. The English spelling of their names varied from interview to interview, and I was only able to match four names. One of the names may be an alternate pronunciation or name for the remaining son in our village records. Both unmatched names may also have been for paper sons. Interestingly, Pak Yick's 1937 immigration transcript indicates that all of his brothers had died and that none of them had been the the US. The contradicts the fact that Don Born died in the US on February 17, 1937, and is buried in South San Francisco.

Gay Bin's grandson William, who was born in 1931, remembers that Gay Bin lived on 8th or 9th street in Oakland in the 1930's while working at Hang Far Low. William recalls his older sister Mary telling him that Gay Bin would take Helene and Henry for walks when they were old enough, but William was still too small. 

William's recollection conflicts with his parents' and siblings' immigration transcripts from 1918, 1936, and 1937 and others public records which indicate that Gay Bin died in San Francisco on January 17, 1916, and that his remains were sent back to China.*

Gay Bin was in the 1^st generation of his family to immigrate to the United States, the 23^rd generation of Chins to born in Liu Cun, and a 62^nd generation descendant of the Ying Chuan Chen family 頴川陳氏.

Sources:

*Death Certificate #3073. Family Search.

National Archives.

Chin Family Genealogy (Jiapu).

TSO Mee Shew (1917 - 2006) - Strength and Resilience

TSO Mee Shew 曹美秀
April 15, 1935

My maternal grandmother TSO Mee Shew
曹美秀 was born in Shek Doi Village 石嘴村 in Taishan County, Guangdong, China, on November 7, 1917. She was the second daughter of Tso Wah Sun 曹華申 and Yow Shee 丘氏.

Her aunt arranged her engagement to CHIN Pak Yick in 1935, and they were married on August 29, 1936. Pak Yick had returned from America following the passing of his first wife and was already father to eleven children.

Gateway to Shek Doi Village, 2014
(credit: Douglas Lam)

On June 19, 1937, they traveled with Pak Yick's youngest son, William, to the U.S. aboard the SS President Coolidge. Meanwhile, Edward was sent to Shanghai to study. After arriving at the Port of San Franciso, Mee Shew was detain at Angel Island immigration station for a medical examination and to await the determination of her legal status to enter the United States.

On July 7, 1937, Pak Yick and Mee Shee attended a lengthy interview session before a board of special inquiry consisting of two inspectors, a clerk, and an interpreter at the Angel Island immigration station. At the end of the inquiry, the Chairman, R. W. Hanlon, made the following findings:

1. The alleged husband accompanied the applicant to the United States and was admitted as a returning merchant.
2. There were a few statements on which they lacked agreement but it is not believed that this factor would discredit the general favorable showing made. He believed that the evidence should be considered as reasonably establishing that the claimed relationship exists.

Chin Pak Yick & Tso Mee Shew in 1937

Hamlin moved that Mee Shew be admitted if and when cured of a hookworm infection that had been identified during her medical examination. The other inspector seconded the motion, and clerk concurred. After being detained on Angel Island for 23 days, Mee Shee obtain her medical release on July 12, 1937 and was admitted to the United States at 12:10 PM the same day.

Chen Family from Huangdi to Char Jew Toisan

This document traces the history of my maternal grandfather's family from it's beginnings in China's mythical past to the founding of the Ying Chuan branch of the Chin clan 潁川陳氏 in Henan Province, through to settling in Char Jew Village 六村槎州 in Toisan County, Guangdong 廣東省台山縣 at turn of the 18th century.

Char Jew Village Gate
1936-37 Photograph by William S. Chin

REVISION HISTORY: 

September 13, 2023: Added to post: photograph by William S. Chin of the Char Jew Village Gate taken on his first visit in 1936-37.

February 18, 2022: Added paragraph on page 11 about Feng Tai’s sons scattering to places with the water radical in remembrance of their home town Sha Shui. (Source: Gene M. Chin https://www.chinfamilytree.com/indexenglish.html)

11/17/2021: Minor corrections to table of contents formatting. Corrected generation numbering for Chen Wen and added Hanson Chan's ancestor Chen Zhi-tong.

6/18/2021: I have made the following updates to this document to more closely match the family tree in Hanson Chan's book Finding the Direct Bloodline of My 111 Ancestors in China:

• Added entries for the cadet branch of Marquises of Chen that moved to Qi and adopted the name Tian.
• Removed entries for the Emperors of the Chen Dynasty, which has been republished in a separate article.
• Added entries for the Fujian branch of the family. 

See Oops! Mistakes in the Book for the reasoning behind these changes.

Where my Mother comes from...

This is the follow-up post to "Where I'm really from...". There I write about where my father's side of the family is from. This is where I get to tell you about my mother's side:

• To recap, I live in the suburbs outside Philadelphia, PA.

Philadelphia City Hall (credit: Kenneth Hong)

• But, dude, I'm like totally a native Californian, born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco (credit: public domain)

[I know that. What about your mother and her family?]