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 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.

Growing up in Kunming, China, and Rangoon, Burma

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 and 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.

I Owe My Life to Wong Kim Ark

By Kenneth Hong
May 30, 2023

The threads of history are woven together in unexpected ways. My family's story is inextricably linked to that of a man who fought for his rights as a U.S. citizen. A man whose name I had never heard of until a few years ago. I owe my very existence to that man named Wong Kim Ark.

Wong was born on Sacramento Street in San Francisco in 1870. My great-grandfather, HONG Yin Ming was born a few blocks away on Washington Street that same year.* We don't know whether or not they ever met, but they lived almost identical lives.

Identification Photo of Wong Kim Ark
 on 1904 Immigration Affidavit
(National Archives)

Identification Photo of Hong Yin Ming
 on 1899 Immigration Affidavit
(National Archives)

Official Map of San Francisco Chinatown 1885, with
Sacramento and Washington Streets Highlighted

Keep reading to learn more about Wong's legacy and how it affected Hong Yin Ming and his descendants.

The Hong Family: Recollections on Serving the Community

1951 San Francisco Civic Center Plaza - Paul, Larry, and Jack Hong

1955 San Francisco Richmond District
(L-R) Sister-in-law Marie Chu,
Mary, Lily, and Paul Hong

     My father, Jack, and his four siblings, Larry, Paul, Lily, and Mary came of age in the 1950's and 60's when it was common young men and women heeded their country's call. They felt a deep and abiding desire to serve their communities and country. They also grew-up at the tail end of segregation and exclusion in the United States when government jobs often provided some of the best (and often only) opportunities for hard-working, dedicated minorities to make a good middle-class life for themselves and their families.

     They were third-generation Chinese Americans, who were born in China and spent their early years there. After World War II they followed their father and grandfather's footsteps moving to the US in their teens, individually then in pairs. They spent most, if not all, of their careers serving their country, state, or local communities. They and their spouses served with distinction as teachers, doctors, engineers, lawyers, civil servants, and community leaders. All U.S. military service was completed with honorable discharges. Continue reading to learn more about their individual stories.

Zeng Laishun - The first Chinese to enroll at an American College

From the Hong 曾 Family's American Diaspora Files^†:

ZENG Laishun 曾來順 was the first Chinese to attend an American college. Laishun attended Bloomfield Academy, a boy's boarding school in New Jersey for three years. He then enrolled at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York in 1846. The women from the First Presbyterian Church in Utica, NY, were Laishun's sole source of support and refused to extend his funding beyond their initial two-year agreement. In May 1848, Laishun left New York and set sail for Hong Kong.

According to historian Edward J.M. Rhoads, “he was a pioneer in Western studies, an early and lifelong convert to Christianity, one of the first Chinese in the United States, a leading second-echelon figure in China’s self-strengthening movement, and, during his CEM [Chinese Educational Mission] days in the United States, a diplomatic representative of the Qing government as well as an explicator of things Chinese to the American public.”

The pioneering achievements of Zeng Laishun, America's first Chinese college student, have often been overshadowed by Yung Wing 容閎 (November 17, 1928 - April 21, 1912), who followed Laishun's footsteps by four years and is forever remembered as the first Chinese student to graduate from an American university, Yale College in 1854.

Zeng Laisun late in his career. From the Smithsonian Institution, United States National Museum,
Department of Anthropology, Division of Ethnology.

The Smithsonian misidentifies this photo as “Portrait of Li Hung Chang, Viceroy of Chilhli in Costume with Fur Cost n.d.” Researchers have asserted that the photo is of Zeng Laisun and not the Viceroy. Moreover, the photo is signed “Tseng Laisun” (which is the way Zeng spelled his name in his later years). The Smithsonian has declined to correct its catalog.

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.]

Zack ZENG Zhe - A September 11th Fallen Hero

From the Hong 曾 Family's American Diaspora Files^†:

On September 11, 2001, Zack ZENG Zhe 曾喆 was working at the Bank of New York at One Wall Street near the World Trade Center. When his building was evacuated, Zack could have gone home like the rest of his colleagues. Instead the 29-year-old gathered all the first aid and medical supplies he could find and told his friends and colleagues he was heading to the disaster scene to assist.

While attended the University of Rochester college Zack had worked as EMT with the Brighton Volunteer Ambulance. So, on 9/11, Zack was doing what he was trained to do.

The Burma Road (1938-1945)

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]

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.

HONG Chew Yook (1870-1941) and CHIN Shee (1880-1963) - A Lifetime under the Chinese Exclusion Act

Chew Yook, 1899

My great-grandfather HONG Chew Yook Ming 曾稠毓 also known as Hong Yin Ming 湯恩明 was born in San Francisco, CA in 1873, according to official U.S. documents.

Chew Yook returned to China with his mother when he was seven years old. There he married CHIN Shee 陳氏, returning to U.S. on June 18,  1888 aboard the S.S. Zambesi.

At that time, he had to sue in Federal court to be allowed to land.

This was six years after the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 passed prohibiting all immigration of Chinese laborers, with exceptions for diplomats, teachers, students, merchants, and travelers. However, U.S. District Court of the Northern District of California ruled “In the Matter of Hong Yin Ming on Habeas Corpus,” case no. 6514, that HONG Chew Yook was a native-born American citizen. On February 20, 1989, he was released and allowed to land, 

These court records are the first documented evidence of the Hong Family in the United States. While the records refer to his birth in 1873, we do not have his birth certificate or information about his parents from any US documents. He may have in fact been born as early as 1869.

Thru Revolutions and World War: HONG Hock How (1900 - 1979) & CHU Tui Goon (1909 - 2005)

My grandfather HONG Hock How 曾學厚 was born on 23rd day of the 6th month of the 26th Year of the Emperor Guang Xu (July 19, 1900),  in the waning days of the Qing Dynasty in Dong An Village , Taishan County, Guangdong Province 廣東省台山縣東安村. He spent his boyhood years in the village, entering school at age 7 where he spent his first four years memorizing books and learning how to write.

The Chinese Revolution of 1911

In 1911, the Chinese Revolution overthrew the Qing Dynasty, and the Republic of China was established on January 1, 1912. The revolution signaled the end of 2,000 years of dynastic rule in China and the start of China's early republican period. The revolution accelerated the modernization of daily life in China, and for Hock How, it meant his school was re-organized and divided into different classes. He continued to study there until he was 15 years old.

Hock How, 1915

In February 1913, Hock How’s father, Hong Chew Yook, returned to their village from America. At Hock How's grandmother's insistence, he married NG Chau Hai, “a very pretty girl", in April 1915. Hock How returned to America with his father on October 27, 1915. He was detained on Angel Island while his citizenship status was investigated. After the initial interrogation, Hock How's application was rejected, and he faced deportation. Chew Yook hired a lawyer who petitioned the Labor Department in Washington DC. Eventually, his petition was granted, and on February 23, 1916, Hock How was admitted to the U.S. as the son of a native-born citizen. Afterward, Chee Yook took Hock How to visit the grounds of the 1915 Panama-Pacifc International Exposition. The now iconic San Francisco Palace of Fine Arts is one of the few remaining structures from the 1915 Expo.

Once in Palo Alto, Hock How spent a month teaching himself to read English with the help of friends and was eventually placed in 4^th grade at the Lytton Primary School. In 1918, his wife, NG Chau Hai, had a heart attack and died while traveling to her younger brother’s wedding. According to Hock How “that news knocked me off my feet, but thereafter I determined to put all my energy into study.” 

From the time he started Primary School, Hock How worked for families as a house boy, doing odd jobs in the house including cooking and cleaning. This work earned him “a room in the back barn, breakfast, and evening meal, and $20 per month.” He first worked for Mr. Nagle, then Professor Fish, and finally Mrs. J. F. Newsom at 1129 Cowper Street, Palo Alto, eventually earning $40 a month. He continued his studies at Palo Alto Union High School and went on to qualify for admissions to Stanford University’s School of Engineering.

Zeng Family from Huangdi to Toisan

The document below traces the history of my family 曾氏 from to our forbearers in Chinese mythology to our family founder, the Confucian Sage Zengzi 曾子宗聖公, and his descendants who over many generations migrated from Northern China to the Sheung Gok in Toisan County, Guangdong 廣東省台山縣上閣.

Where I really come from...

If you want to know where I'm from, well, I hope you have some time, because it's complicated.

• I'm from Philly. I live outside Philadelphia, PA. [But you don't have that cool Philly accent, like Kate Wislet in Mare of Easttown.]

Independence Hall, Philadelphia, PA

• Okay, dude, I'm from a native Californian, born and raised in San Mateo, CA. But I have lived and worked all over the US and around the world.
  

[Well, what about your parents or their families?]

• Alright, Dad, he grew up in San Francisco where went to high school and college.
• Grandpa, he wasn't from San Francisco. He grew up out in the country in Palo Alto where he went to high school and college.
• His father, my great-grandfather, spent over half of his life living in Palo Alto as well. But he first came to the US in 1888.
• So, we've been Californians for generations.