THE MEE YIM WONG FAMILY HISTORY—Draft 2

By Matilda Wong, Ed Wong, May Louie, et al. (1994)

Edited by Jeffrey L. Staley (2003)

Draft only—not to be quoted without author’s permission

The Lee family in China

Early history

We know very little about our branch of the Lee family in China prior to Mee Yim’s immigration to the United States at the beginning of the twentieth century. However, Dong Chew’s father, a distant relative of Mee Yim Lee,[1] received a “Lee Family Book” in 1931 for donating money to the Lee Family Association in the United States. It consisted of twenty-four slim volumes of Lee family genealogical lists, all in Chinese, of course. According to Dong Chew, one of the volumes ended with Mee Yim’s great, great grandfather, Lee Wing Gak, who was also Dong Chew’s great, great, great grandfather. Because of the patriarchal structure of the traditional Chinese family, only male descendants were listed in the book.

An article in the Seattle Times stated that the Lee Family Association “dates back to the 1800s, when Chinese arrived in the United States to work on the transcontinental railroad.”[2] The article goes on to note that the Lee family—or Li, depending on how you transliterate it from Chinese—has “recently edged out Chang (or Zhang) as the largest surname in China, and, therefore, the world. There are about 100,000 Lees in the United States.”[3] The Lee Family Association believes that they are “descended from the ancient Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu, founder of Taoism, who lived 2,500 years ago,” but “traces the explosive growth of the family back about 1,500 years to the Tang dynasty, when an emperor named Lee bestowed his surname upon favored subjects.”[4] Steven Lee, grand national president of the association, states that “at that time, it was an honor to be a Lee. The emperor said, ‘If you’re loyal to me, [a] good soldier, I [will] give you the last name Lee.’”[5]
In April 1984, Dong Chew had dinner at the home of Walter Wong, Mee Yim’s oldest son.[6] After the meal, Dong Chew told Walter and Jeff Staley the story of the “Lee Family Book” and how it had been lost during the Japanese occupation of China, at a time when his father was living there.[7] Luckily, prior to its loss, Dong Chew had memorized seven generations of the family, and could also recite the next five generations of male Lee descendants after Wing Gak, who was the last direct ancestor to be included in the book.[8] According to Dong Chew, Wing Gak had two sons, Yin Hing, from whom Dong Chew and Peter Lee[9] were descended, and Yin Dick, Mee Yim’s ancestor. Dong Chew said Yin Dick had one son, Ha Chai, who had four sons: Sing Fou, Sing Lok, Sing Ling, and Sing Chai, who was Mee Yim’s father (and also known as Lee San Tuey, or Lee Sing Tui).

Matilda Wong has in her possession fifteen pages of Chinese documents which were translated by a friend of her brother, Edward, in 2003.[10] According to the summary of their contents, these fifteen pages comprise eight different documents, seven of which are land purchases in China. Six of these land purchases involved Mee Yim (aka Lee Hawk Seen, his married name), while the seventh, dated March 2 1862, involved the purchase of a parcel of land belonging to “Lee Hay’s grandfather.”[11] Most likely “Lee Hay” is “Lee Ha Chai,” Mee Yim’s grandfather. If this hypothesis is correct, then the “Lee Hay’s grandfather” mentioned in the Chinese document that Matilda has, would be Wing Gak.

Lee Mee Yim’s parents and siblings

Lee Sing Tui, Mee Yim’s father, was a farmer from the village of Cheong San Toon, Chen Wo Hen province, Canton, China. His wife’s name was Ng Yen Hai. She had at least one older sister whom Mee Yim’s children called “Yee Pau.” Mee Yim most likely had two brothers and two sisters, but Mee Yim is the only child whose name we know. According to Mrs. Jang Wong, who lived in Cheong San Toon village for many years,[12] one of Mee Yim’s brothers moved to “Nam Yang” (Singapore), and the other moved to “Jill Foo” (place unknown). Mrs. Jang Wong thought that one of these two brothers died at an early age.[13] According to her recollection, Mee Yim also had an older sister and a younger sister. The older sister, Ng Lei Hai, married a “Hom,”[14] but she died soon after she was married. The younger sister’s name was June Hai. Mrs. Jang Wong remembered calling her “June Goo.”

Family tradition holds that Mee Yim’s mother had a difficult life in the village. Mrs. Jang Wong lived with Ng Yen Hai for eight years, and told Mee Yim’s daughter, Matilda, that Ng Yen Hai was widowed and had lost two of her children to early deaths. But despite these tragic losses, Ng Yen Hai acted superior to many in the village. This may be due in part to the fact that she had live-in maids. Although this was somewhat of a rarity in peasant village life, perhaps her son, Mee Yim, had sent enough money home to China from “Gold Mountain” (the Chinese name for California) to allow her to purchase the live-in maids. Live-in maids (“mui tsai”) were usually from very poor families that could not afford to care for additional girls. The girls’ families would be paid a lump sum of money for their children’s services, and then for their room and board the maids would help get water from the well, cook, and garden. They usually stayed only a few years before leaving to get married. Ng Yen Hai’s maids’ names were Sen Toy,[15] Fook Lon, and Hon Lon. Mrs. Jang Wong knew the last two maids.

Ng Yen Hai had a reputation in the village of Cheong San Toon for being difficult to get along with, and Mee Yim’s wife (Ow Loy Ho) later recounted many incidents which typified her mother-in-law’s behavior.[16] For example, Ng Yen Hai would chase a pig into her daughter-in-law’s bedroom so it would wreck her things. Ng Yen Hai would also berate her daughter-in-law for stealing food. When Ow Loy Ho would prepare Swiss chard (a vegetable that shrinks a lot when cooked), Ng Yen Hai would accuse her of eating some of the chard when she wasn’t looking.

Despite the tense relationship with her daughter-in-law, Ng Yen Hai kept a little red booklet with the birthdates of her son, her daughter-in-law, and her grandchildren. Somehow Mee Yim got this red booklet, and when he died, his daughter Matilda put it in a safe deposit box, where it remains to this day.

Ng Yen Hai was in her 70s when she died in China in 1939. When Mee Yim received word of his mother’s death, he took out a picture of his mother and looked at it, heaving a big sigh. He obviously was sad to lose his mother.

Lee Mee Yim

From what Mee Yim told his children, the name he was given at birth was Lee Mee Yim. In other words, this name was not merely a “paper Wong” name. However, on some immigration papers he lists a second name as “Wong Dan Sing/Dong Sin.”[17] The name “Sing” was also carried by his father and his father’s brothers. In China, when a man married, his parents or other relatives would choose a married name for him. From that time on, the man would be known by his married name. Mee Yim’s married name was Lee Hawk Sin and he was born January 5, 1883[18] in the village of Cheong San Toon, Chen Wo Hen province, Canton, China. Mee Yim had three years of schooling in China before coming to the United States.

Lee Mee Yim comes to America

In July, 1958 Mee Yim’s daughter, Matilda, began planning for her father’s eightieth birthday celebration.[19] In preparation for that event she asked him some questions about his childhood, and jotted down his answers in a small notebook which she kept. This is what Matilda wrote back then: “To U.S. when 17 years old; been over here 60 years.” This would mean that Mee Yim first came to the United States sometime between January 1899 and January 1901. Since Chinese children were considered to be one year old when they were born, we cannot be sure whether Mee Yim was reckoning the seventeen years in terms of American birthdays or Chinese birthdays.

We do not know what Mee Yim’s reasons were for coming to the United States nor do we know how he entered the country; but we do know that many Chinese people were living in extreme poverty in their homeland and were continually trying to immigrate to California. So perhaps Mee Yim’s family was facing similar economic hardship. Since Mee Yim left his ancestral village at such a young age, it is likely that he was the youngest son in his family and stood little chance of inheriting any farmland. Even when confronted with the anti-Chinese sentiment in California, America still appeared to be a “Gold Mountain” compared to the harsh reality of landless village life in China.

According to Dong Chew, Lee Ha Tip was one of Wing Gak’s grandsons and Dong Chew’s great grandfather. He was about seventy-five years old in 1906, owned a wood store in San Francisco, and had already been living in the United States for a number of years. It may be that Lee Ha Tip, a first cousin of Mee Yim’s grandfather, functioned as an important link connecting Mee Yim to his new life in California, giving him lodging and work, and perhaps even claiming him as his son.

We do not know precisely how Mee Yim was able to enter the United States the first time. Since the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 prohibited the importation of Chinese laborers “construed to mean both skilled and unskilled laborers and Chinese employed in mining” (see Appendix B),[20] he could only enter on a student visa, or with false papers claiming he was born in the United States, or as a merchant or a merchant’s son. And since there is little evidence that Mee Yim had the requisite education to enter on a student visa under his real name, it is more likely that he immigrated with false papers of some kind. But if Mee Yim had done this, he did not initially immigrate under the Wong name, for there are no Alien Identity records for a Mee Yim Wong that predate November 1905. The earliest papers on file at the San Bruno NARA (National Archives and Records Administration) have to do with Mee Yim “Wong’s” departure from San Francisco in 1905. So the hypothesis that Mee Yim originally immigrated with false papers leaves unanswered the question of why there are no Alien Identity records for Mee Yim Wong prior to 1905. Could it be that he originally immigrated under another name? This is possible, but why wouldn’t he have kept that name when he left for China in 1905? These perplexing questions raise another possibility: that Mee Yim was smuggled across the border from either Canada (Victoria was a popular port of entry into Canada) or from Mexico. Under this hypothesis, Mee Yim would not have had any identity papers whatsoever until he decided to return to China in 1905. And since he intended to return to the United States, he would have bought the false Wong papers at that time. At this point, we are only left with hypotheses. His manner of entrance into the United States was a secret he kept to himself—and perhaps shared with his wife. Probably out of fear of deportation, he never divulged this secret to his children.

Lee Mee Yim buys a new heritage: The “paper Wong” connection

When Mee Yim left for China on November 4, 1905 on the steamer S.S. Siberia, he already had a false identity as “Mee Yim Wong,” a merchant’s son, and a native Californian born February 28, 1884 at 810 Montgomery Street, San Francisco.[21] His parents are listed as Wong Si Way and Wong Mon Lee Shee, who were both still living and were residents at 727 Clay Street in San Francisco.[22] At that time Mee Yim swore that he had never been to China before, that his mother, (Wong Mon Lee Shee), was on a temporary visit there, and that he planned to return to the United States. He lists his occupation as a cook in the Royal Restaurant on Third Street in Sacramento, near Chinatown, where he had worked for a little over two years.[23]

We do not know the details of how Mee Yim purchased his false papers. But the practice was common, and it was one way to circumvent the Chinese Exclusion laws. In this intricate system of deception, prospective Chinese immigrants would buy “paper” or “slots” from people, who, for a sum of money, would claim the buyer or the buyer’s children as their native-born sons or daughters. The buyer then either memorized the paper family history or arranged for a real relative to immigrate to the United States, sending information about the “paper” relative’s family history back to the family in China. The prospective immigrant would then memorize the information in anticipation of the questioning he or she would undergo when arriving in the United States. According to Judy Yung, professor of American Studies at UC Santa Cruz, the system would often start with a Chinese merchant “returning from a visit to China, . . . [who] would claim the birth of a son, thus creating a slot by which a kinsman could later immigrate to the United States as his paper son. . . .[F]or a certain amount of money (usually $100 per year of age) . . . peasant[s] could buy papers and come posing as the son of a merchant or US citizen.”[24]

The Federal Immigration authorities knew about this practice but were unable to stop it. In fact, the Angel Island port of entry in the San Francisco Bay was built in part to deal with the problem. The object of the center was to detain Asian immigrants long enough to ask them a battery of questions about their family, village, and residence in California, and to bring witnesses to testify on behalf of the “returning” immigrants, hoping that they could trick them into providing contradictory information. The contradictory information would then be used against the prospective immigrants as justification for their deportation.[25]

The Wong family from whom Mee Yim Lee bought his false papers was quite active in the Congregational Church at Waverly Place in San Francisco, and apparently owned a mortuary near Portsmouth Square. Whether this is the “Nam Sang Lung” “general merchandise business” Wong Si Way claims to be a member of, is not clear.[26] Perhaps the mortuary was just a “side business,” off the books, so to speak.