The Chinn Family
Strangers in a Strange Land
My father was off fighting the war in a faraway place when I was born forty-five minutes after midnight on May 10, 1943, in the backseat of a taxicab en route to Hollywood Presbyterian Hospital.
Apparently, I must have been very anxious to come out and see the world. Although I have no actual recollection of the event, the incident caused quite a stir at the time since Grandmother Chinn, who had accompanied my mother, was the somewhat panicked person somewhat reluctantly forced to attend to my somewhat untimely arrival. But both she and my mother managed to weather the ordeal. My mother had decided to name me after my father, so I became Robert Clarence Chinn, Jr. My Chinese name, which was chosen by Rev. Philip Lee of the Chinese First Presbyterian Church, was Kai-yin, meaning “develops talent and virtue.”
My father was a handsome man and an athletic one. He excelled in school sports and won many awards. From his mother he inherited the Caucasian aspect of his appearance, and from his father, the Chinese. It was a formidable combination. I’m certain that in the course of his regrettably short life he was able to break more than his share of hearts.
The Chinese surname Chinn has suffered a variety of Romanized spellings attributed to the choice of the immigration officer filling out a name form. When my great grandfather first came to this country, he was listed as Ah Chin. When he subsequently returned once again to America with his young son, their surname was spelled out as Chan. Later my father legally changed the name back to what he considered to be the proper spelling: Chinn.
In 1866, Ah Chin, the man who would eventually become Chan You’s father, left his ancestral village of Look Toon in China to seek his fortune in a land far away known as Gold Mountain—the United States of America. Gold had been discovered in California in 1849, and when news of this had finally reached China countless Chinese flocked there, lured by the promise of untold riches.
He had joined the See Yup contingent from China’s southeastern coast and boarded a ship of the Pacific Mail Line bound for California. He would arrive in America and go to work as a laborer for the Central Pacific Railroad, which was in the process of building the western segment of a railroad line that would span the continent of the United States from the Pacific to the Atlantic—the first Transcontinental Railroad.
Construction on the western portion of the railroad had begun from Sacramento in 1863, but when the workers reached Donner Pass and the mountains beyond, they ran into a major problem. The mountains steadfastly refused to be conquered. Undaunted by this setback, the railroad engineers brought in Cornish miners to blast a path through the mountains.
But the job proved to be much more difficult. When the Cornish miners were unable to make any headway through the solid granite outcroppings of California’s Sierra Nevada Mountains, the Chinese railway workers were brought in to get the job done.
The Chinese workers had their own methods. Carving out roads precariously clinging to the sides of cliffs was an engineering feat that had been commonplace in China for thousands of years, so the US Chinese laborers tackled this challenge in much the same way.
The Chinese laborers lowered themselves from the tops of cliffs by ropes in baskets they had fashioned for themselves, and, while suspended two thousand feet above the base of the American River Gorge, they chipped away at the granite cliff face and planted explosives to blast tunnels and carve a passage through the mountains. Of course it was no easy feat to do this. The slightest miscalculation could prove fatal.
The white men watched in awe as the little Asian men from Kwangtung hung from the cliffs at dizzying heights, their little baskets swaying in the wind as they chipped away at the shale and granite to set their dynamite charges. Then they held their breath as the little men scrambled back up the ropes to make it back to the top of the mountain before the charges detonated.
It was dangerous, difficult, backbreaking work, but Ah Chin was young, strong, and relatively fearless—more importantly, he was determined to make enough money to return to China a rich man. That was his goal, and he worked hard, collected his pay, and saved as much as he could—which was most of it because, as he saw it, there really wasn’t very much to spend it on out there in the middle of nowhere.
The Caucasians were amazed at what they considered to be the strange and bizarre habits of the Chinese. After returning from a hard day’s work the Chinese laborers would always take a hot bath in bathtubs made from empty whiskey kegs and change into clean clothes before having their evening meal. The white men, who rarely ever bathed, found this habit as repulsive as the unusual food that these strange heathens ate.
Instead of the beef, potatoes, beans, and bread that made up their own fare, the Chinese meal consisted of a soup made from dried seaweed, salted cabbage, and pork or poultry cooked with several different kinds of vegetables, as well as strange dishes made from things they had sent from San Francisco such as dried oysters, abalone, cuttlefish, and dried mushrooms. They ate all this strange stuff with bowls of steamed white rice.
They would not drink cold water but instead seemed to consume endless cups of tea. The fact that the boiled water they used to make the tea also prevented illness and stomach ailments was totally lost on the white men.
The Chinese, on the other hand, couldn’t figure out what the Caucasians had against proper hygiene and illness prevention. To the Chinese the white man’s food was boring, bland, and tasteless.
One day, one of the white workers who had been to San Francisco and had eaten at a Chinese restaurant there sat down to eat with the Chinese. It wasn’t long before a few of the others became somewhat curious and followed suit. Eventually, many of the Caucasians bold enough to taste the Chinaman’s exotic food immediately became enthusiastic converts.
The Chinese workers were paid a wage of twenty-five dollars a month, out of which they had to pay for their own food, lodging, tools, and supplies. Most of them lived in makeshift tents, found some kind of shelter outside, or slept beside the campfire. The white laborers were paid thirty-five dollars a month plus room, board, and supplies.
The Chinese, who did the more dangerous and unwanted work in addition to working longer hours, were far from happy with this situation. The Chinese laborers lodged a complaint and their employers reluctantly raised their salary to thirty dollars a month. Eventually their salary went up to thirty-five dollars, although the workers still had to pay for their own food, supplies, and lodging.
The Chinese workers were divided into labor gangs of about twenty men. Each of these groups had an elected head man, a go-between for them and their Caucasian employers, who managed their affairs by ensuring that they received the proper pay and seeing to their needs—which included delicacies from San Francisco and available hot water for tea.
It was not easy, but Ah Chin managed to save around twenty dollars or more out of his salary each month. Whenever they camped near a river or stream Ah Chin tried to save even more money by catching fish for his meal, or, if he was lucky enough to catch several, he sold some of them to his fellow workers.
He was enterprising and thrifty by nature, and these were traits that he would eventually pass along to his son. On Sunday, which was the day off for all of the railroad workers, the Chinese would wash and mend their clothes, relax, and gamble. Ah Chin took this opportunity to make some extra money by doing the laundry for those that preferred to spend the idle time gambling.
Life on the American frontier was rugged and difficult, but not totally unbearable. The Chinese laborers, for the most part, were used to hostile living conditions, so what they faced seemed like a piece of cake. That is, until winter came. The winter of 1866 and 1867 turned out to be one of the worst in all of recorded history. The hostile forces of nature compelled the railroad workers to struggle through blinding blizzards and relentless snowstorms as they doggedly continued to tunnel their way through the mountains, sometimes working through snowdrifts as deep as fifty feet.
Finally, by January 1869, they had reached the Great Salt Lake Basin. The Chinese laborers continued working from the break of dawn to sunset laying rail after rail eastward to meet their counterparts, the teams of Irish workmen laying track westward for the Union Pacific Railroad.
Ah Chin was there to witness the historic event of the joining of the Central Pacific Railroad and the Union Pacific Railroad on May 10, 1869 at Promontory Point, Utah. I, his great-grandson, would be born exactly seventy-four years later to the very day. To honor their hard work and dedication in the building of the railroad, an eight-man Chinese crew was selected to place the last section of rail that connected the United States of America from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific.
After the final completion of the first Transcontinental Railroad, the Central Pacific no longer had jobs for a good many of the workers and Ah Chin went to work for the Union Pacific Railroad.
When this job ended, he joined a group of Chinese men going into the hills in search for gold. They worked mines abandoned by the white miners before them, tirelessly scavenging a little gold here and there. They lived frugally and saved most of their money. By the mid-1870s, Ah Chin felt that he had made enough money to return to China as a rich man.
Back in China he took a bride and started a family, but as the years passed he began to grow restless. The memories of his numerous adventures in America and the relative freedom that he had enjoyed there still remained in his mind. There was still so much of that vast country that he had not yet seen or experienced.
His son Chin Gong Yuen (who became known as Chan You or Frank You Chan) was born in 1882, and after his son’s twelfth birthday Ah Chin made a decision. In 1893 he returned to America with his son. America was a land of great opportunity, and he wanted his son to take advantage.
After arriving back in the United States, Ah Chin got a job working construction with the Chinese railroad gang on the Southern Pacific Railroad. His young son Chan You looked older than his age, but he was still too young and not strong enough to work laying track. He was not too young, however, to become the cook’s assistant, so he lied about his actual age and ended up getting the job. It was a learning experience that would stand him in good stead for the rest of his life. It was also a job that would allow him to travel with his father around the American Southwest.
After the work on the railroads ended at the turn of the century, Ah Chin and his son travelled for a while, taking jobs and saving their money. They were unwelcome everywhere they went, however. Many of the people in some of the small rural areas harbored a deep suspicion and prejudice of the strange yellow men. Children would follow them, calling them Chinamen, among other demeaning names, and hurling other curses and rocks at them.
In order to conserve their money, they travelled by walking or hitching rides with friendly travelers who happened to be going their way. When the distance between where they were and where they wanted to go was too long, they would sometimes hop onto a freight train that often travelled the very rails that they had labored to lay. When the train slowed down during the approach to the station, they were careful to jump off in order to avoid the railroad police, who took a dim view of free riders.
One time in Arizona, however, on a freezing cold night, they were both particularly tired and huddled together for warmth. They fell asleep only to awaken as the train jolted to a full stop at the train station. They quickly gathered their belongings and disembarked. But it was too late. A big, burly, eagle-eyed railroad cop had seen them jumping off the freight car and, yelling, “Hey, you there!” started after them.
Ah Chin and Chan You fled on foot with the railroad bull hot in pursuit. The young and agile Chan You managed to put some distance between them, but the older and slower Ah Chin, weighed down by his baggage, was not fast enough. Suddenly Ah Chin felt a sharp pain as the cop’s hard wooden billy club whacked against his shoulder and the force of the blow sent him stumbling to the ground.
Chan You saw his father fall and stopped. As he ran back to help his father he saw the cop raise the billy club to strike again, but at that moment Ah Chin turned toward him and the cop saw his face.
“Chin Chinaman!” the cop exclaimed in surprise as he lowered the billy club and put it back in his belt. “You’ve gotten old and slow, old man.” He reached out his hand and helped Ah Chin up. When Chan You reached them, the big bull of a railroad cop was dusting his father off and laughingly saying, “Fancy seeing you again after all these years.”
As it turned out, the railroad cop had been one of the Caucasian laborers who had worked alongside Ah Chin on the Central Pacific Railroad. He had taken a liking to Ah Chin’s cooking and they had become friendly with each other back then.
The railroad cop took them to his small house, where he lived alone, and invited them to stay as long as they needed. In turn, Ah Chin cooked a meal for him once again. “Ah,” the railroad cop said with satisfaction after he had finished the supper. “This is the taste of the old times.” He shook his head. “Here in Williams there is an old Chinaman with a cook tent but his food is slop, not even fit for pigs.” Then, as if an inspiration had come to him, he said, “You should think about staying and opening up an eating place here. With your skill I’m sure that you would meet with success.”
Ah Chin simply laughed, but Chan You pondered what the railroad cop had said. They slept at his house that night and the next day Chan You and his father went to the old Chinaman’s cooking tent. The owner was a surly old man who, like them, had originally worked on the railroad. They soon found that the railroad cop was right. The soup was foul and watery and the food was tasteless and simply awful. The owner told them that he was tired of the business, that his heart was no longer in it and he simply wanted to return to China. He offered to sell them the entire business, lock, stock, and barrel, at a very attractive price.
Chan You had noticed that an increasing number of American people were taking an interest in Chinese food. Larger American cities such as San Francisco and New York with their large Chinese immigrant population had proper Chinese restaurants. But in the more rural areas of the Southwest, the Chinese eating places might have been found inside tents such as this one or beneath a crudely constructed makeshift shack. They served the same type of Chinese food—an Americanized version of the simplest dish, stir-fried vegetables with a little meat—that the Chinese rail workers had remembered eating at home. In America they used whatever local ingredients and produce were available to them. It was in this way that the dish so popular with Caucasians called chop suey had come into being.
Chan You thought it would be a good investment to use some of their savings and take the old Chinaman up on his offer. Ah Chin, however, was more focused on getting back to the West Coast so that he, too, could return to China, having seen enough of America. He had finally had his fill of adventure, and now all he wanted to do was return to his homeland and live out the rest of his years in peace.
“But Father,” Chan You argued, “if we do this we could make much more money and you could return to China a much more wealthy man.” Ah Chin pondered the logic of his son’s wisdom and finally gave in.
They haggled with the old Chinaman and obtained the cook tent for next to nothing. But the business came with a bad reputation that Chan You and his father had to rectify. From the years spent working with the cooks on the railroad gangs, Chan You had learned not only how to cook the food that Americans liked but also where to send for the imported Chinese food and supplies that he needed from wholesalers in San Francisco and Los Angeles.
While Chan You had no scruples about cooking the inauthentic Chinese style dishes white people preferred, that didn’t mean that he and his father were going to eat them. There were a few Chinese living in Williams, and one of them grew Chinese produce that he sold to the other local Chinese. Chan You began buying from him so that he could supplement the menu with a few more authentic dishes that they themselves could enjoy.
Chan You also remembered that on feast days back in China his father had slaughtered pigs and had made various dishes utilizing the entire animal, including his favorite dish of crispy-skin roast pork. He asked his father if he could replicate those dishes here in Arizona, and his father replied that they would need to build a proper roasting oven since the cook tent they had inherited only had a crude, rudimentary fire source, two large woks, and an old cast-iron grill.
Ah Chin and his son built a proper Chinese-style roasting oven out of brick and mortar. Then they bought a live pig and Ah Chin taught his son how to slaughter it and butcher it to make the feast dishes that he had cooked back in China. With their new oven they made the crispy skin roast pig as well as char siu, the Chinese barbecued pork that they served either by itself or stir-fried with vegetables over chow mein. They used the rest of the pig for other dishes and cured some of the meat as lop yuk—Chinese bacon—and made the sweet Chinese sausages with rice wine called lop cheong.
When word got out in the small Chinese community about what the new cook, tent owners were doing, they began attracting some Chinese customers as well as the Caucasians. This was a major breakthrough because most of the Chinese preferred cooking their own meals at home. Of course, most of the Caucasians preferred beef to pork, so Chan You had to learn how to butcher cattle as well so that he could prepare the steaks, stews, and other dishes that they liked.
Soon they began serving a good portion of their Caucasian and Mexican customers the more authentic Chinese dishes that they had taken a liking to after noticing Chan You and his father eat them. Chan You was gratified to see that some of their Caucasian customers were finally beginning to expand their eating experience with the more authentic Chinese dishes along with their chop suey and chow mein as well. This newly added variety also made for a lot of repeat business, and it wasn’t long before they had a solid customer base. Their business in Williams prospered, and with all this prosperity Chan You got another idea.
The Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway had opened the Grand Canyon Railway only a few months before. Chan You and his father had taken the three-hour, sixty-five-mile trip to the southern rim of the Grand Canyon and they had noticed that a couple of cook tents had been set up there that were doing a brisk business serving food to the many tourists that flocked to see the unique natural attraction, but none of them were serving Chinese food. While they were doing good business in Williams it occurred to him that they could do even better business at the Grand Canyon, so while Ah Chin looked after business in Williams, Chan You opened up a cook tent there.
In his new cook tent, Chan You served chow mein and chop suey alongside the more authentic Chinese dishes that the Caucasian customers in Williams had taken to. But he found that most white people didn’t like to eat Chinese food for breakfast, so he decided to cover all his bases by adding bacon and eggs and flapjacks as well as steaks and chops and the more traditional American fare that he had served before on his new menu.
Their venture into the restaurant business in Arizona had ended up being a more profitable venture than Chan You had even imagined, but his aging father began to long to return to his family in China. Even Chan You began to contemplate the endless financial opportunities that could result from living in a big city instead of the comfortable but limited income that they were able to eke out in the middle of a desolate wasteland.
In the city he would have to start from scratch once again, since his father would be taking most of their savings back to China with him. But Chan You was young and healthy and he had the ambition and enough courage and strength for whatever might lie ahead. Now, not only had he learned how to cook and run a restaurant but he had also learned the skills of a butcher, and this would serve him in good stead in the not too distant future.
They made the decision to sell their business, leave Arizona, and head for the West Coast. Chan You and Ah Chin arrived in the city of Los Angeles sometime around 1903. They were two strangers out of many who had finally arrived in the big city.
Los Angeles at this time was still in the beginning stages of the sprawling metropolis that it would eventually become. Still, it provided a remarkable change of pace from rural life.
Not long after arriving, Ah Chin would return to China where with the money that he had saved from working in America he was able to live out his remaining years as a prosperous and wealthy man. Chan You would remain in Los Angeles and his life would span the years that would see that city turn into the largest and most prosperous boomtown in the history of the United States.
The Chinese family societies of “Tongs” were formed just after the middle of the nineteenth century in the United States of America to help the Chinese immigrants who had come to work on the railroads. These family societies helped the new immigrants adjust to life in their new homeland. They provided them with food if they were too poor to buy food and support when they needed support.
The Chinese in America could also look to them for other kinds of assistance. When disputes or law troubles arose, they would look to the Tongs to intervene. Because the Chinese were not protected by American law, the Tongs had to provide justice for them. The Chinese were frequently targets of racial discrimination and hate crimes arising from ignorance and prejudice.
When he first came to Los Angeles, Chan You had settled in the area now known as old Chinatown, and went to his family association for help. The family association put him in contact with a relative, the owner of a meat market, who employed him as a butcher in his shop.
Today, little is known about Chan You’s early years in Los Angeles. The earliest known photograph of him, taken from an immigration identification document bearing that name, shows him as a young man dressed formally in a dark suit and wearing a necktie. Other early photographs show him smartly dressed in a military uniform, so at some time between 1903 and 1909 he must have been in the service.
According to my grandmother, he was an industrious and ambitious young man who worked very hard and diligently saved his money so that he would someday be able to open his own business. He was filled with youthful optimism, and, since he was also extremely conscientious, he tried to assimilate himself into the American culture and the English language. He gave himself the English name of Frank and thereafter became known as Frank You Chan.