Skipper

according to family legend......
Skipper was one of the smartest dogs around.
When the family first moved to 710 So. 5th Street, there was a couch just inside the entryway, next to the telephone.  Skipper was told, 'No. No. you can not get up there' on numerous occasions.

On the weekends, the family would often pile into the car and drive up to Dubuque to visit Grandpa Owens.  Upon their return, the first person on the porch often heard a 'thud' from the otherside of the front door.  When they opened the door, there was Skipper wagging his tail waiting to greet the family.  However, further investigation always revealed a warm spot on the couch where Skipper had laid, keeping watch over the house while his family was gone.


Alice riding Spot with Skipper



DIE BUNG JUNG .... BABY!

it was shortly after they were married, in 1964.  the newly weds had just settled down to domestic bliss in their little apartment on sacramento street in san francisco. 

alice decided she needed to learn chinese. everyday when kirby came home from work, she would ask him the same question. "when are you going to teach me chinese?" and every day he wold reply "you don't really want to learn chinese,"  this went on and on for several weeks.  finally he gave in to his young bride's request and told her he would teach her how to say 'i love you'  and for  the next several weeks they practiced; morning and evening greeting each other with this loving little phrase:

DIE BUNG JUNG ~ I LOVE YOU

after several weeks of practicing, alice paid a visit to the in-laws house on california street.  she wanted to make a good impression. she wanted the family to like and accept her.  when she arrived, several of the aunties were present along with kirby's mother and his sisters. greetings were shared amongst the ladies. and everyone settled down for a nice visit, when suddenly alice made the big announcement.....

"kirby is teaching me to speak chinese"

everyone was taken by surprise, unbeknownst to alice, they all knew that kirby had skipped chinese school to play baseball with his friends and his grasp of the chinese language was rudimentary at best.  so with a knowing nod, someone asked her what she had learned thus far.  alice took a deep breath and said,"he taught me to say 'I LOVE YOU" '

and  with a big smile and a twinkle in her irish eyes she very carefully pronounced

DIE BUNG JUNG

at which point the mother-in-law, all of the sisters and aunties could contain their amusement no longer and they all began to laugh uncontrollably

alice was thoroughly confused, and with a bewildered look on her face she asked what why they laughing? did she mispronounce the words?

finally, jesse, the mother-in-law's older sister patted alice on the shoulder and said 

"no, dear. you pronounced it PERFECTLY! however, kirby did not teach you to say 'i love you' that rascal taught you to say 'YOU ARE A BIG FAT ELEPHANT'.

apparently, this phrase was one of the first things that children learn when they first begin chinese school.  and because he had played hookey for the majority of his time there, this was the only phrase that stuck in his young, juvenile delinquent mind!

Bread Stuffing for Turkey or Chicken

At first glance, this looks like a long complicated recipe, but after reading it through I realized that the context of the recipe is actually Josephine trying to instruct her youngest daughter, Alice (who had very few cooking skills before getting married) on how to make stuffing (I am guessing probably for her FIRST Thanksgiving as a newly married woman) I enjoyed reading the notes/advice from mother to daughter, especially realizing how many thousands of miles separated them from Clinton, Iowa to San Francisco, California

Jian dui

FROM WIKIPEDIA: Jian dui is a type of fried Chinese pastry made from glutinous rice flour. The pastry is coated with sesame seeds on the outside and is crisp and chewy. Inside the pastry is a large hollow, caused by the expansion of the dough. The hollow of the pastry is filled with a filling usually consisting of lotus paste (蓮蓉), or alternatively sweet black bean paste (hei dousha, 黑豆沙), or less commonly red bean paste (hong dousha, 紅豆沙).
Depending on the region and cultural area, jian dui are known as matuan (麻糰) in northern China, ma yuan (麻圆) in northeast China, and jen dai (珍袋) in Hainan. In American Chinese restaurants and pastry shops, they are known as Sesame Seed Balls.^[1] They are also sometimes referred to as zhimaqiu (芝麻球), which translates to sesame balls in English.<sup>[2]

I have fond memories of the pink boxes that Yeh-yeh (my grandfather) would bring home from Chinatown.  These pink boxes meant two things......one - we were having company.....and two - there were YUMMY SWEET TREATS to be eaten inside.

Often the treats were still warm, fresh from the bakery. The outside is crispy and slightly nutty tasting.  As you bite through the crunch to the slightly chewy doughy insides and finally to the sweet bean filling that always reminded me of peanutbutter.

Now, as an adult, whenever we go for dim sum I always end the yummy meal with a delicious sesame ball (or two) and am immediately whisked back to my grandparents house on California Street with many aunties, uncles and cousins stopping by for a visit. Everyone gathered in the kitchen and the melodious cadences of Cantonese floating about in the air.  I couldn't understand what they were saying, but it was family and i was content to sit and look at photographs and eat the yummy jian dui that my yeh-yeh offered to me.</sup>

Ming Quong Home for Girls

Jessie's eldest daughters Eleanor and Estelle lived at the Ming Quong Home For Girls.  They were her daughters from her first marriage.  I do not yet know the reason why her first marriage ended, nor do I know why the girls lived there.

The home was run by the Presbyterian Missionaries.  From watching the video, it seems that girls were sent there to live if they were orphaned or if their parents were unable to care for them properly. It was during the Great Depression that Eleanor and Estelle would have been sent to live at the home.  I would venture to guess that their father was no longer in the picture and Jessie was unable to care for them on her own.

Every Saturday Jessie and Ed would drive to Oakland to visit the girls, and often would bring some of the cousins along for the visit.


~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~**~
update: 2013

....Last year, I had the privilege and honor to meet Jessie's daughter Estelle and Estelle's grandson Greg and great-granddaughter Kelsi.

I learned that in 1930 Jessie and Homer(her first husband) went to China in 1930 and took their two young daughters with them.  While living in China, Jessie gave birth to a third child.  They named the baby Homer Jr.  Sometime during their time in China, Jessie and Homer's marriage fell apart.

The two sisters returned from China in 1938 and lived with various relatives for the next few years.  Eleanor is reported on the 1940 Census as living with her father Homer and his third wife, Frances.

Sometime after 1940, someone reported the girls to child services as not 'orphan' children without a proper home/family and they were placed in the Ming Quong School until they were adults.

Mary Seu 1890-1951

Karl Young, Mary Seu, Keith Young

Nelson Soohoo(?), Mary Seu, Kirby Dong

Mary Seu was born in 1890 and died in 1951.  She had seven daughters, two sons, a step-son and numerous grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Mary lost her left eye while horse playing with her brother.  They were holding a 'glass lamp' and accidentally poked her eye out.  Mary was raised as a traditional Chinese daughter with a sense of filial duty.  As a mother she arranged the marriages of her own daughters.

She raised her family in Lucerne Township just outside of Hanford, California.  At some point between 1920 and 1930 she moved, with her children, to San Francisco. In her later years, she lived with her daughter Arlene, Arlene's husband Peter and their five children. I have heard from my aunties that Kirby was her favorite in their family and she spoiled him.

Mary Seu

Auntie Kam

I have vague memories of my dad's aunt and cousins coming to visit my grandparents in San Francisco in the 1980's.  His cousins Pat and Liz were very nice. and his aunt, Auntie Kam, seemed very nice also but she did not speak English, so we really could not communicate very much.

I recently learned that Uncle Bill married Auntie Kam in China. then he brought his bride back to America. If someone had told me this six months ago, I would have thought this was an interesting situation and wondered why he didn't bring her back to the US and then get married.  I also learned that 'Kam' is not her real name.  It's just what the family called her.  It was short for Kum Mo which translate to 'Aunt" in Cantonese.  In China it was culturally acceptable to name a person by the place they held in the family, so you might have families whose children were named FIRST SON, SECOND SON, FIRST DAUGHTER, etc.  And people's names sometimes changed based on things that happen during their lifetime.

Again,  six months ago I might have found that to be very odd to not know the 'real' name of a family member.  But recently I have been reading and researching Chinese-American history in the hopes of learning and understanding more about my own family history. My sister recommended reading SHANGHAI GIRLS by Lisa See. This was the fictional story of two 'upper class' girls in Shanghai China and how their world came crashing down around them when they learned that their father (who had a gambling problem) had lost their family's fortune and at the same time Japan invaded Shanghai.  Hoping to save his own life, their father sold them as brides to a Chinese man from America for his sons.  Because of the Japanese invasion, many families were torn apart.  The mother took the daughters and started out on the journey that would bring them to America.  The book is the story of that journey as well as the lives of these two sisters once they made it to 'The Gold Mountain'.  It gave me a broader understanding of how life was in China before and after the Japanese invasion. And it gave me a better understanding of life for Chinese people in the United States in the 1930s - 1950's.

After reading this book I wanted to know more.  I decided to read GOLD MOUNTAIN MAN, also by Lisa See.  Turns out that this book is a family biography covering four generations of the author's family. Her great-great grandfather came to America just after the California Gold Rush.  He found work as an herbalist treating and caring for the many Chinese men that were helping to build the transcontinental railway.  A few years later the author's great-grandfather came to America. He found his father and began working with him. But soon he was ready to strike out on his own, and he opened a store selling ladies undergarments to 'working girls' in the Sacramento Area.  It was at this time that her great-grandmother emmigrated from Portland to Sacramento and somehow convinced the chinaman that he needed to hire her (a white woman) to work in his store.  They worked together and eventually fell in love.  But there were laws forbidding inter-racial marriages, so instead of a traditional marriage, they went to a lawyer and drew up a contract. This union produced four sons and a daughter who were all 1/2 Chinese and 1/2 white. (like me!).

Reading this story gave me a better grasp of the laws and discriminations that Chinese have faced in America since they began emmigrating here.  Thankfully, most (hopefully all, but I'm not sure) of these laws have been repealled. And America has become such a true melting pot that Chinese as well as other Asians and other minorities are more readily accepted into the mainstream of American culture.

I was shocked and saddened to learn that there were laws that prohibited Chinese from entering the United States.  If, somehow, you were lucky enough to 'get around' these laws, then you still  had to face laws that prohibited the Chinese from voting, owning property, marriage, attending schools, owning businesses, going to resturants and stores frequented by white people, living in towns and neighborhoods outside of Chinatown.  Many Chinese persons entered this country 'illegally' as paper sons and daughters. And because of this they were often afraid to provide personal information, if they were caught they would be deported and sent back to China in disgrace.

I know that my own grandfather was a 'paper' person.....but THAT is a different story for another day!