They came to lay track. They stayed to pick oranges. And eventually prospered cooking up chop suey. The history of Gom Benn in America began with the building of the transcontinental railroad in the 1860s.
With China’s last dynasty in decline, and a revolution looming, many peasants from southeast China fled overseas. From the Toishan area, they went to California. By the 1870s, hundreds of Chinese laborers found work in and around the new San Bernardino-Riverside citrus groves, according to the City of Riverside’s Chinese Americans in Riverside: Historic Context Statement (2016).
At the peak in the 1890s, three quarters of the 3,000 Chinese laborers came from Gom Benn or neighboring villages near Toishan in southern China.
Riverside became a refuge, a home away from home, and a training ground for their business startups. In the late 1870s, a Chinese quarter or downtown formed in Riverside with laundries, contracting offices, general stores and boarding houses. The impoverished Chinese men came, despite laws in the late 19th century and the early 20th century that (until after World War II) stopped Chinese women from immigrating and generally allowed only the “paper sons” of those men already in America to come.
The Gom Benn immigrants in Riverside included Voy Wong (d.1975) and his wife Fay Hing Wong (d.2000), whose Chungking Cafe operated from 1942 to 1974.
At times, their partners included Bing Tew Wong (d.1984), who later operated the Great Wall Restaurant in West Covina, and Harold Wong. Harold and his wife Mary would later endow a Gom Benn scholarship in the memory of their son, Stephen Huahn.
After World War II, the Gom Benn immigrants began to move away from Riverside, to start restaurants and laundries and seek other opportunities elsewhere. Riverside Chinatown all but disappeared.
In 1990, the Riverside Chinatown archeological site was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The citizen-led Save Our Chinatown continues efforts to preserve and promote the Chinatown site and its role in the Chinese American experience. Learn more at Save Our Chinatown.
Note: The photos of the citrus packers and Main Street Chinatown are Courtesy of the Museum of Riverside, Riverside, California. The Voy Wong photo is Courtesy of UC Riverside’s Department of the History of Art.
