This article, slightly updated, was written by Art Wong in 1979 for the 1980 issue of the Voice of Gom Benn newsletter. It was inspired by Alex Haley’s 1976 book, “Roots,” and the ABC’s much-watched television mini-series the following year. “Roots” was supposedly Haley’s family history, beginning in Africa with his ancestor Kunta Kinte who was enslaved, to the present time. Later its scholarship was questioned. The following article is not a work of imagination but based on oral interviews and memories passed from generation to generation. For a well-researched history of Gom Benn, read archeologist and anthropology professor Laura Ng’s dissertation.
Alex Haley had his Kunta Kinte – we, the descendants of Gom Benn Village have our Wong Han Chal.
While it took Haley years to find (or imagine) his Kunta, we – my cousins and myself – found Han Chal during a few weeks in the summer of 1979 while digging around in our parents’ memories. And just as Kunta was the founding father of his American family, so Han Chal was the first of our family from Gom Benn to emigrate to America.
It was, however, a very brief emigration.
Han Chal came to America in the wake of the California Gold Rush, in the mid-19th century, probably around the time of Abe Lincoln and the Civil War.
He sailed across the ocean – undoubtedly aboard a clipper ship – and after a short and apparently inauspicious stay (it’s remembered he was gone for only one planting season) – he became the first of our family to return to Gom Benn.
Despite his short visit to America, he was one of our more notable ancestors. Some of the others include counterfeiters, gamblers and opium smokers. Of course, there were also upright ancestors: farmers, shopkeepers and restaurateurs. And yet, these men – infamous and notable – set forth in each generation for America, surviving unimaginable hardships in moving from a harsh land to another country in many ways just as forbidding.
The discovery of Han Chal came during the 10th year of the Gom Benn Village Association, during another of the periodic efforts to interest the younger generations in their “roots.” And with a bow to Alex Haley the association initiated a roots project – including the search for some of the village’s Kunta Kintes.
The project took the form of a colorful family tree and in particular the history of Wong Han Chal’s family. The beginnings of the project simply involved son asking father for their stories, though in most cases it was the mothers and grandmothers who stayed behind in the village who supplied most of the history.
We of Han Chal’s family discovered that we are tied together by a poetic system of names. While Han Chal was the first of our family to visit America, he was but the fourth generation in a name cycle dating back to the early 18th century. The initiator of the name cycle isn’t remembered, but each succeeding generation has followed his pattern of names: All, Ack, Dun, Chal, Han, Sai, Chun, Lai, Gnee, Gene, Gah, and San. And I am the ninth generation in the name cycle, while my niece, Dorenda, is the 10th generation.
The history of our family – and of the Gom Benn Village – is filled with uncertainties. Whether Han Chal’s great-great-great-grandfather, who lived in the 1800s, actually lived in the village isn’t known. Nothing of the origin of the village is remembered – even the meaning of its name is now uncertain. “Gom” means sweets and “benn” means border. Apparently Gom Benn means “neighbors of the Gom,” whoever they were.
Beginning in the late 1800s, the history of the village was marked by emigration to America. Generations of Gom Benn men left the village to seek their fortune, which out of necessity they dutifully sent back to their families in China.
But the men in America, including Han Chal’s offspring, knew little of their own history – that was left to the women who stayed behind. Ironically, the Chinese family tree is tied to the men – most of the women are quickly forgotten except for women who marry into the family. But it was the women who carried forth the family history and passed it on, even to the present generation.
Little is known of Han Chal’s stay in America except that he rushed right back to Gom Benn, having stayed only a year in California. In the village, Han Chal was married twice, fathering four sons and at least one daughter. Life in the village was apparently hard, and all four of Han Chal’s sons set out for America in the later part of the 19th century, at a time when Chinese labor was first welcomed, then bitterly opposed by Californians. Yet all four sons stayed for lengthy periods in America and two eventually died in California.
The eldest of the sons, Sai Ack and known in America as “Charlie,” is remembered fondly as the family counterfeiter, apparently able to reproduce coins. He never married and had no family to carry on his history. But it’s known he lived in the Riverside-San Bernardino area when it was a budding citrus area, from the end of the 1800s through the early part of the 20th century. Tales are told of him being struck down and killed in a car accident. It isn’t known if his accident stemmed from his infamous talents as a coinmaker.
His three brothers were less notorious. There was Sai Lee, known in America as Wong Tong, whose great-grandson is Gary Gin, the notorious Gom Benn Auxiliary secretary – another talented counterfeiter of sorts, able to reproduce newsletters.
(In Laura Ng’s research, she found a 1927 newspaper reporting the death of a 67-year Wong Tong in San Bernardino, who died after being struck by an automobile. Wong Tong had lived in San Bernardino for nearly a quarter-century, operating the Sing Lee Cafe for many of those years. He was survived by a wife and two sons in China, and a brother in Stockton. Laura wondered if the stories about Sai Ack were actually the stories about Sai Lee or Wong Tong.)
The third of Han Chal’s sons was Sai Fung, of whom little is remembered in my branch of the family. However, he was able to return to Gom Benn where he died in 1937. Among his great-grandsons is Lester Low, the official caterer of the village auxiliary.
The youngest of Han Chal’s sons was Sai At, my great-grandfather. Born in 1869, he lived for perhaps 30-40 years in America, apparently working as a Stockton farmer remembered for having been kicked in the head by a horse. His great-grandchildren include Ben Wong, auxiliary president, and Andrea Wong, auxiliary vice president.
After returning to China in the 1930s, Sai At died at the age of 75 in 1942 – remembered by village women as the year of the great peace, the end of World War II. At the time most of the young men were in America.
The Sai generation of the name cycle lived in the hardest of times. While Han Chal had four sons, his offspring had only one son each and two of those sons were adopted. And the economic and political turmoil that haunted the Sai generation also plagued their sons, the Chun generation. Of the sons in the Chun generation, only one – Chun Fot or Hong Sam Wong, my grandfather – could go to America, where he worked as a cook, another immigrated to “Ah Yua” – believed to be somewhere in Mexico – while the third remained in Gom Benn, working as a shopkeeper.
The Chun generation was not particularly successful. But remarkably enough, the generation that followed – my father’s generation, the Lai generation who are among the founders of the Gom Benn Village Association – survived and prospered in America, overcoming the most restrictive immigration laws in U.S. history.
The key for most of the Lai generation came from another branch of the family – the offspring of Han Wu, the brother of Han Chal. Han Wu isn’t remembered as having visited America. But he fathered two sons, the younger one, Sai Dat, was able to work in America and is the grandfather of Henry Wong, whose children are Gordon, Wanda, and Wendy. Han Wu’s older son, Sai Fong, also stayed behind in Gom Benn. Like the others of the Sai generation he also had only one son, Chun San, who became the key in opening the way for later generations to make their livelihood in America.
While Sai Fong was a farmer and pencilmaker – not among the most prosperous trades – his son Chun San became the founder of Sam Sing in Los Angeles, a meat market through which my father and many others of the Lai generation found passage to America. Beginning near the end of the 1800s, U.S. law allowed the immigration of Chinese, only if their fathers lived in America and worked in categories such as merchants. So father brought son, but in many cases, particularly in a family with our deceptive talents, the sons were “counterfeit.” However, Chun San’s own children include Albert Wong, who continues to operate his father’s butcher shop on Spring Street.
The Chun generation was the first to move permanently to America. And their sons, the Lai generation, became the last of Han Chal’s offspring born in Gom Benn. The men of the Lai generation prospered in America following World War II as relaxed immigration laws allowed them to bring their wives to California. They are now owners of four restaurants: Great Wall, Kun Ming, Yangtze and Kam Wah. They fathered the ninth generation in our family tree, the Gnee generation, which includes myself and is the first generation born in America.
Thanks to the roots project we have found that the ninth generation includes 48 cousins – counting all the cousin-in-laws, the husbands and wives of the Gnee generation. Including those on Han Wu’s side of the family there are 69 cousins. (Those numbers, of course, were as of 1979…)
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