Chapter 1

Farewell, Long Har Village! (1907)

Ah Kuey was turning eleven this year, and the last time he had seen Ah Ba was six years before.

For as long as he could remember, he had longed to see his father and dreamed about what it would be like to ride a ship to Gold Mountain to live with him. He knew Gold Mountain or “Gum Saan” was just a nickname for that land across the sea that some people called America. He knew it wasn’t literally a mountain made of gold, but the pictures in his head still shimmered brightly. After all, wasn’t it said that the streets there whirred with electrified street cars and glowed at night with the light from tall lamps? More images from the conversations he had overheard swirled in his head, only half making sense. Their name for San Diego where his father lived, “Saan Jeh Goo” - with a Saan in its name, like Gum Saan - made him imagine a hilly place. But his uncles only mentioned a magnificent bay. In Saan Jeh Goo, his father and his four uncles had a store that sold Chinese merchandise to non-Chinese. But if all five brothers were owners, why was the name of the store - “Quon Mane” - that of 4th Uncle alone?

Now finally, after so many years of trying to picture the store and bring his imagined Saan Jeh Goo and fading image of his father into sharper focus, he was actually going to see them. Only a few weeks before, 4th Uncle had informed Ah Kuey that the time had come for him to go back to Saan Jeh Goo, and it had been decided that he would take both Ah Kuey and his cousin Sook Gin with him. Sook Gin was a son of 2nd Uncle and two years older than Ah Kuey.

Although Ah Kuey had been told that this would happen at some point, he hadn’t expected the day to arrive quite so soon. He was nearly jumping out of his skin, but in front of his little brother he played it cool. Poor Ah Toy didn’t understand anything. He was only six, hadn’t been to school yet, and kept asking silly questions. “When do I get to see Ah Ba? Is Ah Ba an old man like 1st Uncle? Does he have short hair like 4th Uncle?” Ah Toy had only been a tiny baby when Ah Ba last left them to go back to San Diego, so Ah Toy remembered nothing about their father at all.

It was precisely because of these gaps between father and sons that the year before 4th Uncle had herded his nephews together to take a photo, using the camera he had brought back from America.

Sook Gin, Ah Kuey, cousin, Ah Toy, cousin, c. 1906

He knew his younger brother would be pleased to see how much his two sons had grown. The timing was also good because Ah Kuey, and Ah Toy and their mother were about to move out of Long Har Village to a village newly built with the Quons' overseas earnings, called Yuk Sow Lei. There they would live in a new grey brick house with arched doorways looking out on a spacious courtyard,  brightened by openwork panels of green glazed ceramic.

One of Ah Toy’s daughters, Liliane Quon McCain, at the Yuk Sow Lei house, 2018

Third Uncle and his family also moved to Yuk Sow Lei. But 4th Uncle and Uncles #1 and #2 remained in Long Har with Ah Kuey’s grandmother, the matriarch of the family. Long Har was where Ah Kuey, Ah Toy and countless generations of Quons had been born. The village had about 100 houses and a school that Ah Kuey had attended since the age of seven, along with the other boys of the Quon lineage. At first he didn’t like his daily school commute between the villages, a walk of more than two li, or almost a mile, each way. But now he was used to it, and in any case, the distance was nothing compared to the ocean that would soon separate him from both villages.
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As the weather grew warmer and the day in June for Ah Kuey’s departure approached, his mother kept busy folding and re-folding bundles of clothes for him and preparing small packets of his favorite snacks. But when 4th Uncle stopped by with last-minute instructions, he told Ah Ma to pack less. He re-explained what they had already heard so many times: that just to get from their village to Hong Kong was a two-day journey mostly by boat, that they would only have bunk space on the steamship to San Francisco, and that after that, there would still be another leg to San Diego. In short, too much luggage would be a nuisance. Not to mention that many foods they liked were plentiful in Gum Saan. Most importantly of all, he and Ah Kuey’s father would soon be buying the boys American-style clothes.

Ah Ma

4th Uncle Quon Mane

Pulled up short, Ah Ma now channeled her energy into chiding Ah Kuey to be good, to mind his manners, and to obey 4th Uncle. She reminded him that at the age of eleven, he would be the youngest of anyone in their family to go to Gum Saan. Sook Gin was thirteen. Elder Cousin Choak was fourteen when he went, while his father and 4th Uncle left home when they were fifteen and sixteen. What she did not say was that whenever any of them left, it was always years before they came back. Just look at her own experience. In eighteen years of marriage, her husband had only been home twice. Of course, he would be due for another visit soon. After two and a half years minding the store, Ah Ba would be relieved of his duties once 4th Uncle got back to San Diego. But her husband’s return would come at a price: the loss of her elder son.

Ah Kuey about nine months before his arrival in the US

Despite Ah Kuey’s excitement, he found the weeks aboard the S.S. Mongolia long and often uncomfortable. As steerage-class passengers, he, Sook Gin and their uncle were housed with hundreds of other travelers. These areas were large, but much too crowded with people and baggage for Ah Kuey and Sook Gin to run about freely. Some of the other mostly male passengers were chatty and kind to the boys, but others were gruff or seasick. The food, so unlike Ah Ma’s dishes, was unappetizing. 

The Steamship Mongolia

One funny part of the voyage was that there were no barbers to shave the boys’ foreheads, and soon their hair was growing out in itchy spikes that stuck out in every direction. Fourth Uncle said this was good because in America they would need to cut off their long pigtails and switch to Western hairstyles. At first the boys giggled nervously at this daring idea. It was the law to wear one’s hair as the emperor did, and to do otherwise was disloyal. But then again, the world was changing, and the emperor didn’t command the same respect that emperors before him had. He lived far away in the north, while the Quons were southerners. Their lives were shaped by Canton, Macau and Hong Kong - nearby port cities that drew foreign traders from around the world to buy prized Chinese specialities such as tea, silk, and porcelain.

For many years, the Quon family had been in the business of making and selling farm implements. But even in rural Hoiping County where Long Har Village was located, the farmers who were the Quons' customers grew little of their own food. They preferred to raise and sell cash crops, then buy their rice and other basic foodstuffs. Southern Chinese had always been open to trade and travel, and this is what made it possible for men like Ah Ba and his brothers to abandon the farm implements business and try their luck working abroad when a weak emperor did not rule the country well.

During the voyage, it felt like 4th Uncle spent most of the time drilling the boys over and over again on the kinds of questions they would be asked by US officials after they docked in San Francisco. It was the law that people from China were forbidden from entering the US, unless they could prove they were students, teachers, diplomats or merchants. The Quon Mane & Co. store allowed Ah Ba and the uncles to qualify as merchants, and merchant status gave them permission to bring their children and wives to the US. But 4th Uncle said that government officials at the wharf would want to double-check very carefully who the boys were and that their fathers were merchants.

Fourth Uncle said that each of them would be questioned separately. He reminded them that it was extremely important that both of them answer the questions correctly and in the same way. Since Sook Gin’s father no longer lived in America, he must say he was Ah Kuey’s older brother, not his cousin, and when asked the names of his parents, he must remember to give the names of Ah Kuey’s parents. Ah Kuey, who mainly thought of himself as Ah Toy’s big brother, must remember that Sook Gin was now his older brother.

​Everything 4th Uncle warned them about came true. Ah Kuey was ordered into a room alone and seated before three unfamiliar adults: a Western man whose title was “Inspector”, who asked questions in English; a Chinese interpreter who repeated the questions in an accent that was rather different from their village dialect, then translated their answers back into English for the Western man; and a third person called a stenographer who typed throughout the interview, making a record in English of each boy’s answers. Because the stenographer didn’t speak Chinese, she spelled the names of people and places in whatever way she thought best, and so the “Kuey” in Ah Kuey’s name became “Qui” and his full Chinese name was written as “Quan Hong Qui”.

Here is the stenographer’s record of Ah Kuey’s answers, carefully preserved by the US government in its archives for over a century:

Ah Kuey’s and Sook Gin’s answers must have satisfied the officials. Some travelers were asked many more questions, or kept much longer, or even turned away and sent back to China. But after a week at the immigration sheds of San Francisco’s wharf, the Quon “brothers” were told they had been approved to enter the US. ​

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See For Yourself

• Did you notice Ah Kuey’s signature scribbled crookedly in Chinese characters in the corner of his interview transcript? Nowadays the characters would be written from left to write - 關康虧, the opposite direction from how he wrote them.
• Are you interested to know more about what travel was like aboard the S.S. Mongolia? You can find plans for  ships similar to it at: https://hdl.huntington.org/digital/collection/p9539coll1/id/22030. See if you can find the areas marked “Asiatic Passengers” and “Chinese Women”.