Monday, June 7, 2010

Finding our roots - A beginning

Hello all ! My name is Jack Jr. and I am the great grandson of Jue Joe . My grandfather, San Tong Jue ,was his son . My father,Jack , is his grandson. My sons ,Robert and Jordan, are the great great grandsons of Jue Joe . My daughter, Leah, is his great great granddaughter . My grandson ,Jackson , is his great , great , great grandson . It is now a long line from the patriarch of our clan who came from China in the 1800's to find his fortune in a new land . He has left a large extended family that has grown and prospered over the generations that have come after him . I never met Jue Joe in person but I did meet his picture ! As a young man , I spent time , in the grand house that his son , my grandfather ,San Tong Jue , built in Van Nuys . In that house over the mantel in the living room was a large commissioned portrait of a rather commanding looking aristocratic Chinese man in a Western suit . Who was he ? How did he make his fortune ? What did he want for his family , for the generations that were to follow him.? What was he like ? How did he live and how did he die ? What happened to his clan after his death ? These are questions that have dogged me for years .
My hope is that other family members will share their comments and recollections so that we can create a joint remembrance of our extended family -how it started with Jue Joe and how it continued through the years. There is much to write about , great joy and great sorrow . There are pictures and maybe even movies to share . There are poems and stories that have been written by family members. Most importantly , my Auntie Soo-yin has written this story already in a wonderful book that she has shared with all of us . My goal is not to rewrite her history but to expand on it and bring it alive for all of the extended family . My hope is that this document will live on for our children and their children so they can understand where we come from , and where we have been and where we are going as a family . Of course, the story could start earlier back in China but for me and for this blog the story really starts with the great grandfather who I never met who came here and started the story of our family in America .

6 comments:

  1. Descendant of the 2nd emperor of the Song Dynasty (Zhao Gunagyi), Jue Joe was born and raised in a chicken coop, in 1860. He grew up dirt poor and vowed that his descendants would never suffer as he had. So at the age of 14 he sailed alone to California, working as a cabin boy, and jumped ship in San Francisco. He sailed with 16 lbs of rice and landed with 1/4 lb left. So he went to the Chinese Six Companies for help. They sent him to St. Helena and Marysville to work the vineyards. Then he found work on the Southern Pacific Railroad. In the Mojave Desert he met Otto Brant who was hoboing his way to L.A. They became friends and together hoboed to that destination. According to San Tong, Jue Joe learned business from Otto Brant and what land and water would mean to future settlers of the L.A. Basin. Auntie Soo-Yin.

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  2. Jue Joe had 4 siblings. His relationship to them are as follows: Oldest brother Jue Nui, the great great grandfather of Jimmy and Ming Loon. Joe sent for Jue Nui and Nui got a job in Monterey in the canning & fishing
    industry. Later Jue Nui sailed to Alaska to work on an off-shore oil platform. There was an explosion on the platform and Jue Nui perished at sea. Communication was almost nonexistent in those days and Joe heard the news only years later. In those days when you said goodbye to kin you generally never heard from or saw them again. (After that Jue Joe sent for Jue Shee, his younger brother.) Following Jue Nui in birth order came a sister (her son eventually emigrated to Cuilapa, Guatemala), then came Jue Joe, then Jue Shee (15yrs younger than Joe), and finally Jue Yao (Jue Joe never met Jue Yao because he'd sailed to California before Yao was born). Lee Shee, Jue Joe's mother, was a very strong and determined woman, and Jue Joe inherited her temperament. His father was very gentle and passive, he died early. I remember seeing a photo of his gravesite taken by San Tong in 1937 when he married my mother Ping. In Auntie Pingileen's video of our trip to the ancestral home, you will see an altar carved into a brick wall on which once stood a picture of Jue Joe's father and on which incense were burned and rituals of homage were performed. China was a land of established traditions based on kinship and every household had such an altar. Sum Gong Village kept records of all its families in a big Jue Clan Temple, but if you made good overseas and brought the Clan honor, you could have a temple for yourself and your descendants. When Jue Joe became successful in California the Village elders allowed him to open a "wui," meaning a Jue Joe Temple housing all births and land acquisitions of his bloodline. After so many generations the earlier names of Joe's bloodline would revert to the big Jue Clan Temple. Jue Joe built a two-room temple; one for the altar of records, and a sideroom for his caretaker to sleep in. In Jue Joe's youth it was a shock to sail for three months across the Pacific Ocean and land in undeveloped California: The Wild West in which stagecoaches were the means of long-range transportation, cowboys on horseback riding into town and brawling in saloons, veterans of the recent American Civil War trying to restart their lives, the Indian Wars still ongoing, Buffalo Bill Cody bringing his show to town, troubles with Mexican land grants, and Midwest sojourners infused with vision and determined to change the face of Southern California. It was a world that Jue Joe found eye-popping. It was a world in which a purge against Chinese immigrants was exploding. The fear that Chinese would take jobs away from Whites. And a severe drought in Southern California at that time helped to brand this fear onto the minds of men. As Chinese first arrived at the gate of U.S. Customs they were each given English names of either "Joe" or "Charlie." This is how Jue Joe got his American name. Auntie Soo-Yin.

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  3. Correction: Jue Nui is the "great grandfather," not great great grandfather, of Jimmy and Ming Loon. Auntie Soo-Yin.

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  4. Jue Joe's "family" temple ("hong") was named "Wei Kao Ngok Hong" in honor of his father, Leong Kao, and was located in Canton (Guangzhou, Guangdong Province). It had a main room for recordkeeping, and a side-room with a raised platform for a caretaker to sleep on. After six generations the founder (Jue Joe) would revert back to the Jue Clan's "lineage" temple in Sum Gong Village, and so on. Chinese culture is based on families and their roles and relationships to one another. It began from early civilization, over three thousand years ago, along the Yellow River in North Central China and is embedded in the conscience of every Chinese. Great emphasis is placed on development of personal character, moral conscience, and fair play in relationships. Life is viewed as cyclical and circular, not as linear from one point to another and measurable. Each individual is seen as a fraction of the whole. And the spirit world is a part of, and lives alongside, the physical world. Auntie Soo-Yin.

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  5. I propose a new theory of how Otto Brant and Jue Joe met and became friends in the post below. I think that Jue Joe may have been employed in the Brant household as a "houseboy".

    http://juejoeclan.blogspot.com/2010/07/details-jue-joe-most-unusual-houseboy.html

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  6. Recent immigration documents obtained by our family has caused us to change Jue Joe's birth year to 1856. He was age 18 when he first arrived in America in 1874.

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