Asparagus Farming Then and Now

 A recent article in the Los Angeles Times discussed how asparagus farming has been dying off in the United States with the transfer of the growing of asparagus to foreign countries. The primary reason is that asparagus farming remains very labor intensive requiring hand harvesting of the asparagus shoots. Labor costs have skyrocketed in the United States and the cost of labor is much lower in foreign countries. 

Asparagus farming unlike other crops has resisted all attempts at mechanization of the harvesting and still relies on stoop labor. 

Here is an excerpt from Auntie Soo Yin's new book "Asparagus Opera." . She is remembering following her father, San Tong, in the fields of their asparagus farm when she was a young child.:

"I have high regard for those who labor on a farm.  Their postures bent over; their faces tanned by a burning sun.  These silhouettes fill my horizon.  They are sweating.  Their boots are bought from a thrift shop.  And those heavy boots move field crates from row to row and onto sleds driven by mules.  Filled to overflowing, the sleds head for our packinghouse.  In the distance of time, I see the last of our slow-moving mules, the strongest mare that Father had kept against the onslaught of tractors and harrows.  The mule has been with us longer than I, and she knows to pull her asparagus sled filled with fresh harvest back to the right barn.  The old mule knows every worker on the Jue Joe Ranch too.

“It’s a backbreaking job,” says Father as he catches me watching the farm workers.  “It is ten to twelve hours a day—seven days a week—you stoop and rise until your back hurts; until your legs and shoulders and arms can’t stand no more.  But you can’t stop neither—you gotta take those shoots just as they come up!  You pick’em when they’re seven- or eight-inches high.  And they pop up day or night, and day or night you pick’em.  Even when we think the day’s over, they pop up come evening, and we gotta be out there with lamps lit and we gotta skin that field.

I pick up something heavy in our asparagus field.  My tool is a two-foot-long, medieval weapon.  It is forged of iron and its tip is forked like a rattler’s tongue.  Father shows me how to uproot expertly the earth’s green quills with this machete.  Like a reaper of old Song Dynasty times, he thrusts his machete at a steep angle—as if brushing the face of an exquisite scroll.  Soon, I follow my father’s motions, feeling clumsy with my iron rattler until, finally, I can do it, reaping asparagus shoots until the ground sings with the echo of a timeless rhythm; Verbena flows across his personal acreage.  I see the field’s stardust settle like silken specks on his hair and it softens the monkey grease routing across his suntanned face.  I see dirt buried beneath his fingernails, and when I kiss his rosy cheek, I taste the salt of the South China Sea."

Here is a link to the Los Angeles Times article which makes for fascinating reading concerning the current state of asparagus farming which has not changed much in 70 years!

Auntie Soo Yin's Talk about Her New Book at Chinese Historical Society of Southern California

 Auntie Soo Yin  gave a talk for the Chinese Historical Society of Southern California about the historical family background of her new book "Asparagus Opera- A Chinese Family in the San Fernando Valley. " She explained how intragenerational conflicts between members of the family grew out of discriminatory Chinese Exclusion Laws that created different rights between descendents born in China and those born in America. She also makes a heartfelt case that time eventually heals wounds and that many members of the family who were in conflict and their descendents have reconciled. She hopes that in the end all members of the extended family will one day be able to reunite in recognition of their common roots in the struggles of their ancestors to make a new life here in America. 

Here is an open letter to all members of our extended family that I wrote 14 years ago when I first started writing this blog and it remains very timely with respect to my Auntie's new book and her wonderful talk.

https://juejoeclan.blogspot.com/2010/06/open-letter-to-all-members-of-jue-joe.html

Here is a the video recording of Auntie Soo Yin's talk.

Photos to Accompany Asparagus Opera Book

 Recently my Auntie Soo Yin and I collaborated on a new book.  Details are in this post:

Asparagus Opera-A Chinese Family in the San Fernando Valley

Although Auntie Soo Yin moves back and forth in time in narrating our family's story,  in this photo essay I have started the story with Jue Joe's emigration to America in 1874 through San Tong Jue's death in 1987 in chronological order . The pictures are meant to help the reader follow visually the narrative in our book.

Images-Asparagus Opera-A Chinese Family in the San Fernando Valley

Jue Joe Family Tree

Jue Joe departs China  for America at age 18 in 1874 aboard the SS Japan steamship

Chinese passengers are stacked three high in the below decks steerage compartment 

Jue Joe  was employed as a cabin boy serving caucasian first class passengers 

After arrival in San Francisco he was sent to work as a farmhand in the vineyards of Marysville and Napa

Jue Joe then worked as a railroad worker on the Southern Pacific Railroad

He next worked as a houseboy for the family of N.C. Johnson in Chatsworth

c

N.C. Johnson and Anne Wilden Johnson

Jue Joe met and became friends with Title Insurance president Otto F. Brant

Jue Joe worked for Otto Brant buying and selling real estate as a “Straw man”. 

       

He was also a successful potato farmer on leased land. 

He finally made enough money to go back to China aboard this steamship SS Nipon Maru in 1902 at the age of forty six

He went back to his village of Sam Gong which he left 28 years ago.

He builds a large western style two story brick house which still stands to this day!

He marries 17 year old Leong Shee who bears him two sons San You and San Tong.

Meanwhile back in  America  Jue Shee,  Jue Joe’s younger brother, is attending college prep classes at Pomona college with dreams of eventually becoming a mining engineer. Jue Joe had arranged for his brother to emigrate using false immigration papers to get around the Oriental Exclusion Act.  Jue Joe expects his younger brother to continue Jue Joe’s farming operations and send him monthly cash from that farming operation. However, Jue Shee sells his brother’s farming operations and drops out of Pomona college and heads for Paris France and then Harbin China without telling Jue Joe.  Here is Jue Shee's Pomona transcript.

Without any money coming from his brother, Jue Joe leaves his wife and two sons in China and returns to America in 1906 aboard the steamship SS Mongolia to remake his fortune. His immigration and his restart in America is helped by his friend Otto Brant. 

Meanwhile back in China , Leong Shee raises the two boys herself hearing nothing from Jue Joe for 9 years!.  Jue Joe leaves for America when San Tong is only 4 months old and he has no memories of his father. Jue Joe built a western style toilet in his home . Only problem was there was no plumbing and the boys had to go fetch water every day to fill up the water closet on the toilet!

San Tong learned to swim in the canals that ran through the village .

There were many pirates around who would abduct young boys and Leong Shee hid her sons every night in bales of rice straw  so they would be safe. 

Finally in 1918 Jue Joe, having once again become a successful potato farmer and having established his status as a member of the merchant class, arranges for his wife and two sons to emigrate to America . 

They travel first class on this ship the SS Columbia 

Arriving in Angel Island detention center the boys have to survive a rigorous interrogation by immigration authorities before being admitted. 

 

The San Fernando Valley receiving water from the Owens valley becomes lush with farming opportunity and Otto  Brant reserves prime land for Jue Joe to begin Asparagus farming . Unfortunately the Alien Land law prevents any Chinese born abroad from owning land so neither Jue Joe nor his son’s hold title . The title is held in trust by Otto Brant for Jue Joe’s two American born daughters, Corrine and Dorothy, until they come of legal age 

Jue Joe builds redwood barns , cottages and a packing shed and begins large scale Asparagus farming. 

San You marries first in a large Chinatown wedding and then San Tong marries his first wife Rose.

Rose is thoroughly Americanized having been born in Los Angeles. Here is 

Rose and San Tong with their son Jack SR. 

Jack Sr. and Joan, Rose's two children

San Tong’s older brother San You dies of leukemia suddenly in 1933 leaving San Tong as the sole surviving son of Jue Joe. 

In 1935 Rose dies unexpectedly during a surgical operation for a uterine bleeding problem. 

In 1937 San Tong travels with his mother back to China and he is married to Yee Lai Ping in 1937

In the late 1930's San Tong takes the family to Catalina Island.

This is a picture of Corrine and her mother Leong Shee with Jack Sr. and Joan on that trip.

Here is a picture of San Tong and his daughter Joan on board the ship to Catalina.

In 1940 San Tong takes the entire family to the Golden Gate International Exposition.

Here is Dorothy and friends at the Expo.

Here is Corrine at Treasure Island, the site of the Expo.

Jue Joe dies in 1941. San Tong assumes all farming and wholesale produce market operations.

San Tong beomes head of the San Fernando Valley Vegetable Growers Center

Leong  Shee on the Jue Joe ranch in Van Nuys

Cousin Loon on the Jue Joe Ranch

Ping and her sister in law Dorothy on the Jue Joe Ranch.

San Tong employed bracero workers and became fluent in Spanish. He built a large house for his family. 

Soo Yin and her brother Guy in front of the big farm house. 

Soo Yin and sister Pingileen on the ranch. 

And here is Ping and all her children.

Famous singer Ritchie Valens and his mother and stepfather lived on the ranch.

Here is a photo of San Tong and Ping in 1957.

In the 1950’s San Tong’s sisters Dorothy and Corrine sued him in court for control of the Jue Joe properties, winning the lawsuit and appeal and evicting San Tong and his family from the Jue Joe  Van Nuys ranch.

San Tong left for Mexico to try to remake his fortune. 

Ping would come visit him but because of  a severe rheumatoid arthritis condition could not remain with him and lived with family in Los Angeles. 

San Tong was a food scientist and experimented with trying to make money from various products none of which  unfortunately were sucessful. 

San Tong with some business associates in Mexico.

San Tong with a very modern tea bag machine and business associate. 

San Tong returned to America eventually and lived with his daughter, Soo Jan, and her family in Seal Beach before he passed away.  He loved tending the community garden.