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Chinese in Maine
Articles about the history and role of Chinese people in Maine, indexed alphabetically by title.
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A Chinese-American Tragedy, by Gary Libby
Portland area old timers will recall that, in 1979, a new kind of Chinese restaurant opened on Congress Street. It was called Hu Shang, and it offered a different menu from the familiar Cantonese-American fare, including Sichuan dishes that would set your mouth on fire. It quickly became one of Portland’s hottest restaurants, with customers lining up at the door.
The owners of that restaurant were two brothers, Ken and Henry Ng. While Henry worked the kitchen, handsome and personable Ken became the public face of "K & H Corp," as their business was named. And a successful enterprise it was. By 1981, needing more space, they bought a building on Brown Street, with $75,000 cash down. They closed their Congress Street place and named the completely remodeled Brown Street restaurant "Hu Shang II." The business continued to thrive. Two years later, in 1983, they opened Hu Shang III on Exchange Street, with a full bar and disco. The money poured in.
Ken and Henry seemed to be living examples of the American dream for industrious immigrants. They were getting rich and were becoming pillars of the Portland business community. Henry was not so well known, but Ken charmed everyone.
However all did not continue happily. It seems that Ken had a dark side and was not inclined to play by the rules. The first sign of problems happened when the brothers argued and agreed to manage the two restaurants separately. But that was just the beginning.
The real source of troubles was Ken’s financial shenanigans. He was in charge of all the books and, since the restaurants accepted only cash, he could easily under-report income. The money he skimmed was used to buy real estate in the names of family members, usually with cash down payments.
In another slick transaction, Ken wired about $200,000 to a Hong Kong bank. He then traveled to Hong Kong, picked up the check, and returned to Maine where he declared the money as income from the sale of stock (favorably taxed as "capital gains"). Also, using funds skimmed from the business itself, he made loans to K & H Corp to cover cash flow problems, totaling more than $300,000.
It was only a matter of time before all of this came to light, and when it was over, Ken would find himself an inmate in a federal prison, and even Henry would go to jail.
For starters, Ken’s Hong Kong trip caught the attention of the Internal Revenue Service and an investigation was started. Then Henry grew suspicious of Ken’s bookkeeping. When confronted, Ken essentially dared his brother to sue him. This was a mistake. Henry filed a civil suit in 1985. The proceedings disclosed the existence of two sets of books. Henry alleged that Ken had underreported corporate income between 1979 and 1985 by at least $2.5 million. It also came to light (among other questionable things) that Ken habitually underreported daily receipts by about $1,000 per day. This cash went into a canvass bag which Ken kept in a closet. The brothers almost settled the suit, but then Ken backed out.
The fact that all this information came out was a Godsend to IRS investigators. Plus there was a federal grand jury indictment charging Ken with lying on his application for citizenship (which was based on a sham marriage). Confronted with so much incriminating evidence, Ken pled guilty to personal and corporate income tax evasion on May 2, 1986. At his sentencing, the prosecutor estimated that Ken had misstated personal income by more than $700,000 in just two years between 1981 and 1983 and misrepresented the H & K Corp’s income by more than a million dollars.
Although many prominent citizens wrote letters urging leniency, the judge was not swayed. He sentenced Ken to four years of incarceration and three years’ probation, fined him $45,000, and ordered him to reimburse the government for the cost of his prosecution. This was the longest sentence for tax evasion in Maine’s history.
Meanwhile, Henry himself had pled guilty to conspiring to impede tax collection. He agreed to cooperate with the federal government against his brother in return for a six-month sentence.
Ken’s troubles continued. On the positive side, he served only 22 months of his four year sentence. However he had been forced to pay $864,000 in personal income taxes and still owed about a million dollars in corporate taxes. Still worse, after his release from prison, an IRS agent alleged that Ken tried to bribe him in connection with seized property that the IRS was about to auction off. He was indicted in 1991. At that time he was also subject to deportation proceedings. He entered a guilty plea in July and, in September of that year, he was sentenced to five years in prison, two years for bribery and another three years for probation violation.
In the annals of Chinese in Maine, the story of Ken and Henry Ng is surely the most spectacular case of incredible success and sadly avoidable disaster. [By Gary Libby from May 2008 CAFAM Newsletter]
Early Chinese Christians in Maine, by Gary Libby
The earliest known reference to a Chinese person’s membership in a Maine church appeared in the Portland Press on December 26, 1870. It reported that Ar Tee Lam had joined the Congress Square Sunday School on Christmas Day and promised "to become a learner and good exemplar of the Christian religion." (Mr. Lam’s interest may have been prompted by his recent guilty plea to a charge of bootlegging which resulted in a $50 fine.)
Five years later at Calais, the East Maine Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church admitted Zing Neng Chick and five other Chinese men to full communion and elected them to Elders Orders. They were missionaries stationed in China.
About 1880 Mrs. H. F. Crocker, who was active in the Women’s Christian Temperance Union as well as the Second Parish Church in Portland, gathered together a few local laundrymen into the church’s Sunday school. By 1885 the class had grown to nineteen.
| Thereafter the church took an active interest in Portland’s Chinese. Many of them used their involvement to learn English and socialize with white society. By 1888 the church had established a separate Sunday school for its twenty-four Chinese. Average attendance was about fifteen. Their contributions of between $30 and $40 a year, went toward supporting a theological school in China. The Second Parish organized its Chinese Sunday school so that each member had his own individual teacher, mostly women. |  First Baptist Church Sunday school picnic ca. 1920. Courtesy Maine Historical Society. |
The meetings began with a hymn reading, with the teachers distinctly pronouncing each word. Then, to organ accompaniment, all sang another hymn which had been translated into Chinese and written down both in Chinese characters and phonetically for the teachers. A simple catechism followed, and then the Lord’s Prayer. Then the class broke down into individual sessions. The teachers used slates and bi-lingual illustrated primers to teach English. The students often became quite attached to their teachers and frequently brought them small gifts and visited them at their homes. A communion table purchased by the students in 1887, is still in use today.
Sometime in the 1890s, this Sunday school seems to have stopped meeting. In 1902, laundryman Frank Chin Guey and a friend approached First Baptist church and asked to be taught the Bible and English. At the church’s Sunday school they were provided with an instructor. Frank Guey persisted in his studies, eventually becoming a member of the church. As interest grew, the church established a separate Chinese Sunday school which had about thirty-five members in July 1913.
In 1913, the Sunday school hosted a large banquet for Mr. Guey, seeing him off to China, where he intended to visit family and do missionary work. In later years there were similar gatherings. In 1916 about 200 people attended a banquet in the vestry which was hung with the flags of the Chinese Republic and the United States. There was also an annual summer picnic, featuring sports, games, lobster, and Chinese food. [By Gary Libby from March 2008 CAFAM Newsletter]
Early Chinese Students in Maine, by Gary Libby
Gary Libby, who was instrumental in establishing the Chinese Archive at the Maine Historical Society, has continued his research into Chinese in Maine. The most recent result of these investigations is the following account of the very first Chinese college students in Maine institutions. This is the first part of a two-part series.
One of the consequences of the Boxer Uprising of 1900 was the arrival of Chinese students at Maine colleges.
Prior to that time, small numbers of Chinese students had come to America (as well as to Europe and Japan). The first to earn a degree was Yung Wing (Yale, class of 1854). By 1870 a Chinese Education Mission was established, at the urging of Yung Wing, now an Imperial official. In that year the first group of boys arrived in Connecticut. However the Chinese government abandoned the Mission in 1881 because the American government refused visas for its students to study at West Point and the Naval Academy (in violation of the 1868 Burlingame Treaty), and also because cultural conservatives in China had long been appalled at the students’ Americanization.
After the Boxer Uprising, the Allies imposed a huge indemnity on China to compensate for loss of life and property. However it became clear that the amount allocated to the United States far exceeded the actual claims filed, and how to spend the excess became an issue. Thus In 1908 Congress voted to use the US share to establish the China Foundation for the Promotion of Education and Culture. This foundation in turn funded Chinese students to study in America. Tsinghua Xuetang (Tsinghua School) was also established to prepare these candidates, later to become the renowned Tsinghua University.
These students began to arrive at universities in the United States in 1909. After a few years, the Chinese Education Mission grew concerned that they tended to cling together at the universities and did not experience American culture. It began to send students individually to liberal arts colleges where they would have closer contact with student life and American culture. Those that came to Maine include the following.
The very first case took a tragic turn. In 1909 Tse Sheng Linn came to the University of Maine (Orono) where he studied government. He became enamored of his Latin tutor Christine Shaw, a 1909 UM graduate. When she discouraged his advances and stopped tutoring him, Mr. Linn began to send her long letters and tried to visit her at home. On June 9, 1911 Mr. Linn shot her in the head as she and her brother were returning home from a dance. He was convicted of attempted murder and sentenced to fifteen years at the state prison at Thomaston.
Yih Cuing Chien, born in Chang Chow in 1888, was the first Chinese student to matriculate at Bates College. He only stayed through the 1909-1910 academic year and then attended the University of Maine School of Law from 1910 to 1913.
A decade later Carl Chang-Tse Teso, born in Wuchang, in 1888, became Bates College’s first Chinese graduate as a member of the Class of 1919. Prior to entering Bates in 1918, he had graduated from Boone University in Wuchang. The Bates yearbook described him as industrious, steady, cheerful and courteous. He was also a Bates Chapel attendant.
George Taing Tse Yeh, born in Canton in 1904, attended Bates during the 1921-1922 academic year.
Reginald Q. Wong may have been the first Chinese American to attend a Maine college when he matriculated at Bates in 1926. Although born in China, he emigrated about 1918. He lived in Boston and graduated from Boston English High School and later attended the Wentworth Institute. He died in Boston in 1956 where many of his family still live.
Kam Tok Chung, born in Canton in 1905, graduated from Canton Christian College in 1923. While a junior and senior at Bates he was a member of the tennis team. He was also a skillful ping pong and bridge player. He drove a Mercer automobile which the Bates yearbook described as being "capacious as Noah’s Ark." He graduated from Bates in 1927. It is known that he worked for the Berlin Wall Paper Co. in Shanghai from 1928 to 1929.
Laap-Pan Chan, born in Hong Kong in 1907, graduated from Canton Christian College in 1925. At Bates his nickname was "Roby." As a senior he joined the Outing Club and the Y.M.C.A. He graduated in 1929 and in 1931 was a student at Columbia University. [By Gary Libby from September 2005 CAFAM Newsletter]
Early Chinese Students in Maine—II, by Gary Libby
In a previous article, Gary Libby described the first Chinese students to appear in Maine colleges. Although the first one (Tsu Sheng Linn, 1909) ended up in the Thomaston prison, those who followed had rather better success. In this second part, we meet the first students at Bowdoin.
The first Chinese student to attend Bowdoin College was Huan Shang Tang, of Canton, who matriculated in the fall of 1916. He was one of fifty students sent to study in the United States that year. He immediately joined the Bowdoin Club, and by 1918 had been so assimilated that he was required to register for the military draft. His yearbook inscription suggested that he had imbibed more than one American pastime: "[Huan] has been greatly captivated by our American young ladies, and in spite of his modest, bashful appearance has managed to get away with a whole lot during his brief sojourn with us."
The next student to study at Bowdoin was Huan’s roommate, Ch’en Pe’ng Chin a native of Hankou. A brilliant tennis player, he was the first Chinese to win an athletic letter at Bowdoin. He joined Delta Upsilon Fraternity.
Arthur Tsu-Kuang Linn attended Harvard before spending a year as a member of Bowdoin’s Class of 1922. He was a member of Alpha Delta Phi Fraternity.
Chi-Hai Fong, was the son of a Chinese foreign service officer who had attended the American High School in Mexico City. His father in-law, Chi Ling Hsuing, was Prime Minister of China during World War I. Although a member of Delta Upsilon Fraternity, he and his wife lived off-campus in a small McKean Street apartment furnished with fine Chinese appointments. Their baby daughter, named Kien Mae Fong, was born in Brunswick in April, 1925. He majored in German and studied French, Greek, Spanish and Italian. His fluent English allowed him to excel in debate. He was one of four students selected to deliver Commencement Day addresses in 1927.
Quincy Queen Shan Sheh, of Tienjin, China, also graduated in the Class of 1927. He participated in cross country and track. He was a member of the Quill Board from his freshman through his junior years. He returned to China and spent a long career teaching English at several Chinese universities.
Vi Tsu Sun, Colby College’s first Chinese student, graduated in 1920. He was closely followed by Tun Fu Dzen and Chin Foh Song who both graduated in 1921. Mr. Son was living in Hangzhou, China, in 1939. Li Yieh Su graduated in 1924. He was living in Shanghai, China in 1939. [By Gary Libby from January 2006 CAFAM Newsletter]
History of Portland's Chinese Restaurants, by Gary Libby
Gary Libby has published an article "Historical Notes on Chinese Restaurants in Portland, Maine" in Chinese America (2006). This is from the journal of the Chinese Historical Society of America.
Through meticulous research, Gary has recreated the story of these eating places starting with the first Chinese restaurant in Maine, established in 1880 at One Custom House Wharf. He brings the story up to the present 22 restaurants presently operating in Greater Portland.
Gary calls the period up to World War I the era of "chop suey joints," a time when Chinese eateries catered to a downscale and sometimes rowdy clientele. Starting around World War I, Portland saw the advent of high class Chinese restaurants, and during Portland’s World War II boom years a variety of establishments flourished.
The sixty years since World War II have seen the spread of Chinese restaurants from downtown into the suburbs and shopping malls, as their menus evolved into spicier and regional versions of Chinese cuisine. New fast-food Wok-Inn type and Great Wall all-you-can-eat buffet type formats have come in as well.
This most interesting article might be titled, "All you would ever want or need to know about Portland area Chinese restaurants and their owners." If you would like more information, contact Gary at paladinsf@gwi.net. [By Gary Libby from March 2006 CAFAM Newsletter]
Illegal Immigration, by Gary Libby
The following comes from the Portland Eastern Argus of April 24, 1895, and demonstrates to what lengths human traffickers would go to circumvent anti-Chinese immigration laws.
IN VENTILATED COFFINS
The Latest Scheme for Smuggling
Chinamen into this Country
Montreal, Que., April 23 – A gang of Chinese smugglers has been unearthed here and some arrests are expected shortly. There are said to be 80 or more in different parts of the country acting in collusion. The modus operandi is: Chinamen come here from Vancouver and are shipped in batches of six to Quebec, where they are dressed as women and forwarded to St. John, N. B. There they are kept in hiding a day or two. Ventilated coffins are provided and in these "corpses" are shipped to Vanceboro, Maine, where they are claimed by another of the gang who arranges for their distribution through the States.
[Submitted by Gary Libby from September 2007 CAFAM Newsletter]
Portland's Chinese 'Rocky', by Gary Libby
In the late 1940s one Harry Wong battled his way into the boxing scene in southern Maine. Known variously as "little Chinese wildman" and "Bongo Bongo," Harry fought thirty-seven bouts in the Portland and Lewiston areas between 1946 and 1948. He won seventeen (eleven by knockout) and came away with six draws. But he himself was knocked out five times and lost nine decisions. It seems that his great asset and also great weakness was an aggressive, lunging style, without much defense. This made it likely that he would knock out his opponent or be KO’d himself. It also made him popular among fans, who loved action.
Harry Wong, was born in Portland, Maine, in 1925, the son of restaurateur Charles Tuck Wong and his wife Mark Shee. Harry’s father opened the Oriental Restaurant in Portland’s Monument Square in 1917. That deluxe establishment closed in 1938.
Chinese boxers being a rarity, it is not known how Harry got into his brief pugilistic career. He first entered the ring in 1946 when he fought to a four round draw against Young Sacco in Sanford. He weighed in at 142 pounds. Two days later and three pounds heavier, he fought Napoleon James at Portland’s Exposition building. The newspaper’s account said that Harry was too strong and that he "wanged away inside" while evading James’ wild swings. A few days later, now at 147 pounds, he knocked out Young Tanguay, of Biddeford, in the first round.
Later that year he fought three more bouts, notching two knockouts and a draw.
The Sunday Telegram called him a "little Chinese wild man." On May 11, 1947 Harry caught Art Gallant of Portland with a right uppercut so hard that his head hit the canvas with a thud. Gallant’s corner men took five minutes to revive him. Harry next took on "Jabber" Joyce, a well known local baseball pitcher, in what was described as a slugfest. The Press Herald said, "Mr. Wong comes from a race noted for stoic calm but on his expressive pan, emotions ran the gamut from deep concentration to intense pain as he alternately pitched his best punches and caught Jabber’s." Harry won a six round decision.
Within a year from this event, Harry fought twenty-eight more times, in the course of which he himself occasionally fell to an opponent’s blows. His final bout took place on April 9, 1948, ending in his being knocked out in two rounds by keg-chested Bob Stecker of Portland.
During his boxing career, Harry lived with his mother at 64 Brown Street in Portland. He was listed in the Portland City Directory through 1949. His mother sold the house, and the family dispersed by 1950. She died at the Togus Veterans Administration Hospital in 1954. Harry himself dropped from the historical record. [By Gary Libby from September 2007 CAFAM Newsletter]
The Pekin Restaurant, Bangor, by Gary Libby
 | CAFAM recently acquired four photographs of the former Pekin Restaurant in Bangor. These 1920s vintage photos, showing the exterior and interior, complement an oral interview of Raymond Li Min Huang, the son of the Pekin’s founder. CAFAM also obtained a photo of Raymond, then known as Raymond Jones, as a 6-year-old child in 1929 taken outside the Pekin, as well as a 1930s menu. All these items now reside in the Maine Chinese Archive at the Maine Historical Society. The Pekin was established by a man named Wong Jack June ("Jack June" being a rather loose spelling of his personal name). He was born in the Toishan District of Guangdong Province in 1893. (Toishan – or Taishan — is a place from which large numbers emigrated in the 19th and 20th centuries.) At 16 or 17 he immigrated to Seattle to join some cousins there. When he arrived, the authorities declared him to be Wong Jack Jones, and "Jones" he remained thereafter. He worked for about a year in the Washington salmon canneries before joining other relatives in New York City and becoming a waiter in a Manhattan Chinese restaurant. |
About 1918 Quoy Wong, the owner of the Oriental Restaurant in Bangor, invited him to come to work as a waiter. Jones and Wong got into a serious disagreement about six months later.
Apparently liking the Bangor area, Mr. Jones decided to quit the Oriental and open a competing restaurant which he called the Pekin.
| The Pekin was located at 24 Post Office Square just a half block from the Oriental, and accommodated about 120 customers. It was open seven days a week from 11:00 AM to midnight. Four Chinese cooks and six non-Chinese waitresses served the fare. The restaurant was definitely Chinese-American. The menu offered slightly more American items than Chinese. Thirty five cents bought you a lunch of fried halibut in tomato sauce, soup, coffee and dessert. Even the Chinese section was heavily Americanized, mostly types of chop suey and chow mein. |  Interior of the Pekin Restaurant, Bangor, c. 1920. |
Mr. Jones returned to Toishan in 1920 for an arranged marriage to Chin Ngan Kee who returned with him to Bangor. This being the era of Prohibition, she fermented rice in barrels in the basement of the Pekin and distilled Chinese rice liquor for the family and for the half dozen or so local Chinese laundrymen.
Raymond and his siblings, using their little red wagon, delivered gallon bottles of the clear potent liquid to these laundrymen. Perhaps because of the spirits, the laundrymen would gather at the Pekin on Saturday evenings after closing their laundries.
On their only day off, they would eat, drink, and gamble, often playing pai gow, a dominos game, into the early hours of the morning.
Mr. Jones became a naturalized American citizen in the mid-1930s. A staunch straight-ticket Republican, he joined Bangor’s St. Andrew’s Masonic Lodge, where he became a 32nd degree Mason and a member of the Anah Shrine Temple. He enjoyed hunting and fishing.
When he became prosperous enough to buy a house, he had to have a local banker and Pekin Restaurant regular, purchase the house in his stead. According to their arrangement, the banker bought the house, and Mr. Jones paid the banker until the loan was paid off. The banker then deeded the property to Mr. Jones.
Wong Jack Jones retired in 1948 and closed the restaurant. Like many contemporary Mainers he eventually settled in Orlando, Florida, where he died. All of his six children left Maine after World War II. [By Gary Libby from March 2005 CAFAM Newsletter]
The Pekin Restaurant, Bangor, and Raymond Huang, by Gary Libby
Wong Jack June opened the Pekin Restaurant in Bangor, Maine in the 1920s. He and his wife, Chin Ngan Kee, had one daughter and five sons. One of those sons, Raymond Li Min Huang, is the subject of this article.
Raymond’s parents gave all of their children Chinese names. Their "American" names were selected to sound like their Chinese names. "Li Min" became "Raymond." His sister, "Fee," became "Fay." His brother, "Ang," was called "Don" and his brother "Wey" was "Wade."
All of the children began working at the restaurant when they reached about nine years of age. Their first job was peeling vegetables. In their spare time they played with the neighborhood children, skied and sledded in the winter, picked wild berries, played sandlot baseball and fished in the summer.
When America entered World War II, Raymond was a student at the University of Maine at Orono. Like all able bodied male students, he was a member of the Reserve Officer Training Corps. Two months after Pearl Harbor, he was mobilized. After basic training he was selected for Officer Candidate School and was commissioned a Second Lieutenant in the U. S. Army at age 19. He returned to Bangor for a month’s leave before reporting for duty in Europe.
While there at the Peking Restaurant he encountered Senator Owen Brewster, who congratulated him on becoming an officer. The Senator was surprised that Raymond wasn’t assigned to China, and being a member of the Armed Services Committee, he arranged to have Raymond reassigned to the Chinese Combat Command.
 | Once in China, Raymond was attached to the liaison group working with the Chinese Fifth Army where he dealt with none other than Zhou Enlai. He remembers Zhou as a very stern and demanding man. Raymond was briefly attached to the staff of General George Marshall. His duties included rummaging around camp trying to find cowboy novels and Pond’s Cold Cream for the General. His best source for cold cream was the nurses’ quarters. Later he served as a translator until he was discharged in 1946. As mentioned in the last newsletter, Raymond’s father’s family name was changed to "Jones" when he immigrated to the United States. Raymond, upon leaving the Army, decided to assert his Chinese ethnicity. He went to the Penobscot County Probate Court and became legally Raymond Li Min Huang. |
He also returned to the University of Maine where he finished his degree in business administration. He earned an M.B.A from Stanford in 1950, after which he began a long career as a salesman at IBM. His years there spanned the technological transitions from the punch card computer and electric typewriter to the personal computer and the ATM. Raymond’s spent most of his career working with the banking industry until he retired in 1988.
He now lives in San Francisco with his wife Florinda. In 1991 he came back to Bangor for his fiftieth high school reunion. He has shared many more memories of growing up in Bangor in an oral history interview, that can be found at the Maine Historical Society.
Gary Libby has received 13 black & white reprints of photos that have appeared in the Portland Newspapers. The most important one is of Chin Kow who was Portland’s last Chinese laundryman, taken in 1966, shortly before he died. He sits in a chair talking with a woman. Most of the other photos show various cooks at local Chinese restaurants including all three of the Ng brothers associated with the Hu Shang restaurants. Unfortunately the terms of acquisition do not permit reproduction in the Newsletter. The photos can be seen in the Chinese Archive at the Maine Historical Society. [By Gary Libby from May 2005 CAFAM Newsletter]
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