Chinese choriszo

'Chinese Mexican in America' was son of Tucson pioneers
By Kimberly Matas

arizona daily star

Tucson, Arizona Published: 02.02.2007

advertisementTo his wife and children, Phillip Wah Don Sr. was a hardworking family man with a silly sense of humor.

Don's sister remembers him as the only brother among nine siblings, the son of Tucson pioneers.

His bingo buddies remember Don as a gregarious character who would do a little jig in the aisles when he won.

And a former employee remembers her boss as a kind man who knew more about making chorizo, a Mexican sausage, than she did.

Don, 85, died Jan. 27, from a pulmonary ailment.

He and his eight sisters were the children of Don Wah, who moved to Tucson from San Francisco in the late 1800s, and China-born Fok Yut.

When he arrived in Tucson, Don Wah worked as a cook for Southern Pacific Railroad. An entrepreneur, he eventually opened six grocery stores. In time, he turned his stores over to his children, and Don acquired El Cortez Market, 2455 N. First Ave.
"We all grew up among the Mexican people," said Don's sister, businesswoman Esther Tang. "All of our customers, primarily, were our Mexican neighbors. I guess we were Chinese Mexicans in America."

"Their family was raised in a unique Chinese-American tradition that combined the Chinese heritage with modern American ways of life," read Don Wah's 1961 Arizona Daily Star obituary. "The entire family was taught to be fluent in Chinese, English and Spanish. The balance between the cultures was demonstrated by the family tradition of having one Chinese meal daily with the remaining meals either American or Mexican."

From that upbringing, it seemed a natural progression when, in the early 1970s, Phillip Don converted part of his grocery store into Don's Chinese/Mexican Deli.
A 1984 Tucson Citizen restaurant review called the combination of cultures a "unique local phenomenon."

The reviewer called Don's red chili burro "a generous and good-tasting example of gustatory portability" and said: "I have yet to come across anything Don's does poorly. Their Mexican food has a good sharp bite to it, which carries a Chinese accent, but nonetheless cannot be faulted by any prevailing local standard of border cookery."

"Phillip was the butcher for his store and people came from all over to buy his special chorizo sausage," said his daughter-in-law, Alison Don.

"It was very famous," said his wife of 61 years, Florence Chan Don. "People from California would come in and want to take some back. It was tasty. ... He found the magic touch."

Former employee Yolanda Reyna cooked for the Mexican side of the deli for 10 years. Don, she said, was a generous family man who gave jobs to her four daughters and her sister-in-law. Don's children also worked at the grocery after school.

Don taught Reyna to make chorizo using wine, his secret ingredient.

"What was so different and unique is he was Chinese, but he knew Mexican food and he knew how to make chorizo and menudo," Reyna said. "He would sample my cooking and give me pointers. I'm ... the Mexican cook and he's helping me with tamales. He taught me a lot about cooking. Every time I make chorizo, I think of him."
Don also lent Reyna money if she ran short before payday, and he was equally generous with others in need, from feeding the homeless to forgiving customers' debts.

"He would sell people groceries on credit and never charge them. He had all these little credit slips he would toss out," said his daughter, Christine Don Given.
Don worked long hours at his store to support his immediate family, plus his siblings and parents. He usually wouldn't get home until 8 or 9 p.m.

In the mid-1980s, after working 12-hour days, seven days a week for more than 50 years, Don sold the store and retired.

After that, the Dons traveled occasionally. They took a family cruise last year for their 60th wedding anniversary.

Don also liked putting on silly faces and telling jokes and was a fan of bingo. He cultivated a group of friends at the hall the family frequented.

"Of course he loved to win, but it didn't matter," daughter Phyllis Don Miller said. "He loved the social atmosphere."

Cathy Downs was one of Don's bingo buddies.

"He was a character," she said. "He was fun to be around."

When Don won, he threw his arms up and jiggled his waist in what she called "his bingo jitter."

Even after Don's pulmonary ailment was diagnosed in November, he maintained his sense of humor.

David Given last saw his father-in-law five days before Don's death.
"He was being spoon-fed soup because he couldn't feed himself anymore, but even then he was kicking his feet, rolling his eyes and making sounds every time he took a spoonful. Even though he was in pain and couldn't even feed himself, he just wanted to make us laugh."

One of his last requests, Christine Given said, was for a shot of tequila. Her father was too weak to sit up to swallow the shot, so a sponge was soaked in tequila and put in his mouth.

"He was a person who never complained, never said a bad word about anybody," she said. "We can only hope we can follow in his footsteps and be a little bit like him."

A few photos

Mexico City: People's Daily On-line (February 01, 2005)

From: http://www.answers.com/topic/chinatowns-in-latin-america

From Joe Cummings, ""Sweet and Sour South of the Border"

Emigrants crossing into Laredo, 1917 (CHINESE HEART OF TEXAS)

Mug shots of three Chinese immigrants captured in a sting on smuggling across the U.S.-Mexico border in 1911. Back then, border crackdowns focused on Chinese and other foreigners barred from entering the United States -- not on Mexicans and other Latinos. Photo: National Archives, on web at "1965 Immigration Law Changed Face of America" by Jennifer Ludden (National Public Radio)

STEAL THIS BLOG!

Leaving for a flight from San Francisco to Mexico, I was picked up by a airport shuttle service. My driver, who was Asian, asked:

Where are you flying to?Mexico.

Oh, what city?Puebla.

That's a very nice city.

You have been to Puebla?

Yes. I'm a Mexican. I'm from Chiapas. My parents moved from China to Mexico before I was born.
(John Barreiro, "larpman")


I ran across a picture of a woman soldier serving with a Yaqui Indian unit during the Revolution with the improbable name of Hermilianda Wong Chew which got me spending an hour or so looking for a website -- any website -- on the Chinese in Mexico. But, beyond a short article by Joe Cummins on the Chinese in Mexicali, there isn't much on the Chinese immigration. Considering that the Chinese have been coming to Mexico since at least the 16th century (with the Manila trade) and that Chinese have lived in Mexico City since 1635, there's got to be more... in Spanish, English or Chinese ... somewhere.

So... until someone writes SOMETHING like S.Lenchek's Mexico-Connect two part series, "Jews in Mexico" or like the Houston Culture Organization's "Irish Presence in Mexico", or even a decent Wikipedia article, I've put together what notes I have, based on suggestions originally offered by Lonely Planet's "Thorn Tree Mexico" forum contributors:


PRECOLUMBIAN MEXICO

There was a program on PBS a little while ago about an anthropologist who is convinced that Chinese sailors came before Colombus to the New World. Check out this website Then click on "Book" at the top for a more general description.

Discovery of an early Chinese temple in Uros, Mexico

17th-19th century

EXPLORE ASIAN ORG site

1635 : The Chinos, a name commonly use to describe any people who came from across the Pacific Ocean, are so numerous that the Spanish barbers in Mexico City petition the Municipal Council to prevent Chino barbers from working in the capital. They are duly banished from the city.

But Spanish shopkeepers also face competition from Chino physicians, tailors, weavers, silversmiths and ironsmiths, shipbuilders, carpenters, merchants and more. Many of these men take Mexican wives but they and their descendents remained Chinos. The seaport of Acapulco where the Manila Galleons landed, becomes known as the ciudad de los Chinos, the 'City of Chinos'.

The trade route from Acapulco to the capital, Mexico City is called El Camino de la China - 'the road of the Spanish Chinos' who later became known as Mexican Chinos.

La China Poblana was more than a typical dress. Spanish merchants from the Philippines during the colonial period brought La China Poblana to the port of Acapulco in the Pacific Ocean. While the versions don't agree, most point to the fact that she was either married or sold to a prominent family of Puebla. Her colorful dress, which would become synonymous with typical femininity and a tradition of folklore and fashion, was designed to match her Oriental features, her exotic beauty and yearning for her homeland, this being India.

Many legends have been attached to the China outfit, including the romantic story about the oriental princess who was sold as a slave in the city of Puebla, who then fell in love with a criollo and created her wedding gown based on the local fashions but decorated with oriental motifs. The truth behind the costume is that once every three months a ship carrying goods from the Philippines known as the "Nao de China" (Ship from China) anchored in Acapulco. The aristocratic ladies purchased a textile known as "castor" to make the skirts for their female servants, called "chinita" or "china". The word is completely disassociated from any oriental background. As the length of this fabric was not enough to reach the floor, an addition of silk was sewn at the top of the skirt to complete the length.

With time and dedication, the women embroidered or applied sequins to highlight the oriental decoration of the fabric. The modern China Poblana's outfit is so covered in sequins that the historic "castor" fabric (Which is only made in Puebla and Mexico City today) can only be seen if you turn the skirt inside out.

To this day, a monument-fountain, dedicated to La China Poblana stands in one of the main avenues of Puebla. Legend says that if you look closely, the sculpture rotates in the mid day sun. The three colors of her dress, green, white and red, were adopted over the centuries to incorporate the colors and insigna of the mexican flag.

(notes by SPARKS)


19th Century


After 1882 (when the U.S. Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act), Mexico became a better destination for Chinese than the U.S. -- and, in the U.S., Chinese workers were discouraged or forbidden to bring their wives and children. Coincidentally, these was the period of time when Porfirio Diaz was trying to find people to settle in the north... a good deal for the Chinese.I don't have the documentation for this, but it always fascinated me, the Mexico Southern Railroad (Ulysses S. Grant, President and CEO) hired Chinese workers away from the Southern Pacific, the incentives being not only the chance to send for their families, but that these laborers would be paid as skilled foreign workers, not as general labor. (my notes)

NORTHERN MEXICO, ETC:
Immigrants to a Developing Society: The Chinese in Northern Mexico, 1875-1932

Here's an article from El Universal (originally appeared in the Miami Herald) earlier this year about the history of the Ley (Lee) family. The six sons of patriarch, Lee Fong, started the Sinaloa-based Ley supermarket chain, which has since spread to all corners of northwest Mexico where it's battling interlopers WalMart and Soriana for dominance:Ley family represents immigrants' success.


From Rolly Brook :

TORREON RAILWAY: There were a lot of Chinese who worked building the railroads in Mexico. A large group of them with their families settled at the just completed railroad junction that became Torreón. They exercised considerable economic influence in the early years of Torreón until the revolution. There is a particularly horrid story of the near total extermination of this Chinese community by lead elements of Villa's army. When Villa arrive and saw what was happening, to his credit, he put a stop to the massacre, but not before 300+ had been killed. The Chinese community never recovered. I have misplace the referencesd to this story, but I'm looking for it. Torreon Tram .

The story of the Torreón Chinese Massacre is described by Wm. K. Meyers, Forge of Progress, Crucible of Revolt, U of New Mexico Press, 1994.

BAJA CALIFORNIA


THE CHINESE COMMUNITY IN MAZATLAN: A JOURNEY FROM PAST TO PRESENT (PART 1)

THE CHINESE COMMUNITY IN MAZATLAN: A JOURNEY FROM PAST TO PRESENT (PART 2 - The present generation)

Yucatan

While touring some haciendas in the state of Yucatan, I saw one hacienda that had Chinese style drawings painted as borders in the now-very-dilapidated wall paper. When I asked about it, the local watchman who agreed to show us around said that in the past it was common to have Chinese workers do decorative work like that in haciendas. After asking around some more about it I was told that there was heavy Chinese immigration into Mexico at the same time there was heavy Chinese immigration into the US - which I guess was approx mid-19th century, and would foot to others' info about the RR building.

MISC.

Borderlands, Chinese in El Paso (Texas) : http://epcc.edu/nwlibrary/borderlands/19_chinese.htm

Overseas Chinese forum (message thread on the Chinese in Mexico)

More...

This from the Overseas Chinese Forum -- posted back in 2002 by Fred Woo:

At one point, there were over 100,000 Chinese (mostly men) who migrated to Mexico and found work. Many of them had founded families with Mexican women. Later, many of them were sent back to China in a round of deportations. Many also remained or found their way back. The Mexican singer, Ana Gabriel is of 1/4th Chinese background (her grandfather was Chinese).

My own grandfather had married a Mexican woman in Los Angeles and we lost contact with her and the step-relatives after my grandfather died.

I know there also must be some Chinese of partial Mexican heritage who were forcibly deported back to China in the 1930s. Some have said that there are "barrios" (Mexican ghettos) of such descendants still living in certain villages of Guangdong. Is that true? Where do most of them live? Have they not been fully integrated into Chinese society by now?

But, anyways, I found an article posted by one of these Chinese-Mexican descendants:

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

My grandmother, Cruz Arredondo, met my grandfather, Antonio Yee, in Sinaloa, Culiacan, when he immigrated to Mexico from China to look for work in the mines, in 1928. He opened a small store with the help of the growing Chinese community already in Mexico. They married and had 3 sons, Poncho, Jacinto and Antonio.


Abuelita Crucita, y mis tres Tios, went with my grandfather when he was sent back to China by the Mexican Government in 1932. President Calles at that time did many corrupt things, one of which was to conduct a massive movement to deport Chinese immigrants back to China. Many families were rounded up, uprooted, put on buses and trains to Arizona, U.S., before they were taken to a boat headed towards China.

Of the Chinese who came to find work in Mexico and a better way of life, the majority were young men, many of whom married and established families with Mexican women. Given the choice to go with their husbands or stay and raise their children alone, many women, like Abuelita Crucita, chose to go.

Although, Abuelita Crucita also suffered in China. They went to his hometown where he had a home, wife and children already. Both families lived there together. Abuelita Crucita was also a stubborn woman and would not allow herself to be second in this situation, but she was still miserable.
My Tios felt discriminated there,

because they were different to their classmates, and did not speak Chinese well at first. They soon learned over the 6 years they lived there, until 1937 when the President of Mexico, Lazaro Cardenas, made it possible for my grandmother and her sons to come back to Mexico, along with the other Mexicans in China, who wished to return to Mexico.

A newspaper columnist wrote an article one day announcing that anyone who told their story of how they got there and who was president at the time they came, would be given passage to Mexico. Abuelita Crucita saw her chance to go back home.

President Cardenas then arranged for a boat to leave from Shanghai before war between Japan and China disrupted. Abuelita Crucita, who was 7 months pregnant with my mother, packed up her 3 sons and snuck away in the night. She knew my grandfather would not let her go otherwise.

The boat trip lasted two months. Abuelita Crucita was constantly sick. She thought she would deliver her baby on the boat, but she made it to Mexico and traveled back to Mexico, where she gave birth to my mother.


_______________________________________________________


Information posted by Conchita Villalba Yee.
Anyone with a similar experience or with any comments
please send email to:

CVTV@aol.com

Paul Yih of San Paulo, Brazil added this:

I have loved your story -- and I think this story of yours should be chronologically dated for the future history about China and and about their immigrant workers and their plight in the past. I think your story will be of tremendous value to not only Chinese but to the Mexicans as well.

If I may add a bit of history, often times, not the most pleasant -- but I think you and I or in t his forum can create such an interesting thread as many will follow sooner or later -- for the sake where we can now document the many events past and present -- which can only lead to a good future. I for one will come to Mexico to research more.

As we all know, as in the many story of the Western stories, be that of cowboy or Indians as in Hollywood -- be that of the well know apache like Geronimo in Arizona and his many skirmishes with the US Calvary.

But in and near Tucson and in Nogales, also there is Nogales right next to the American Nogales. As Tucson, the last city of that famous Santa Fe railroad ended.. along with that, many of hte Chinese railroad builders had also stopped there . If one goes to the city or Marana ---well, a name was given to the Jews -- right ? Maranos e maranas..Some of the largest land owners in the region were also Chinese.

Many Chinese had also ventured accross to the Mexican side, as in your story, in those days, only men were allowed to come to the US to build railroad and to do grunt work. Mexico had followed the same laws then as the US -- no Chinese were allowed to have their spouses or ---female Chinese -- for simple racial reasons -- US and Mexicos did not want more non Whites to be born in their country --- because then, they will have to grant them citizenship ...

Maybe you and us all can also do the research, where in the early 1900 or late 1800s - the Chinese had grown to become very affluent in the city of Nogales, or in that contado of Sonora ---- But the miltary and the politicos in that region had their envy of the rise of the Chinese where a massacre had taken place in that area. I do not have the exact date where I am still partially investgating and doing my best to document that one episode in that region and I wish I can find more Mexican students, university researchers to elaborate more on that famous burning and killing and lynching of the Chinese in Nogales.

I also would like to see more and more documentation of those Mexicans who were in China and more specifically, I would like to know of the village in Guangdong, as we can trace them of those ethnic components of the Chinese-- I wonder if they were from Toisan -- of which there are great interest to have an overseas Chinese museum in that region, agian to document all the past history of joy, glory as well as pain and agony -- be that of the Chinese, be that of the suffering Mexicanos or their half and half children --- As we all aware of the duo comedians as in Chich and Chong -- Chong is part Chinese ..and there will be more for us to show and I wish there will be a greater link now between China and Mejico ..

Keep up with more posting in here -- as a registry of your abuelita --

Vaya con dios y felice navidad a su familia

Encantado.
Pablo (de Brasil) :)