Kam Wah Chung – If you ever find yourself in John Day, Oregon, take the time to visit Kam Wah Chung. In the 1880s, two Chinese immigrants set up their business – a general store, doctor office, and herbalist shop to support the local mining community in the fading days of the gold rush but still the largest Chinese population in Oregon.

Ing Hay was a herbalist and practitioner of “pulse diagnostics” and Lung On was a shewd bilingual merchant. Together, they worked in this small combined store, medical office, flop house, and kitchen until their deaths in the 1940s. At that time, as they had no immediate relatives in Oregon, the place was just locked up and abandoned. Their distant Chinese families were not allowed to leave a China occupied by Japan, and the US government would not allow money to be remitted out of the US to its new enemy.

When distant cousins gifted their land to the City of John Day and the old store was opened in 1968, a veritable time capsule was discovered and that is essentially what you see today – nothing added and nothing removed with reminders of the Chinese products they imported with the local staples they provided.

The narration of the visit whitewashes a great deal of the ugliness of the past but the story of how they left behind family, could never leave without losing everything, the discrimination and exploitation including the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 is complex and moving and well worth reflection.

There is great OPB Oregon Experience documentary of the time and you can find it here … http://watch.opb.org/video/1207317935/