What’s in Store at the China Oriental Curio Company, Los Angeles, ca. 1906

by Paul R. Spitzzeri

It can often be very challenging to find historical material related to underrepresented groups in greater Los Angeles during the Homestead’s interpretive period of 1830 to 1930 and this is certainly true for the Chinese community. While there were often sensationalist accounts of the Angel City’s Chinatown and its opium dens and gambling houses and occasional references to the exotic nature of celebrations for the Chinese New Year or participation of the Chinese in such broader events as La Fiesta de Los Angeles, it is far less likely to locate items on aspects of the community, though some bits and pieces emerge to counter the other narratives.

For this post, we feature, from the Museum’s collection, a early 1900s postcard, sent to Pennsylvania on the last day of 1906 by someone who’d recently moved to the suburb of Monrovia, of the China Oriental Curio Company store, situated in a handsome two-story brick building at the southeast corner of Los Angeles and Marchessault streets located across from the Plaza.

The structure, having the address of 526-528 North Los Angeles Street, with its decorative work along the roof parapet, graceful arched windows, rounded corner where the main entrance was situated, and ample storefront windows was easily one of the more attractive and solidly constructed edifices in Los Angeles’ Chinatown, though it was razed during construction of U.S. 101 through the area and today’s Yaanga and Father Serra parks are there now.

There were at least two prior Chinese-owned business at that location, with the Tong Lang store operating there in 1896 and Chew Pack and Company, which possessed a wholesale liquor license, moving there in 1899 from around the corner on Marchessault Street (named for a mayor whose life ended tragically in 1868), which was one of the several main thoroughfares in Chinatown before it was razed for Union Station and moved to the northwest where it is now. The latter evidently closed down very soon because, on 27 January 1900, the China Oriental Curio Company opened.

An advertisement the prior day in the Los Angeles Times informed readers that there was to be a “fine display of Chinese and Japanese curios, Silk and Crepe Shawls, Embroidered Handkerchiefs, [and] Chinese general merchandise” and implored “Don’t fail to attend.” Just prior to Christmas, the firm took out an ad, boasting that it had the “largest assortment of Chinese and Japanese good in the city” and items that would make “BEAUTIFUL HOLIDAY PRESENTS” which “can be got for friends at [the] lowest prices.”

When the federal census was enumerated in Chinatown on 4 June, four residents at 528 N. Los Angeles, in the second-floor living quarters, were counted. This included 45-year old Ah Duck, a divorced man who emigrated from China twenty years prior and who was a cook and the three merchants who operated the store. 23-year old Wing Sang Chin was likely the junior partner and the only of the quartet born in California, while the brothers Kim Gow and Bow Yuen Yip, ages 43 and 41, respectively, were the principals of the firm.

Kim Gow, who generally went by the name of Henry, came to the United States first, migrating in 1872 and was listed as having been married for 17 years, though there was no spouse noted in the household. His brother, Bow Yuen, a migrant of 1880, was also denoted as married, for four years, but, again, there was no wife shown. Later in 1900, they were joined by Henry Uejann Yip, a 14-year old, who may have been a son of Henry or, perhaps, a nephew of the elder Yips.

An early reference to a “Bow Yip” was from the 7 March 1892 edition of the Los Angeles Express, which reported that he was one of several Chinese men who gave addresses in English at an event held by the Los Angeles Chinese Mission, organized four years prior by the Congregationalist Church (this was the denomination to which Massachusetts native F.P.F. Temple belonged before he converted to Catholicism on marrying Antonia Margarita Workman in 1845). His talk was titled “New Life from the Lord’s Prayer.”

On 26 May 1899, “Yip Bow” landed in San Francisco, listed as age 40 (matching the 1900 census age), and was listed as a missionary, suggesting that he went north under the auspices of the Congregationalists and the Los Angeles Chinese Mission. The next mention of the China Oriental Curio Company came in October 1903 when the Express published a pair of articles by Sui Sin Far (1865-1914), who was a widely known writer born in England as Edith Maude Eaton to a British father with long experience as a merchant in China and a Chinese mother.

Eaton/Sui spent part of her childhood in New York, as well as England and then Montreal, where she left school to help support her large family (she was the second of fourteen children, including sisters Winnifred, known as Onoto Watanna, a Japanese pen name, and who was a writer of fiction as well as journalist, and Sara, who collaborated with Winnifred on a 1914 “Chinese-Japanese cookbook.” Eaton/Sui, who began writing about being a Chinese woman in America starting in 1896, spent some time in San Francisco before coming to Los Angeles, though her stay was brief before she headed to Seattle and then Boston. She died in Montreal in 1914 at age 49.

An Express article from 22 October concerned the visit to Los Angeles, while on a national tour, of Leung Ki Chu (Liang Qichao, 1873-1929), a reformer against the dying Qing dynasty, with Eaton/Sui observing that “in Los Angeles, which is a stronghold of the reform party,” there “are those who believe in Leung Ki Chu and uphold his standard.” She referred to these supporters as educated and advanced in their thinking, but emphasized that “they are not Americanized Chinamen—they are Chinese Chinamen of the sort that a citizen of the world can be proud to know.” Among those were the proprietors of the China Oriental Curio Company.

The following day’s issue was titled “Chinese In Business Here” and Eaton/Sui began by noting,

If one will visit the stores and other places of business of the Chinese of Los Angeles he will gain a clearer idea of the industry and ingenuity of these people than the most learned books and treatises on the Chinese, both at home and abroad, could give. I have passed many a pleasant half hour or longer in the Chinese stores, taking a cup of tea here and there and a pinch of instruction in between whiles, and I have in mind as I write, Wong Doong How of the China Oriental Curio company [and others] . . .

She continued by informing her readers that “nearly all the articles that are to be found in a Chinese curio store are hand made,” adding that (after saying the Chinese did not fully understand the main conveniences of life, while Western treatment of them prevented an appreciation of Western science) “not a few of the creations that are to be seen in these curio stores are marvelous results of attention to detail and have a beauty all their own.”

Another impressive aspect of Chinese curio goods was that “they are made of good and lasting material and are meant to please the eye for than a day, which cannot be said of American manufactured knick-knacks.” Eaton/Sui added that a good many Chinese curios “have been made by Chinese boys and girls living in small, isolated farm houses and cottages of the Middle Kingdom” while “much of the beautiful embroidery work that we see is done by Chinese women in their own homes, and has provided many a poor family with rice and tea.”

The writer continued that most merchants she came across comprised of a proprietor who “is usually a chatty fellow with a long pipe in his mouth” and that “there is a fascination in watching him manipulate the abacus,” which she explained “answers all the purposes of numerical figures.” She commented that the Chinese used the abacus at a time when “the forefathers of the present ‘Anglo-Saxon’ Americans were living as savages in the British Isles or thereabouts.” Eaton/Sui concluded that the happiest of the Chinese were those who grew and sold fruit and vegetables because “he is a natural-born gardener and to help the fruits of the earth to flourish is his delight,” noting that “a Chinaman can grow vegetables where no one else can.”

At the end of August 1905, Yip Bow Yuen joined ten other Chinese men, including the prominent merchant and restaurant owner George Lem (1863-1951), who came to Los Angeles in 1874 and rose to become one of the wealthiest and most powerful figures in the Chinese community and was once foreman of the Chinese workers for Lucky Baldwin on his local landholdings, in the establishment of the Wai Sun Company. The firm, capitalized at $50,000, was intended “to deal in merchandise and real property, to deal in and generate electric current for power or lights, to erect power plants” and other activities, though it is not known how active the enterprise was.

In March 1906, Yip Bow Yuen was, with Lem, a key figure in the Chinese Chamber of Commerce, when a controversy erupted over claims that Chinese were firing at an American flag at a shooting gallery on Alameda Street run by a Japanese man, identified only as E. Morita, and woman. Lem, Yip and Wong Tong formed an investigating committee and issued a report stating that the flag, hung for decoration, was accidentally struck by bullets by two Chinese youth and the Japanese woman that hit targets in the facility. A white man entered and mocked the trio for their poor marksmanship, was evicted, and then sought revenge by hailing law enforcement and asserting that the hitting of the flag was by design. A newspaper, identified only as the “Yellow Shriek,” and possibly William Randolph Hearst’s Los Angeles Examiner stoked the flames of anger about the purported deliberate shooting of the flag.

Lem, Wong and Yip stated in their report

We Chinese living in America have learned to deeply reverence this same flag which stands for so much of human liberty, and knowing further that in order to have harmony and peace among all people justice must be ceaselessly sought after, we entered upon this investigation with the firm determination to bring all and every Chinese who might be guilty of desecrating the America flag before the magistrates that the severest punishment might be meted out to them.

In great detail, the three men outlined their work in interviewing the gallery owner, the police officers who responded and the two young Chinese who visited the premises and determined that there was no intentional firing at the flags, which were attached as decorations to the target areas. They concluded that, while they looked into the matter thoroughly and “we have not overlooked the slightest detail,” it was also important “that the American people look into the affair” and that their report “be confirmed on the part of the American people.”

The Los Angeles Record of 8 June briefly noted that Yip Bow Yuen joined Lem and several others, including a San Francisco Chinese newspaper editor, in welcoming the Chinese Imperial secretary, whose name was given as “Mai Hung Chuan,” and other dignitaries in a visit to the Angel City. Among the activities undertaken was an excursion on the Balloon Route, of which there is a vignette on the back of the postcard.

When the Chinese New Year began on 1 February 1908, the Los Angeles Times observed that “hard times,” stemming from the national depression of the previous year, “have had no effect on Chinatown, judging by the preparations in progress for the celebration . . . “ Adding that a near disaster was averted as the famous dragon used in parades was repaired after rain damage, the paper reported that “Yip Bow, president of the Chinese Chamber of Commerce, is authority for the statement that this year’s celebration will be the best ever” in Los Angeles. Yip was paraphrased as adding,

The Chinese were obliged to take special precautions a year ago to keep out the rowdies, but the police have promised to give special protection, and because of this favor the tourists will be enabled to witness much of the celebration which was held behind closed doors last year.

With regard to tourists, it is notable that there were tours led to Chinatown by out-of-towners seeking to see something exotic in the Angel City, as a previous post here has discussed.

On 17 November 1908, the 49-year old Yip Bow Yuen died from complications from an unstated type of operation at the Clara Barton Hospital, and news accounts, brief as they were, noted his prominence among the Chinese in Los Angeles. The Express of that day called him “one of the best known Los Angeles Chinese” and added that “no tong claimed the membership of Yuen, as he was independent, both in his business and social life.” 

The paper also stated that the funeral was “expected to be one of the largest in the history of Chinatown” and the following day it referred to Yip as “one of the wealthiest Chinese merchants in the West” and a member of the Reformed Congregationalist Church. The Herald of the 18th called Yip “one of the best-known Chinese in town” and a merchant of two decades, while adding that the funeral was to be held at the home of Henry Yip at the store building.

Little could be found about Henry, other than that he invested in a Mexican banana plantation scheme that failed in 1909, that he was an interpreter for the courts. As to Henry U. Yip, however, he rose to a great degree of prominence among the Chinese of Los Angeles after graduating from Los Angeles Polytechnic High School in 1910 (he was listed as living at 526 N. Los Angeles in that year’s census with the occupation of “civil engineer”) and attending the University of Southern California. He became secretary of the Chinese Chamber of Commerce and of the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association and was president of the Chinese Students’ Alliance of Southern California, while at U.S.C.

In 1913, it appears it was the younger Henry Yip who was “looking after the Chinatown end of the movement,” as reported by the Times of 8 April, because the “Los Angeles Chinatown will be placed on wheels and moved to a new site” and older Chinese merchants were hesitant to get involved. Yip, assuming it was Henry U., told the paper,

The merchants of Chinatown realize that it will be necessary to move, since the land here undobtedly [sic] will be bought by railroads and other corporations. Many of us would like to get away from this unsightly district and build a Chinatown that would attract tourists. Our purpose is to build business houses, dwellings and temples after the Chinese fashion of architecture, beautify the streets and present a district that would be a beauty spot instead of a disgrace, such as the present Chinatown. There is plenty of wealth among the local merchants to build a model Chinese quarter.

He went on to acknowledge the conservatism of the elders in the community, but informed the Times that a majority of people he spoke with agreed with the concept and that the idea of a move, frequently discussed in recent years, was animated by “a report that a railroad company lately purchased a large tract in the eastern part of the present Chinatown” and that “we know that we must go, sooner or later, and we feel that the sooner the better.” 

The paper commented that very few of the 1,000 Chinese residents of the area owned property, having “never shown a disposition” for this, while “the American real estate dealers have not been too eager to sell to them,” wanting long-term leases instead. This lack of ownership “near the Plaza facilitates the work of planning for the removal.” It was a quarter century later, in 1938, that the new Chinatown opened just prior to the completion of Union Station on the eastern section of the old community site.

Henry U. Yip soon left Los Angeles for the north, living in Stockton as he worked as a real estate agent, almost certainly among Asian farmers renting from the powerful Miller and Lux Company, for whom he worked, and then in San Francisco. Naturalized in 1945, Yip, who was married to Rose Chan and had several children with her, died in Sacramento in early 1967 at age 81.

The 526-528 North Los Angeles Street building was later occupied by the prominent mercantile establishment, F. Suie One Company, and was also, prior to 1924, the home of the Chinese Congregational Church, as well as, from 1932, the art gallery of the well-known See family before it gave way to bulldozers when U.S. 101 was pushed through the area.

Spotty as the historical record is, this postcard does provide a visual representation of a business enterprise run by members of the Yip family and helps, along with newspaper and other references, to give us some insight into the Chinese community of Los Angeles in the early years of the 20th century.