This illustration is based on my father, Feung Wah Wong, whom I dedicate this book to. He was an entrepreuner, soujourner, master chef, Chinese pharmacist, Chinese scholar, martial artist, poet and an artist at heart. A true Renaissance man. He immigrated to the US at the age of 12 to join his father in Yreka. He worked as a houseboy, domestic cook, restaurant cook, and settling in San Francisco to open a Chinese medicine business, Chung Dack Co. beginning in his little apartment in Chinatown. He later opened a store right next to the YMCA on Sacramento Street then moving the store to 625 Grant Avenue where he opened a curio shop in 1938. It was not until 1948 that he was able to bring my mother over to the US because of previous discriminatory laws from the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 that made it impossible for Chinese Americans to bring their wives from China to the US. His English was largely self taught.

We lived, slept and grew up in the store till I was 17 years old. The store was called Fueng Wah Company. We sold curios, fortune cookies, jewelry, six inch stilleto knives, fake rubber barf, paintings, trick matches, and art goods mostly to tourists. Due to the embargo with China at the time, the merchandise we sold were mostly from Japan. My parents worked very hard in the store, working late into the night. Which is perhaps why I still have this habit of working into the wee hours of the morning to this day. I helped in the store as soon as I was able to make change. What I really liked living in the store was the casual way friends and relatives of my parents dropped in and hung around. What I didn't like about it was how hard my parents alone took care of the store.

The summers especially were long and grueling. Groups of hoodlums would beseige the store and steal things. They even hit my father when he caught them stealing things. The new landlord, Sinclair Louie raised the rent sky high and finally evicted us from the store in 1970. We moved outside of Chinatown. It was the year I graduated from high school and began college. The changes were very traumatic for me. Thinking back, I was glad we closed the store at that time as my father was over 65 years old then. My father passed away nine years later.


HOME | A-Town Graphics | 415.673.0546 | e-mail: atowngraphics@yahoo.com