John Day, OR Rest Day

I actually went to bed at 8:50 last night and slept until 7 this morning. It was amazing. I cannot remember the last time I was in bed for 10 hours! …and it was delightful! After a light breakfast at the motel, it was onto bike cleaning before the heat of the day.

The Kam Wah Chung State Heritage Site was absolutely fascinating and almost next door to the Best Western where we are staying. Only ten people could go on the tour at one time, so I gave up my space to a couple traveling through town without a few hours to spare waiting for a space. The museum then gave us a ticket for the next hour and when I returned, there was another group of four and I gave up my ticket, along with three others from our group until the 1 PM tour! It was no problem and the tour was well worth waiting for. We also watched a 30 minute video that was aired a few months ago on the Oregon PBS station.

Kam Wah Chung State Heritage Site

The old building housed the Kam Wah Chung, a place of business for Ing “Doc” Hay and Lung On, Chinese immigrants who came to this country during a time of great unrest in China. Lung On was an entrepreneur and Ing Hay was an herbal medicine practitioner. The building also housed their home, a stockroom, a general store, kitchen, herb room, and a bunk room. It also served as a post office and a center for Chinese social life, even though they were heavily discriminated against at the time. The wave of Chinese immigrants in the mid to late immigrants came to this area seeking gold, as many others did back in the gold rush times. These to men sought to capitalize on the Chinese population in the area. Their partnership lasted over 50 years. Doc Hay actually treated patients in his clinic until 1948, using herbs and weeds to treat various illnesses. He was fluent in English and well educated.

Some of the many herbs which were imported from China and left when Hay died

Lung On was a very skilled merchant, changing his supplies to accommodate the latest needs of miners and others located in the area. He had a very successful dry goods store and also an import business. Later, he became a mediator for the Chinese community which was segregated from the “whites”. At the beginning of their business, they had to bar the windows and doors as they were frequently bothered by thefts and “Saturday night drunks”.

A small part of the contents of the general store

The building was closed up for 30 years after Hay died in 1952. When bought by the State Park system, it was remarkably intact with food dried in the Oregon weather instead of molded. There were many cans of food as well as herbs, letters, dry goods for sale, a Buddhist alter, tobacco, liquor, and a cleaver (or more than one) in each room. The Chinese were not allowed to have handguns or rifles, so they used cleavers for protection. Also found in a trunk under his bed was $23,000 worth of uncashed checks for services rendered. Several theories as to why he had these were given. Perhaps they were bounced checks. After the gold boom, the town mostly disappeared and people were very poor during the depression. It has been thought that maybe he did not cash the checks for medical treatment because he knew that it was a stress on the person’s budget. Today, that money would be worth a quarter of a million dollars.

Hay and On were buried in this town, unlike most other Chinese immigrants whose bones were shipped back to their families in China. The families of these two men were never brought to America and they never went back. Several poignant letters were found in the old house from the fathers and wives begging them to send money or to return to visit but they never did. The museum was a fascinating place to visit on our day off. It should be a highly recommended stop on any Transamerica Bike Route trip.