Ok, this story is about to get real, but first I need to say something about the miles and miles. From my home to the Page Springs campground is over 300 miles. For the last half of that you don’t see many towns.. You see a lot of big ranches and widely scattered little hamlets clinging to the highway. We drove over a thousand miles. One of the subtle surprises was that all of the pavement we drove over was in excellent condition. One of the reasons for this is that the state highway system is mostly paid for by the people living on the west side of the Cascades because that is where most Oregonians live. I’ll have more to say about the money as we go along. The economics are different of the east side of the mountains.

So where do you go after the Malheur nature reserve? Hey, let's head to what might be the strangest place in Oregon. We’re heading to the heart of darkness—maximum MAGA—John Day Oregon. It might as well been on a different planet. We landed at the Kam Wah Chung interpretive center in time for the last tour of the day. I’ve been in John Day many times, but this was the first time I was able to go inside the historic building. It sat alone and unloved for a long time. Most Oregonians probably aren't even aware that it exists.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kam_Wah_Chung_%26_Co._Museum
https://friendsofkamwahchung.com/
https://friendsofkamwahchung.com/history/

That last link is a brief history of the building. It really doesn’t explain the importance of this building in Oregon’s history.. Doc Hay and his collection of traditional Chinese medications gets all the publicity. He was a pulseologist. He could read a person’s pulse in 17 different places and that was part of his diagnosis. But, the real mover and shaker was his business partner and long time friend, Lung On. He had his fingers on the pulse of the community. If there was a way to make money in central Oregon, Lung On probably found it and was likely to be involved. Both men entered the United States during the period of the Chinese Exclusion Act and found ways around it. Under the exclusion act they couldn’t legally own property. By the time they died they were probably the richest guys in Grant county. Other people probably made more money there from the gold mining, but they tended to move to more cosmopolitan places than John Day.

“Lung On (Liang Guanying, also known as Leon) was a partner with Ing Hay in the Kam Wah Chung and Company general store and apothecary in John Day from 1887 to 1940. Born in 1863 in Guangdong Province, China, he arrived in California in 1882 and formed a business partnership with Ing Hay, a Chinese herbalist, in 1887.

Lung On, from a prosperous Chinese family, was an educated Chinese classicist, and his fluency in Chinese and English made him invaluable to both the Chinese in John Day and the non-Chinese who contracted labor and traded with the store. He served as interpreter and translator, scribe, and business mentor for the Chinese in John Day. He was noted for his conviviality, his knowledge, and his love of games of chance, including horse racing.

In 1905, the Kam Wah Chung was ransacked in an unwarranted search, and Lung On and two other Chinese men were accused of possessing opium. A mob ordered them to leave town. But Lung On remained in John Day, pled not guilty to the charges, and was acquitted. He later helped Chinese laborers navigate local laws when violence and robbery were perpetrated against them.

As he aged, Lung On became known as Leon, and local children frequented the Kam Wah Chung for his gifts of candy. He was a leader in the Sze Yup Communal Organization of Eastern Oregon and held investments in mining interests, real estate, and labor contracting. He opened the first automobile dealer franchise in Oregon east of the Cascades and a service station, Tourist Garage, which operated until his death in 1940.

Lung On’s estate was valued near $90,000 in 1940, and proceeds were divided between Ing Hay and Lung On's wife and daughter, who had remained in China, though his family was never able to recover their share of the estate. Lung On is buried in John Day.”

https://www.oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/lung_on_1863_1940_/

Both men were said to have been very popular. They were the only Chinese people who were buried in the Whites only cemetery in John Day. Lung On employed 7 White guys at his auto dealership. During the depression he loaned a bank enough money that they were able to survive the depression. He had a couple of small rooms added to the old building for his bedroom and an office. The old office now houses an expensive security system with a fancy nitrogen fire suppression system, so any fire can be suppressed without damaging the contents. In addition to business and gambling Lung On enjoyed dressing well and visiting prostitutes.

At the peak of John Day’s gold mining era there were probably around 2,000 Chinese people living in an area around the size of a city block. The only places in the United States with more Chinese people at that time were San Francisco and Portland. They were a significant part of the population. Currently John Day is about 95% White and the median age is 52..5. (For all of Oregon the median age is around 40.) Most of the Asian Americans living there now are probably the families of the southeast Asians who own the motels in town.

John Day has obviously seen better days. There were a lot of empty buildings, including two that looked like they had been nice restaurants and could be again, if there was enough business to support them. One of the more upscale remaining restaurants was a big indication that we have arrived in the middle of Magaland. It advertises itself as a Republican restaurant.. Outside on the reader board it had a message on one side about the Durham report & lies and on the other side there was a message about “fruitcakes” causing a shit show. Another indication is that 77% of the voters in the last election voted for #45. Biden got 20% of the vote. This is also one of the counties where the majority of the voters would like to live in Idaho.

Since we didn’t want our dinner with a side of MAGA we went to the Squeeze In. It was an excellent choice. They serve something you rarely see these days—real freshly made French fries.

We were in John Day during a happy/sad event—high school graduation. It looked like the graduation was the social event of the season. It was sad because most of those kids will have to leave Grant county soon.. There are no jobs for most of them. Ranching and logging are still an important part of the economy, but in John Day the economy is driven by government services and tourism.

It’s hard to take Grant county seriously because there aren’t many people living there. The whole county has less than 8,000 people and John Day is significantly less than 2,000 people. They don’t have enough people or money to pay for the highways they enjoy, let alone all the other government services. One of the interesting things about the museum is the amount of money the state park system pays to run it versus the number of people who visit. They way they are currently configured only 64 people per day can tour the old building and they probably average a lot less than that. The admission was free. On this side of the mountains the state park system charges for just about everything, including day use at many of the state parks.

It was sort of the same way with the Feds. On this side of the mountains you pay to see the recreation of Fort Clatsop on the coast. On the east side of the mountains the visitor center at the wildlife refuge was free. At the Page Springs campground we paid half price because I have a senior card--$9.00. If anything money gets stranger as we go along. More coming soon.

TB

Technobarbarian wrote:

> ...
> Since we didn’t want our dinner with a side of MAGA we went to the Squeeze In. It was an excellent choice. They serve something you rarely see these days—real freshly made French fries.
> ...

Hey. I eat RFMFFs about 3 times a week.............and what does a
side of MAGA look like?

--
bill
Theory don't mean squat if it don't work.

On Thu, 15 Jun 2023 10:55:13 -0700 (PDT),
Technobarbarian <technobarbarian@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Ok, this story is about to get real...

I enjoyed that a lot. Fascinating--I had no idea. Thanks for
posting it.

--
Ted Heise <theise@panix.com> West Lafayette, IN, USA

On Thursday, June 15, 2023 at 11:22:08 AM UTC-7, bfh wrote:
> Technobarbarian wrote:
>
> > ...
> > Since we didn’t want our dinner with a side of MAGA we went to the Squeeze In. It was an excellent choice. They serve something you rarely see these days—real freshly made French fries.
> > ...
>
> Hey. I eat RFMFFs about 3 times a week.............and what does a
> side of MAGA look like?
>
> --
> bill
> Theory don't mean squat if it don't work.

I have no idea and I really don't want to know. I wasn't in the mood for grim fantasies. We had been enjoying the real world and saw no reason to stop.

TB

On Thursday, June 15, 2023 at 12:07:22 PM UTC-7, Ted Heise wrote:
> On Thu, 15 Jun 2023 10:55:13 -0700 (PDT),
> Technobarbarian <technob...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Ok, this story is about to get real...
>
> I enjoyed that a lot. Fascinating--I had no idea. Thanks for
> posting it.
>
> --
> Ted Heise <the...@panix.com> West Lafayette, IN, USA

Thanks, I learned a lot of this from the museum and there's more that can be said about that. The old building was a real social and business center. When you enter to your left is Doc Hay's small simple bedroom. Under his bed was a locked wooden box that contained over $27,000 in uncashed checks. He was treating people from all over the community on his version of a sliding scale. If he didn't think you could afford it he would take your check and never cash it. During the day they had a convenience store partitioned off in the back of first room. The doctor had numbered stools and you would work your way up to the nice red chair where the doctor did his work. The red chair was on your right as you enter the first room. The doctor's apothecary occupied the rest of that corner. At night there would be various traditional games like mahjong and go, and gambling.

In the next room on your left there are four small wooden bunk beds with thin mats. The beds looked big enough for two, if you're very friendly. They could put four people in a bed, for a total of 16. The kitchen occupied the right side of that room. For much of that period it wasn't legal for the Chinese to be out after dark. They had a hand pump that connected to a spring under the building. It also wasn't legal for the Chinese to own guns. The found at least one big heavy meat cleaver in almost every room. There was a trap door under the convenience store where they found 99 bottles of pre-prohibition bourbon. Nobody knows what happened to 60 of those bottles when the city owned them. According to our guide the remaining 39 worth a lot of money. The next two rooms are the small bedroom and office Lung On had added to the original building. That part of the building had not held up to the weather as well as the original section.

The building on top of the Kam Wah Chung building was moved there from somewhere else and added to the original building. People thought the railroad was coming to John Day and Lung On planned to make the new second story into apartments. The railroad ended up 16 miles away and that part of the building was only used for storage. It isn't open to the public. This building and the house the Doc Hay's nephew lived in are about all that's left of John Day's Chinatown. The other house is now the front part of a much bigger privately owned home. Most of the rest of the land is a city park. There's just a water spigot where the Chinese had a shrine. Their shrine was for someone we would consider a saint in western religions. He was a popular "saint" for prosperity in the part of China most of them had come from.

TB

In article <0a993859-8fe0-458f-ace2-7d5bd7e616b6n@googlegroups.com>,
Technobarbarian <technobarbarian@gmail.com> wrote:
> So where do you go after the Malheur nature reserve? Hey, let's
>head to what might be the strangest place in Oregon. We’re heading to
>the heart of darkness—maximum MAGA—John Day Oregon.

We were in John Day for the eclipse in 2017. They had built a
huge quickie RV park with adequate hookups on top of the mesa
next to the airport. Probably isn't there any more, but it was
sufficient to meet the massive spike in demand for the eclipse.

It seemed like a quaint little town then. Doubtless, there
were a whole lot more people there than normal.

--
Mike Van Pelt | "I don't advise it unless you're nuts."
mvp at calweb.com | -- Ray Wilkinson, after riding out Hurricane
KE6BVH | Ike on Surfside Beach in Galveston

On Tuesday, June 20, 2023 at 2:56:08 PM UTC-7, Mike Van Pelt wrote:
> In article <0a993859-8fe0-458f...@googlegroups.com>,
> Technobarbarian <technob...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > So where do you go after the Malheur nature reserve? Hey, let's
> >head to what might be the strangest place in Oregon. We’re heading to
> >the heart of darkness—maximum MAGA—John Day Oregon.
> We were in John Day for the eclipse in 2017. They had built a
> huge quickie RV park with adequate hookups on top of the mesa
> next to the airport. Probably isn't there any more, but it was
> sufficient to meet the massive spike in demand for the eclipse.
>
> It seemed like a quaint little town then. Doubtless, there
> were a whole lot more people there than normal.
>
> --
> Mike Van Pelt | "I don't advise it unless you're nuts."
> mvp at calweb.com | -- Ray Wilkinson, after riding out Hurricane
> KE6BVH | Ike on Surfside Beach in Galveston

Yeah, that area has a lot of quaint going on, particularly in Canyon City.

https://westernmininghistory.com/gallery/6849/modern/towns/

Originally there had been two Chinatowns there. One in Canyon City and one in John Day, which had a variety of names back then. Lower town appears to have been a popular name. A series of "mysterious" fires in Canyon City forced all of the Chinese into lower town. This caused problems because there were two different clans living there that had a long history of competition and conflict. No one is completely sure what happened at this point, but it looks like Lung On was the leader of the winning faction, which had originally settled in Canyon City. The apparent leader of the other faction died in Portland of unstated causes.
The rest of his clan eventually moved elsewhere.

Ing Hay and Lung On, later known as Leon, where quite the dynamic duo. Lung On was obviously a leader for business affairs, while Ing Hay was a leader for religious and medical issues. It was rare for Chinese herbalists to cross over to treating Caucasians. Doc Hay built his reputation treating people for injuries that had become seriously infected. The Western doctors of the era saw pus as a good thing. They called it "laudable" pus. Doc Hay was able to treat people whose doctors had told them they were going to die from the infection. If Doc Hay went somewhere to treat someone Lung On usually drove him there, first by carriage and later by car. They both became honored guests just about everywhere.

One of the fortunate things about the Kam Wah Chung museum is that a lot of Lung On's correspondence has survived. It's a rare window into that era. I don't know where our guide got the idea Lung On was fond of prostitutes. We know from his correspondence that he and one his buddies were doing well with ordinary Caucasian women, despite the taboos of the era.

"China Doctor of John Day" is an excellent quick read on the history of that era.

https://www.amazon.com/China-Doctor-John-Day-Oregon/dp/0832303461/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2A8QLNIQFBSQ5&keywords=china+doctor+john+day&qid=1687712190&sprefix=china+doctor+%2Caps%2C9212&sr=8-1

TB