By Hank Nuwer. From 1881 to 1917, most folks in Juneau referred to a popular baker by his nickname China Joe. He came to Juneau in search of gold dust after a strike on Gold Creek, but he lacked either aptitude or luck. He soon realized that real money was to be made providing miners with his simple bread made from flour, yeast, and salt.
Some old newspapers referred to him as Lee Hing. His gravestone in Juneau’s Evergreen Park Cemetery is marked Hi Chung. And other historians found other first and last names almost certainly connected to him.
I’ll just refer to him as Joe here.
Old newspaper clippings said he came from southern China to Wrangell, Alaska in 1874 when he was about 30 years old.
After short stays in Wrangell and Sitka, he moved to Juneau.
He would remain at the same home at on Main and Third in Juneau even after he became well off by local standards. He had a small lot on which he and his wife kept a garden and fruit trees.
Joe became a part of Alaska’s lore and legend in the mid-1880s during a cold winter when the grub of all miners dwindled, and it looked as if many would either starve or abandon their digs.
Joe temporarily closed his bakery and parceled out flour and the fixings to make bread. In return, miners pledged to pay him back the next summer with their mining earnings.
Joe earned the loyalty of all Juneau with many such acts of charity.
The baker’s generosity and good will saved him and his business.
After President Charles A. Arthur signed his despicable Chinese exclusion Act in 1882 to ban Chinese labor immigrants for a decade, riots and violence plagued the Chinese populace in widespread locales such as Juneau, Denver, Tacoma, Washington; and Rock Springs, Wyoming.
American society broke into anti-Chinese and pro-Chinese factions.
Future Alaska district judge James Wickersham was part of a mob and overzealous splinter group called the Committee of Fifteen. Although Wickersham later downplayed his role, he supported the racist actions that banished an entire Chinese settlement in Tacoma.
In Juneau, following the dynamiting of a residence housing Chinese laborers, a mob loaded all Chinese save Joe on boats bound for Washington State.
When a small mob gathered at Joe’s front gate, his friends among the miners drew a line in the sand and dared anyone to cross it and come after Joe.
No one did. As late as 1903 he was the only person of Chinese ancestry living in Juneau.
In 1890, the father of a local man known only as Interpreter Joe died. Out of respect, China Joe baked 600 loaves of bread so “the friends of the dead man will eat heartily while the spirit marches over the rough and rugged trail which leadeth to the clam beds and fishing grounds of the other world,” gushed a writer for the Juneau City Mining Record.
During the latter years of his life when Joe was revered as a local treasure, Joe sponsored January celebrations in honor of the new year at his modest Juneau home. He doled out fruits and candies popular in China to his female guests and children, reserving hot toddies to warm the bellies of the menfolk.
He also held a “Harvest Home” festival in the fall of 1915 in which children played games and singers sang ancient Chinese songs.
Upon his death, Joe’s personal possessions were auctioned to benefit his two heirs, a male laborer friend and a cousin in China.
Always fragile while generous, Joe’s estate at the time of his death was valued at more than $4,000.