A Willow Tree Becomes a Forest
The Story of Hop Lee
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Using source documents, including a 150-year-old fortune teller scroll, Hop Lee's hand-written journal, and a box of 100-year-old photographs, the story of this Chinese American pioneer turned businessman comes to life on the book's pages. We watch him grow from arrival in Albany, Oregon's Chinatown, through a disastrous stint as a cook for a railroad gang run out of camp for burning the rice, through his days learning his ticket to the American dream as a Chinese laundryman. Along the way, the ever-ambitious and enterprising Hop Lee runs headlong into Anti-Chinse racism with the Chinese Exclu...
Using source documents, including a 150-year-old fortune teller scroll, Hop Lee's hand-written journal, and a box of 100-year-old photographs, the story of this Chinese American pioneer turned businessman comes to life on the book's pages. We watch him grow from arrival in Albany, Oregon's Chinatown, through a disastrous stint as a cook for a railroad gang run out of camp for burning the rice, through his days learning his ticket to the American dream as a Chinese laundryman. Along the way, the ever-ambitious and enterprising Hop Lee runs headlong into Anti-Chinse racism with the Chinese Exclusion Act and the massacre of Chinese miners at Deep Creek in Eastern Oregon. Hop befriends a young Nez Perce warrior in the last adventure by disguising him as a Cantonese. Yellow Fox and Hop have a friendship that transcends cultures and spans decades. Hop's laundry business in Salem, Oregon, is squarely in the crosshairs of the White laundry owners who started a campaign called Bust the Trust to drive the Chinese out of the dirty clothes business. Realizing the need to diversify their portfolios, Hop Lee and fellow immigrant merchant George Sun learn the art of hop farming in the fertile Willamette Valley. They participate in the Northwest's Rise of the Chinese Hop Men, a nearly forgotten chapter in our history. In their haste, they run into the Women's Temperance Union and Prohibition, depressing the price of hops. After almost three decades as a bachelor in America, Hop decides to try to find an American-born Chinese wife, a tall order in a country where there are 20 Chinese men for every woman. So, Hop takes the train to San Francisco and uses a matchmaker to find the rare jewel - the American-born Chinese girl. What happens next is the journey and the tale of how this single Willow Tree became a Willow Forrest. While seeking his elusive dream of citizenship, Hop Lee was, in his heart, a true American who believed in the spirit and possibilities of his adopted country. His story embodies the tale of the bold, bright, determined immigrants who proudly built America with their sweat, imagination, and ingenuity. Those who stayed created the ripples that gave us life as individuals and as a nation of nations.
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