August 27, 2005

So Chun Wong came to the United States in the 1920s in search of the American dream. He found reality instead.

"We came at a time when Safeway wouldn't even hire a Chinese person," said Raymond Chun Wong, So Chun's son.

The Chun family started a grocery store of its own, in Orosi. So Chun Wong, who had come from the Huadu district in the Guangdong province of China, collaborated with other Cantonese immigrants to pool funds and start grocery stores and laundries throughout the Central Valley.

Thanks to his father's efforts, Raymond Chun Wong is now president of R-N Markets, a multi-million dollar supermarket chain in the Central Valley.

"You really have to admire those guys," the younger Wong said of his father's generation. "They came to America without being able to read, speak or write English in order to achieve their dreams of owning their own businesses."

The first wave of Cantonese immigrants came to California in 1848 for the Gold Rush, said Sidney Chang, a professor emeritus of history at California State University, Fresno. They remained to build the transcontinental railroad, living in Chinese-specific districts in Visalia and Hanford, and to start their businesses in the Central Valley.

According to scholar Him Mark Lai, Cantonese merchants owned seven out of the 12 supermarket chains in Visalia in 1990. Those chains include Fairway Market, started by Joe Gong, and Young's Supermarkets, started by Jack Young.

Today, Raymond Chun Wong is director of the Central California Chinese Cultural Center in Visalia. In July, he traveled to Huadu to visit an elementary school that was named after his father.

The reporter can be reached at atan@visalia.gannett.com.

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