JOURNEY TO GOLD MOUNTAIN WITH QUOCK HUNG CHUNG – PAPER FATHER At the age of nine years, after a bittersweet farewell to Cun Chuen Wong, his mother, and Suey Fong Chong, stepsister, Gim Suey Chong, my father, left Yung Lew Gong Village. He walked to Baksa and took a train and a ferryboat to Hong Kong for his epic journey to Gum Saan. He stayed in Hong Kong for ten days in March 1932. As a sojourner, he departed on March 25, 1932 from Hong Kong, China, on R.M.S. Empress of Asia, a Canadian Pacific Steamships steamer, on the White Empress Route from the Orient, its trans-Pacific run. In the steerage class, he was accompanied by Quock Hung Chong, his “paper father.” Quock Hung Chong was a restaurant cook who had lived at 17 Tyler Street in Boston Chinatown. In the Far East, aboard the R.M.S. Empress of Asia, one of The White Empresses of the Pacific, a steamship of 16,090 tons 19 knots 1,118 passengers, made its ports of call, they saw the great seaports of Shanghai (on March 28), Nagasaki (on March 29), Kobe (on March 31), and Yokohama (on April 2) to Victoria on Vancouver Island. The Canadian Pacific Steamships (“World’s Greatest Travel System”) fleet was known as the largest and fastest liners on the Pacific Ocean to and from the Orient. They had white hulls with blue ribbons and with huge buff funnels as they plied the Oriental waters on their trans-Pacific runs. After 19 days of ocean travel, Gim and Quock Hung Chong arrived at the Port of Vancouver on the Pacific Coast on April 13, 1932.
Posted on: Mon, 22 Jul 2013 02:24:23 +0000
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