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Acadiensis

Journal of the History of the Atlantic Region
Revue d’histoire de la région Atlantique“The most modern dining hall in the city”
Chinese Immigrants, Restaurants, and Social Spaces in St.
John’s, Newfoundland, 1918–1945
Miriam Wright
Volume 50, Number 1, Spring 2021
URI: https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/1085750ar
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Publisher(s)Department of History at the University of New Brunswick

Article abstract
The article looks at Chinese immigrants in Newfoundland, focusing on therestaurants they opened in St. John’s from 1918 through the mid-1940s. For the
Chinese immigrants, restaurants were paths to economic stability and, forsome, a way to establish themselves as respected members of the community.
The restaurants were, however, also contested spaces, as civil authorities,
drawing on racial, gendered, and class-based assumptions, saw them – and thesocial interactions taking place within them – as threatening to the moral
order. This history of Chinese immigrants and their restaurants offers adiverse and complex urban history of St. John’s.

ISSN0044-5851 (print)
1712-7432 (digital)

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Cite this article
Wright, M. (2021). “The most modern dining hall in the city”: Chinese
Immigrants, Restaurants, and Social Spaces in St. John’s, Newfoundland,
1918–1945. Acadiensis, 50(1), 5–33.

All Rights Reserved © Miriam Wright, 2022

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“The most modern dining hall in the city”:
Chinese Immigrants, Restaurants, andSocial Spaces in St. John’s, Newfoundland,
1918-1945
MIRIAM WRIGHT

Cet article traite de la situation des immigrants chinois à Terre-Neuve en se concentrant
sur les restaurants qu’ils ouvrirent à St. John’s de 1918 jusqu’au milieu des années 1940.
Les restaurants étaient pour ces immigrants une voie vers la stabilité économique et,dans certains cas, un moyen de se tailler une place comme membres respectés de lacommunauté. Toutefois, les restaurants étaient aussi des endroits contestés alors que
les autorités civiles, s’appuyant sur des suppositions en matière de race, de genre et declasse, les voyaient – ainsi que les interactions sociales qui y avaient lieu – comme une
menace à l’ordre moral. Cette histoire d’immigrants chinois et de leurs restaurants illustre
la diversité et la complexité de l’histoire urbaine de St. John’s.
The article looks at Chinese immigrants in Newfoundland, focusing on the restaurants
they opened in St. John’s from 1918 through the mid-1940s. For the Chinese immigrants,
restaurants were paths to economic stability and, for some, a way to establish themselves
as respected members of the community. The restaurants were, however, also contested
spaces, as civil authorities, drawing on racial, gendered, and class-based assumptions,saw them – and the social interactions taking place within them – as threatening to themoral order. This history of Chinese immigrants and their restaurants offers a diverse andcomplex urban history of St. John’s.

IN OCTOBER 1940 A PHOTOGRAPHER IN ST. JOHN’S, NEWFOUNDLAND,
took a picture of nearly 100 immigrant men from China standing on the stepsof the Nickel Theatre on Military Road.1 The men had gathered to meet with1

I am grateful to Robert Hong for his generosity in sharing his research and knowledge
on Chinese immigrants in Newfoundland, as well as his insights on earlier drafts of thispaper. This paper emerged from work we did on a public history project on Chinese
immigration to Newfoundland. For details, see “Monument Marks Chinese Head Tax
History,” CBC Newfoundland and Labrador, 20 September 2010, https://www.cbc.ca/news/
canada/newfoundland-labrador/monument-marks-chinese-head-tax-history-1.942159
and Tara Bradbury, “Righting a Wrong: ‘Taking Root’ Exhibit Outlines History of Chinese
Immigration in the Province,” Telegram (St. John’s), 24 March 2012. Thanks also to the

Miriam Wright, “‘The most modern dining hall in the city’: Chinese Immigrants, Restaurants,
and Social Spaces in St. John’s, Newfoundland, 1918-1945,” Acadiensis 50, no. 1 (Spring/
printemps 2021): 5-33.
5

6

WrightDr. Shih, the Chinese Consul to Canada, who had travelled to Newfoundland
to support fundraising efforts for China during the Sino-Japanese War (19371945).2 A remarkable image, the photograph challenges popular perceptions of
the history of the city as almost exclusively white. In St. John’s during the firsthalf of the 20th century, Chinese immigrants were both numerous and visible.
Between 1895 and 1949, more than 400 men, most from the “Four Counties”(Sze Yup) region of Guangdong province in southeastern China, came to
the Dominion of Newfoundland.3 Part of a larger diaspora fleeing economic
and political upheaval in the Pearl River Delta in the late 19th and early 20th
centuries, these men settled in St. John’s and surrounding communities andopened first laundries and then restaurants.4
For these men who had uprooted their lives to support their families
remaining in China, arriving in Newfoundland also meant coming to a
racialized world. Like Chinese immigrants throughout North America, themen who came to Newfoundland became objects of race-based assumptions
and stereotypes created and perpetuated by the white settler population.5
These racialized attitudes and assumptions shaped the lives of the immigrants
from China politically, socially, and economically. The starkest example lay inNorth American immigration policy, which featured various “head taxes” and

2
3

4
5

editors and anonymous reviewers for Acadiensis, for their very helpful suggestions, aswell as to Julienne Rousseau for research assistance.
“Chinese Consul Says Farewell to Friends Here,” Daily News (St. John’s), 21 October 1940.
Government of Newfoundland, “Newfoundland Register: Arrivals and Outward
Registration – Registration of Persons of Chinese Race Admitted into the Colony of
Newfoundland Under the Provisions of the Chinese Immigration Act 6 EDW VII CAP2.
June 4 1910 to March 26 1949,” RG 76-D-2-d-v, R1206-174-2-E, Library and Archives Canada(LAC). A scanned version of this source is available on the Memorial University Digital
Archives Initiative site: http://collections.mun.ca/PDFs/chinese/NewfoundlandRegister.
pdf. According to this source, 334 men from China arrived in Newfoundland between
1910 and 1949. For estimates for the period from 1904 to May 1906, see Robert Hong,“‘To take action without delay’: Newfoundland’s Chinese Immigration Act of 1906,” Table
1 (honours diss., Memorial University of Newfoundland, 1987), 60. Using newspaper
sources, he estimated there had been between 184 and 198 arrivals in the period from1904 until Newfoundland imposed its head tax on 1 May 1906. In 1906, government
sources estimated 127 Chinese nationals were living in the Dominion; see “House of
Assembly Debates for Tuesday, April 17, 1906,” Evening Telegram (St. John’s), 21 April 1906.
Although the Chinese immigration act did not restrict women, none immigrated from
China before 1950.
According to the Newfoundland immigration register, the majority of these men werefrom Taishan (Toishan) County and Kaiping (Hoiping) of the Sze Yup region of southeast
China, and they would have spoken a Taishan dialect.
See Timothy Stanley, Contesting White Supremacy: School Segregation, Anti-Racism, andthe Making of Chinese Canadians (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2011) for a discussion of the
racialization of immigrants from China in North America.

Chinese Immigrants and Restaurants in St. John’s

7

Figure 1 – Picture taken on the steps of the Nickel Theatre (Benevolent Irish Society) on
20 October 1940 during Chinese Consul-General to Canada Dr. Shih’s visit to St. John’s tosupport fundraising efforts for the Sino-Japanese War. The photo includes a number ofpeople mentioned in this article: Charlie Dean (Hong), row 1, fourth from left; Joan Hong, hisdaughter, is standing in front of him (her mother was a white, Newfoundland-born woman);
Kim Lee, row 1, sixth from left; Ming Gong Au (Charlie Gong), row 1, seventh from left; Dr.
Shih, Chinese Consul-General to Canada, row 1, eighth from left; Gordon Higgins, row 1, ninth
from left; Davey Fong, row 1, 10th from left; and William Ping, row 2, fourth from left (directly
behind and to the right of Charlie Dean).
Source: Holloway Family Fonds (photo was originally taken by Holloway Studio in St. John’s), Item
40 86, Provincial Archives of Newfoundland and Labrador (PANL).

exclusions directed at Chinese immigrants. Canada adopted a $500 head tax for
people from China in 1903. Newfoundland, following the Canadian example,
instituted its own $300 tax in 1906.6 As Robert Hong has argued, many
Newfoundland politicians debating in the House of Assembly labelled theimmigrants as alien, intractable, and threatening to the social and economic
lives of white residents of Newfoundland.7
While Newfoundland’s immigration policies were restrictive during the first
four decades of the 20th century, the small dominion remained relatively more
6

7

Hong, “‘To take action without delay’.” For other work on the early history ofChinese immigration to Newfoundland, see Margaret Chang, “Chinese Pioneers in
Newfoundland,” Asianadian 3, no. 4 (Summer 1981): 3-7 as well as the documentary
film The Last Chinese Laundry, dir. Charles Callanan (St. John’s: Memorial University of
Newfoundland, 1987), http://collections.mun.ca/cdm/ref/collection/chinese/id/397.
Hong, “‘To take action without delay’,” 47-55.

8Wrightopen to Chinese immigration than the rest of North America. Unlike Canada
and the United States, which imposed bans on most Chinese immigration
beginning in the 1920s, Newfoundland continued to accept these immigrants
as long as they paid the head tax. In fact, after Canada introduced the Chinese
Exclusion Act in 1923, Newfoundland was one of the few destinations in North
America open to Chinese immigrants.8 Only the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese
War in 1937 temporarily halted Chinese immigration to Newfoundland.9
Whether they arrived in Canada or Newfoundland, all Chinese immigrants
faced a racist environment that handicapped them as they tried to earn a living.
Most had to pay off their head tax debts, as many Chinese immigrants reliedon family members or fellow villagers already living there to pay the tax forthem on arrival. Racism limited their opportunities for employment in thewider job market, and many instead found work in laundries and restaurants– jobs considered unworthy of white male labour. 10 These laundries andrestaurants, however, became the focus of the social and economic lives ofChinese immigrants as they worked to pay off head tax debts and saved money
to send to family in China as well as accumulating capital to venture out intheir own businesses. In Newfoundland the fact that a small number of familynames (Au, Fong, Hong, Tom, Jin) predominated among immigrants from
China points to the powerful pull of family and village ties in the immigration
process, and how they remained vital to surviving in a hostile environment.11
While separation and exclusion were a feature of the migration experience,
most Chinese immigrants also lived among and interacted with their nonChinese-immigrant neighbours. Scholars, including Henry Yu, John Kuo
Wei Tchen, Shirley Yee, Lisa Mar, and Ele Chenier, have argued that most
Chinese immigrants in North America were not isolated in ethnic enclaves,
8

While it was often assumed, and discussed in St. John’s newspapers, that Chinese
immigrants were using Newfoundland as a “back door” entry to Canada or United States,
Robert Hong argued there was little evidence to support this – at least in the earlier
20th century. He tracked migration in and out from 1904 to 1908, and he concluded
the Chinese immigrants who arrived mostly planned to stay, and those who left did so
because of limited economic opportunities, the relative isolation, and lack of a larger
Chinese community in Newfoundland. See Hong, “‘To take action without delay’,” 58-61.
9 See Government of Newfoundland, “Newfoundland Register: Arrivals and Outward
Registration.”
10 For more on Chinese laundries in North America, see Paul Chan Pang Siu, The Chinese
Laundry: A Study of Social Isolation (New York: New York University Press, 1988) and Ban
Seng Hoe, Enduring Hardship: The Chinese Laundry in Canada (Ottawa: Canadian Museumof Civilization, 2003).
11 Government of Newfoundland, “Newfoundland Register: Arrivals and Outward
Registration.”

Chinese Immigrants and Restaurants in St. John’s

9

but were part of diverse urban neighbourhoods.12 Chinese immigrants andtheir non-Chinese neighbours were connected in social, economic, and sexual
relationships, as well as by violence and conflict. As Lisa Mar argued, “Thehistory of the Chinese in Canada can only be properly understood if scholars
explore interactions as much as exclusion.”13 Patrick A. Dunae et al. have used
this approach in their study of Victoria’s Chinatown in the late 19th and early
20th centuries. Far from being an isolated enclave, they argued Victoria’s
Chinatown was a transactional, hybrid urban space that was shaped anddefined by the economic, social, and cultural relationships between residents ofChinese heritage and their non-Chinese neighbours. Drawing on theorists suchas Henri LeFebvre and Michel Foucault, they argue that space is “permeated bysocial relations,” including sexuality, race, class, and gender.14 Power underlies
these relationships, making public spaces dynamic sites of interaction andsometimes conflict.
Looking at historical interactions between Chinese immigrants and their
non-Chinese neighbours brings new insights into the urban history of St.
John’s. Earlier studies mention Chinese immigrants briefly, but they give nosense of their presence in the city.15 As John Phyne has argued, however, early20th-century St. John’s, with some residents from Syria/Lebanon and China,
as well as white people from rural Newfoundland, was more diverse than iscommonly assumed.16 Chinese immigrants who arrived during that period
lived and worked in the downtown residential and commercial neighbourhoodsof St. John’s. Moreover, they relied almost entirely on non-Chinese customers
for their laundry and restaurant enterprises.

12 Henry Yu, Thinking Orientals: Migration, Contact, and Exoticism in Modern America (NewYork: Oxford University Press, 2001); John Kuo Wei Tchen, New York before Chinatown:
Orientalism and the Shaping of American Culture 1776-1882 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1999); Shirley Yee, “Dependency and Opportunity: Socioeconomic
Relations between Chinese and Non-Chinese in New York City, 1870-1943,” Journal of
Urban History 33, no. 2 (June 2007): 254-76; Lisa Mar, Brokering Belonging: Chinese in
Canada’s Exclusion Era 1885-1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010); E. Chenier,“Sex, Intimacy, and Desire among Men of Chinese Heritage and Women of Non-Chinese
Heritage in Toronto, 1910-1950,” Urban History Review 17, no. 2 (Spring 2014): 29-43.
13 Mar, Brokering Belonging, 14.
14 Patrick Dunae, John S. Lutz, Donald J. Lafreniere, and Jason Gilliland, “Making theInscrutable Scrutable: Race and Space in Vancouver’s Chinatown,” BC Studies 169 (Spring2011): 51-80, esp. 53.
15 For example, Paul O’Neill, The Oldest City: The Story of St. John’s, Newfoundland (St.
John’s: Boulder Press, 2003).
16 John Phyne, “On a Hillside North of the Harbour: Changes to the Centre of St. John’s,
1942-1987,” Newfoundland and Labrador Studies 29, no. 1 (2014): 5-46.

10WrightIndeed, the history of the restaurants the Chinese immigrants opened
allows us to explore their impact on the city as well as the dynamics of public
spaces. In many ways, Chinese immigrants built the restaurant sector in St.
John’s and during the 1920s through to the 1940s they owned the majority of
public eating places. For the Chinese immigrants, the restaurants were firstly
economic spaces, a source of livelihood and survival. In promoting them tothe wider public, the restaurant owners presented them as desirable places tospend time. For some of the restauranteurs, these establishments were also a
way to connect with the non-Chinese community and to show themselves as
respectable business owners.
While the Chinese immigrants attempted to present and define theirrestaurants in a particular way, others in the city discussed and portrayedthem very differently. As Kathryn Beebe, Angela Davis, and Kathryn Gleadle
as well as other scholars looking critically at the spatial dynamics of urban
places argue, space was and is “constructed, and contested.”17 In St. John’s,
the contested aspect of urban space can be seen in the language and actionsof various civil authorities, who saw the restaurants owned by Chinese
immigrants as dangerous.18 Influenced by racial stereotypes about people from
China, as well as assumptions and fears about female working-class sexuality,
authorities sometimes described the restaurants as threats to the city’s socialand moral order. During the Second World War, when thousands of military
personnel from Canada and the United States arrived in St. John’s, both civilian
and military authorities increased their scrutiny of the restaurants and thepeople spending time within them.
Despite the concerns from various authorities, the restaurants owned by
Chinese immigrants attracted a wide range of people in the period from the
1920s through to the 1940s. They also became significant social spaces and sites
of interaction. In these businesses, people of Chinese descent and local white
residents, men and women, working class and middle class, and people of allages ordered food and drink and socialized. As Dunae, Lutz, Lafreniere, andGilliland have argued, public spaces are shaped by the social and economic

17 Kathryne Beebe, Angela Davis, and Kathryn Gleadle, “Introduction: Space, Place, andGendered Identities,” Women’s History Review 21, no. 4 (September 2012): 524.
18 See Stanley, Contesting White Supremacy; Kay Anderson, Vancouver’s Chinatown: Racial
Discourse in Canada, 1875-1980 (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queens University Press,
1991); and Patricia E. Roy, A White Man’s Province: British Columbia Politicians and Chineseand Japanese Immigrants, 1858-1914 (Vancouver: UBC Press, 1989).

Chinese Immigrants and Restaurants in St. John’s

11

relationships within them “permeated by class, gender, and race.”19 Ele Chenier
noted that these restaurants, new commercialized social spaces, were places
where young women and men could meet away from the eyes of family or
the church.20 Sometimes these interactions involved local white women andChinese immigrants. In St. John’s, as in other parts of North America, someinterracial relationships and marriages developed. The restaurants were also
occasional sites of conflict and racialized violence. Chinese immigrants had
long been targets of racially based harassment and abuse from local whiteboys and young men in the city streets.21 As Craig Heron argues, early-20thcentury working class boys expressed their masculinity, class identity, andrebellion in part by tormenting those lower in the class/ethnic hierarchy.22 In
St. John’s, Chinese immigrant restaurant owners sometimes faced violence anddestructive behaviour from the city’s young men.
Through these restaurants, we gain glimpses of the way that Chinese
immigrants were part of the urban environment in St. John’s as well as theirinteractions with local white residents who walked through their doors. The
wider social dynamics of these relationships, shaped by class, gender, and race,
played out within the restaurants – complex, contested spaces that provide aricher picture of the urban history of St. John’s.
In St. John’s, Chinese immigrants began arriving and opening laundries in
the last decade of the 19th century, just as Newfoundland’s fishing economy
was diversifying into light manufacturing and the service sector.23 This created
new employment opportunities for both middle- and working-class people,
leading to demands for personal services like laundries. The first Chineselaundries opened on New Gower Street, a commercial area on the southernedge of a St. John’s working-class neighbourhood.24 By 1908, the city directory
listed eight Chinese immigrant-owned laundries, some on New Gower Street
and others nestled nearby in residential streets.25 During the subsequent

19 Dunae, Lutz, Lafreniere, and Gilliland, “Making the Inscrutable Scrutable,” 54.
20 Chenier, “Sex, Intimacy, and Desire,” 31.
21 See Hong, “‘To take action without delay’,” 56-8.
22 Craig Heron, “Boys Will Be Boys: Working-Class Masculinity in the Age of Mass
Production,” International Labor and Working Class History 69, no. 1 (Spring 2006): 13.
23 Sean Cadigan, Newfoundland and Labrador: A History (Toronto: University of Toronto
Press, 2009), 158-61.
24 Phyne, “On a Hillside,” 9.
25 McAlpine St. John’s Directory, 1908-9 (Halifax: McAlpine Publishing Company, 1909), 495.

12

Wrightdecades the number of laundries continued to grow, with 20 listed in the city
directory in 1932.26
While laundries were the first businesses that Chinese immigrants in
Newfoundland founded, some began opening restaurants in St. John’s following
the First World War.27 For these immigrants, restaurants offered new economic
avenues beyond the laundry business. By the late 1920s, the number of handlaundries in St. John’s had stabilized at around 20, suggesting the market hadreached its limit for this service. As Chinese immigrants continued to arrive inthe city throughout the 1930s and 1940s, restaurants offered new employment
opportunities. For some Chinese immigrants, working in a restaurant was awelcome change from the hard toil of laundry work. In the 1987 documentaryfilm, The Last Chinese Laundry, William Ping, who arrived in St. John’s in 1931,
recalled working late into the night, until “tears ran down my face.”28 While
restaurant labour was challenging, it was less physically draining than laundry
work.
While Chinese immigrants were opening restaurants to earn a livelihood,they also made a significant impact on the restaurant sector in St. John’s.
Before 1918, the city had few public eating places apart from hotel and boarding
houses.29 By the late 1920s, however, Chinese immigrants owned the majorityof restaurants in St. John’s. Over the next two decades, they continued todominate the sector. By 1936, Chinese immigrants owned at least 16 of 29
restaurants in St. John’s and at least 18 of 27 in 1946.30
Moo Sic (Charlie) Fong, Charlie Dean, and Kim Lee were among the first
Chinese immigrants to open restaurants in the city. Moo Sic Fong had arrived
in 1897, following a relative, Fong Choy, who had been one of Newfoundland’s
first Chinese immigrants.31 After years in the laundry business, in 1919, Moo
26 St. John’s Classified Business and City Directory, 1932, ed. A.R. Thomson and E.P. Button (St.
John’s: St. John’s Publishing Company, 1932), 431.
27 I identified Chinese immigrant-owned restaurants through city directories, newspaper
articles, and advertisements, and also by cross-referencing the restaurants’ addresses
with the home addresses of people with Chinese surnames in the Newfoundland
manuscript census.
28 Callanan, Last Chinese Laundry.
29 See McAlpine’s St. John’s City Directory, 1915 (Halifax: Royal Printing and Litho Ltd., 1915),
433.
30 Newfoundland Directory, 1936 (St. John’s: George H. Andrews, 1936), 17, 20; St. John’s City
Telephone Directory, 1946 (St. John’s: Avalon Telephone Company, 1946). In 1936, Chinese
immigrants owned at least 16 of 29 cafés and restaurants, and at least 18 of 27 in 1946.
31 David J. Fong, “The Fong’s[sic] Family in Newfoundland and Labrador,” in Chinese
Association of Newfoundland and Labrador, Reflections of the Chinese Community on

Chinese Immigrants and Restaurants in St. John’s

13

Sic Fong opened the King Cafe on Water Street. That same year Charlie Dean,
who had been in Newfoundland since 1912, opened the European Cafe on
Water Street, next to the Supreme Court building.32 Charlie Dean also worked
as a court interpreter in cases involving Chinese immigrants, suggesting his
English-language skills were strong, an advantage for someone running a
restaurant.33 Another early entrant in the restaurant business was Kim Lee, theproprietor of the Dominion Cafe on Water Street (which opened in 1920). 34 Kim
Lee, who had been in Newfoundland since 1899, was one of a small number ofChinese immigrants who worked briefly in the iron ore mine on Bell Island,
just east of St. John’s in Conception Bay.35 By 1904, he was operating his own
New Gower Street laundry.36 An English speaker, Lee quickly emerged as aleader in the St. John’s Chinese-immigrant community. Lisa Mar has describedpeople similar to Kim Lee as “brokers” – early-20th-century community
leaders who helped their fellow Chinese immigrants navigate their way within
the wider Canadian society.37 Robert Hong noted that Lee became a defenderof the Chinese immigrants in the city – visiting newspaper offices to correct
negative stories about them, writing letters to the editor, and petitioning city
council on concerns related to their laundry businesses.38
By the 1930s, more Chinese immigrants in St. John’s were moving fromlaundries into the restaurant business. This included Robert Hong’s father,
the Occasion of the 30th Anniversary of the Chinese Association of Newfoundland andLabrador (St. John’s: Chinese Association of Newfoundland and Labrador, 2006), 29-30.
32 “Chinese Restaurant,” Daily Star (St. John’s), 28 May 1919; Miriam Wright, Exhibit Guide– “Taking Root: Chinese Immigrants and their Families in Newfoundland, 1895-1970s –Work, Family, and Community” (St. John’s: Newfoundland and Labrador Headtax Redress
Organization (NLHRO) in conjunction with Centre for Newfoundland Studies, Queen
Elizabeth II Library, Memorial University, 2012), 24-5. The exhibit itself was curated byMiriam Wright and Robert Hong, and was a joint project of the NLHRO and the Centre
for Newfoundland Studies. Charlie Dean, whose family name was actually Hong, also
operated a laundry on Hutchings Street in the 1930s, and then the Convoy Lunch Roomon Water Street West in the 1940s.
33 “Magistrate’s Court,” Evening Telegram, 26 June 1929; “Magistrate’s Court,” Evening
Telegram, 17 February 1930.
34 “New Cafe Opens,” Daily News, 30 July 1920.
35 Callanan, Last Chinese Laundry; Chang, “Chinese Pioneers,” 4. Kim Lee continued to run
his New Gower Street laundry and, by the late 1920s, another Chinese immigrant was
managing the restaurant.
36 “Notice,” Evening Telegram, 27 July 1904.
37 Mar, Brokering Belonging, 3-8.
38 Hong, “‘To take action without delay’,” 43-5, 53-5, 64; see also Chang, “Chinese Pioneers,”
4. Although he was known as “Kim Lee,” his family name was Au. At the time hewas writing those letters (c. 1906-1910), no Chinese immigrants had yet establishedrestaurants.

14

WrightMon Jin (Gene) Hong, who had come to St.
John’s from Taishan County, Guangdong,
China, in 1931, and who arrived on thesame ship as William Ping.39 Gene Hongworked in a Gower Street laundry for a few
years before moving over to Bell Island towork in a café. In the 1940s, he moved backto St. John’s and opened the United Nations
Restaurant with his friend Lee Leung.
William Ping, too, left his laundry job
after a few years, and found work at a New
Gower Street café.40 While working at thatcafé, he met former Newfoundland Prime
Minister Sir Richard Squires, who offered
him a job in his household. He spent a few
years there before moving to Carbonear, Figure 2 – Lee Leung (left) and Mon Jin
near St. John’s, to work in yet another (Gene) Hong, c. 1930s. Gene Hong and
Lee Leung owned the United Nations
restaurant. He later moved back to the St. Restaurant on New Gower Street, St.
from the early 1940s throughJohn’s and opened a mechanized laundry. John’s,
the mid-1950s. Lem Bing later joinedJack Chow arrived in St. John’s in 1935 from them in the partnership.
This is a family photo belonging
Kaiping, Guangdong Province, and worked Source:
to historian Robert Hong.
in the American Cafe, which was owned byhis relatives.41 In the 1940s, he left the city for the Grand Falls area in central
Newfoundland, where he opened a restaurant of his own.
The Chinese immigrants opening restaurants in St. John’s would havebeen well aware of the North American restaurant culture, fueled by urban
industrial economies and an expanding middle class. Scholars including
39 Wright, Exhibit Guide – “Taking Root,” 8-12, 18-19. Gene Hong later owned a restaurant,
Radio Lunch, on Main St. in Stephenville (1956-1964) and then the House of Hong (former
Bamboo Gardens) on Harvey Road, St. John’s, from 1964 until the early 1970s.
40 “Chinese Immigrant – From $5 a week to business success,” Evening Telegram, 13 January
1973. In the 1940s, Ping opened a modern, mechanized laundry in St. John’s, and his was
the first owned by a Chinese immigrant. Other laundries owned by people of Chinese
heritage acquired mechanized equipment in the post-Second World War period as well.
Most of the laundries founded by pre-1949 Chinese immigrants closed in the 1960s, but
Ping’s remained open until the early 1990s. His was the “last Chinese laundry” referred toin the 1988 documentary.
41 Wright, Exhibit Guide – “Taking Root,” 12, 17, 24-5; see also May Soo, “The Four
Generations of the Tom Family,” in Reflections of the Chinese Community, 54-5. Jack
Chow’s family name was Tom, and members of the Tom family owned the American Cafe
where Jack Chow worked when he first came to St. John’s.

Chinese Immigrants and Restaurants in St. John’s

15

Andrew Coe and Samantha Barbas have described how white, middle classpatrons flocked to Chinese restaurants in early 20th century North American
cities in what was known as the “chop suey craze.” Restaurants owned bypeople of Chinese heritage in late 19th-century “Chinatowns” in urban centres
had started offering stir-fried dishes featuring a variety of bite-sized meatsand vegetables. The term “chop suey” for that type of dish became common in
North America in the first decade of the 20th century.42 Patrons searching forexotic dining experiences created opportunities for restauranteurs of Chinese
heritage, but they also catered to those with less adventurous palates. Barbas
also argued that the restaurants themselves were sites of cultural interaction:“Chinese restaurants encouraged Americans to maintain many social, ethnic
and geographic boundaries, and at the same time, to breach others.”43
While chop suey was gaining popularity in other North American cities,
little Chinese-style cuisine was served in St. John’s restaurants before the 1950s.
Coe noted that restaurants serving Chinese-style food reached a wider North
American market only after the Second World War.44 One surviving 1940s-era
menu for a St. John’s restaurant, the American Cafe, featured a few “ChineseFood” items, including chop suey and fried rice. Most of the dishes, however,were mainstream North American fare such as roast chicken, fish, pork
chops, sandwiches, and desserts.45 The Chinese immigrants who opened theserestaurants had clearly found a clientele for their meals, judging by the large
numbers of establishments they were operating in this period. Moreover, by themid-1930s, similar restaurants owned by Chinese immigrants were operating inat least five other Newfoundland communities, from Port aux Basques in thewest to Bell Island in the east.46
42 Andrew Coe, Chop Suey: A Cultural History of Chinese Food in the United States (NewYork: Oxford University Press, 2009), esp. 144-79; Samantha Barbas, “I’ll Take Chop Suey:
Restaurants as Agents of Culinary and Cultural Change,” Journal of Popular Culture 36,
no. 4 (Spring 2003): 669-86. For Canadian examples, see Lily Cho, Eating Chinese: Cultureon the Menu in Small Town Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010) andAnn Hui, Chop Suey Nation: The Legion Café and Other Stories from Canada’s Chinese
Restaurants (Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 2019). For a study of the Newfoundland
experience, see William Ping, Chicken Balls and Baymen (St. John’s: CBC Atlantic Voice,radio documentary, 2020). The director is a grandson of the William Ping who came to
Newfoundland in the 1930s.
43 Barbas, “I’ll Take Chop Suey,” 670.
44 Coe, Chop Suey, 211-51.
45 See Wright, Exhibit Guide – “Taking Root,” 12.
46 Notes from 1935 Newfoundland Census, Margaret Chang Papers, MG 364, box 1, file
“Newfoundland Census,” Provincial Archives of Newfoundland and Labrador (PANL).
The Margaret Chang Papers consist of notes and documents collected by researcher

16

Wright

The restaurants the Chinese immigrants opened reached different
customer bases. Some clearly aimed at a middle class clientele through theiradvertising and business locations in higher-priced rent/property areas in thecentral commercial district of Water and Duckworth Streets. When Charlie
Dean’s European Cafe was getting ready to open on Water Street, one of themen involved in the project spoke to the Daily Star, informing them he had“considerable experience in America” and that they planned to “conduct [therestaurant] in an up-to-date manner.”47 When Moo Sic Fong opened the King
Cafe in 1919, he invited several local merchants and a member of the Houseof Assembly, William J. Higgins, to give speeches. The reporter covering theevent for the Daily Star described it as the “latest up-to-date restaurant tobe found in the city.”48 He also noted the restaurant’s chef, Ah Chung, camewith high credentials, including a period cooking for the governor of British
Columbia.49 A year later, when Kim Lee opened the Dominion Cafe on Water
Street, he held a banquet attended by no less than three sitting Members ofthe House of Assembly of Newfoundland (and all three gave speeches).50 The
grand event reflected the efforts Kim Lee had made to establish his businesses,
position himself as a liaison with the white community, and above all, claim
some respectability for the Chinese immigrants.51 The reporter covering theevent remarked on the “beautiful” décor of the restaurant as well as the fancy
multi-course meals of roast beef, ham, and chicken á la royal, with salads, fruit,and desserts. A reporter from the Daily Star also noted that the renovations
to create the “modern and attractive” restaurant had cost the princely sumof $20,000.52 Another Water Street restaurant, the White Lily, owned by Tom
Chong in the 1930s and 1940s, advertised a “Merchant’s Lunch” and “high classmeals at reasonable prices.”53
Margaret Chang. This particular file contained a list of Chinese names transcribed fromthe Newfoundland censuses of 1921, 1935, and 1945. Beside the names in Roman script,
someone wrote the names of the individuals in Chinese characters.
47 “Chinese Restaurant,” Daily Star, 28 May 1919.
48 “King Cafe Opens,” Daily Star, 22 August 1919.
49 “Clever Artist – Local Chinaman Paints Portraits,” Evening Telegram, 6 August 1921.
Another example of this café’s attraction for middle class patrons is that Davey Fong,the son of café founder Moo Sic Fong, drew charcoal portraits for customers – including“prominent citizens.”
50 “New Cafe Opens,” Daily News, 30 July 1920.
51 See Hong, “‘To take action without delay’,” 44-5, for a discussion of Kim Lee’s 1906 publicdefence of Chinese immigrants.
52 “New Cafe Opened,” Daily Star, 30 July 1920.
53 Advertisement, White Lily Restaurant, Daily News, 19 October 1940.

Chinese Immigrants and Restaurants in St. John’s

17

Other Chinese immigrant-owned restaurants in the city catered to working
class people, providing places to get a quick meal or a cup of coffee and apiece of pie at affordable prices. A number of Chinese immigrants opened
restaurants on New Gower Street, where many of the hand laundries werelocated.54 Other businesses in this neighbourhood, including artisan and trades
shops, hardware stores, grocery stores, and a few small manufacturers, would
have provided customers for the new cafés. Another working-class area where
Chinese immigrants opened cafés was Water Street West, just outside the main
St. John’s business district. Hong Wee’s People’s Restaurant, on Water Street
West, clearly aimed at a cost-conscious crowd, and advertised its 45-cent meals
and fish and chips dinners, the latter being a relatively cheap meal in a seaporttown.55
Whether they catered to a working-class or middle-class clientele, theChinese immigrants who opened restaurants drew on their knowledge ofNorth American restaurant consumer culture to attract customers. Whilemost of the early St. John’s restaurants owned by local white residents tended
to be named after the proprietor (e.g., Stewart’s or Sterling Restaurant), theChinese-immigrant restaurant owners of St. John’s gave their businesses exotic
names that suggested luxury or far-away places: the London Cafe, the HollandCafe, the White Lily, and the Silver Ball. During the Second World War some
Chinese immigrants named their cafés after wartime themes, such as Charlie
Hong’s Carry On Cafe on Duckworth Street and Charlie Dean’s Convoy Lunch
Rooms on Water Street West.56 These names, found on restaurants throughout
North America, suggested to the customer that eating out was an exciting
experience, even if the location and food were rather ordinary.
As well as giving their restaurants exotic names, some of the restauranteursemphasized the modern features and cleanliness of their eating places.
Perhaps aware of the way the dominant white society had racialized them as
dirty and slovenly, in their newspaper advertisements Chinese immigrants
often highlighted their restaurants’ cleanliness. In 1924, for example, theRoyal Cafe boasted of its recently painted dining room, adding that the

54 Newfoundland Directory, 1936, 17, 20; St. John’s City Telephone Directory, 1946.
55 Advertisement, People’s Restaurant, Evening Telegram, 22 October 1930. Unfortunately,
the advert did not say what was in the 45-cent meals. Fish and chips would have been a
relatively low-priced meal, as the cod was local in season. In that 1940s menu from theAmerican Cafe, fried cod was about half the price of a piece of chicken or pork chops.
56 St. John’s City Telephone Directory, 1946.

18

Wright“white surroundings present a very neat and attractive appearance.” 57 In
1943, when city restaurants were busy with the influx of military personnel,
several downtown St. John’s restaurants owned by Chinese immigrants ran
advertisements featuring their clean, newly renovated spaces. Sam Gay
announced the re-opening of his United Restaurant, calling it “the mostmodern dining resort in the city.” 58 Likewise, the Good View Restaurant,
managed by Sing Lee, highlighted the “large, clean, bright dining room andkitchen.”59 By focusing on cleanliness, these restaurant owners were trying to
re-define their spaces as clean and modern to help counter the prevailing racialstereotypes of Chinese immigrants,
While the Chinese immigrant-owned restaurants in St. John’s did not
specifically advertise to female customers, women were visiting them. For
women, restaurants and cafés provided safe, social spaces where they could
visit on their own, linger with female friends, and meet men at a time whencommercial social spaces for women were still relatively rare. Ele Chenier, in
their work on relationships between Chinese immigrant men and non-Chinese
women in early 20th-century Toronto, argues that commercialized leisurespaces such as Chinese immigrant-owned restaurants created new heterosexual
meeting spaces for young men and women. Chenier claimed white (often
working-class) women visited these restaurants, where they would encounter
both white and Chinese men. Chenier notes “restaurants were probably thesafest place for a man to approach a woman, and for women to openly engage
with him. By returning regularly, young women and men became acquainted
over time.”60
For men of Chinese heritage, forming relationships with white women wasan alternative to remaining single or celibate while living in North America.
Although specific policies varied, immigration laws as well as Chinese
immigration taxes meant few women of Chinese heritage came to North
America in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Restrictions did not ease on
female immigration from China until the late 1940s and early 1950s. In New
York City, John Kuo Wei Tchen found that in the 1870s nearly one-third of
all men of Chinese heritage were married to white women.61 Mary Ting Yi
57 “New Cafe Opened,” Evening Telegram, 30 October 1924.
58 Advertisement, United Restaurant, Evening Telegram, 16 April 1943.
59 Advertisement, Good View Restaurant, Evening Telegram, 2 April 1943. There was a United
Restaurant and a United Nations Restaurant.
60 Chenier, “Sex, Intimacy, and Desire,” 31, 34.
61 Tchen, New York before Chinatown, 226.

Chinese Immigrants and Restaurants in St. John’s

19Lui, also looking at New York in the same period, argued that one quarter ofmen of Chinese descent in the Sixth Ward were married to white women.62
Chenier’s study of 1930s Toronto suggests that more than 3 per cent of adultmen of Chinese heritage were legally married to white women. Chenier argues
the number of informal relationships was likely much higher, and notes these
relationships happened despite the racism and disapproval within the wider
community.63
In Newfoundland, some Chinese immigrant men had been in relationships
with white local women since at least the second decade of the 20th century.64
In 1917, a woman from Harbour Grace, a community outside of St. John’s,
took a man of Chinese heritage to court for failing to support a child they
had had together.65 Two years later in 1919, a laundry owner, Kong Wah,and his wife, “the former Miss Voisey,” tragically died in a fire at their New
Gower Street laundry.66 Other relationships were recorded in the 1935 and1945 Newfoundland censuses. The published census indicates that in 1935, 135
Chinese-born men were living in Newfoundland,67 and, of these, seven were,or had been, married to white, Newfoundland-born women.68 Four couples
were in St. John’s and two were in Grand Falls. As well, in St. John’s a widowed
Chinese man was caring for his six children he presumably had had with awhite woman. A decade later, in 1945, the census indicates 135 men of Chinese

62 Mary Ting Yi Lui, The Chinatown Trunk Mystery: Murder, Miscegenation, and Other
Dangerous Encounters in Turn of the Century New York City (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton
University Press, 2004), 154.
63 Chenier, “Sex, Intimacy, and Desire,” 33, 36.
64 Letter to the Editor, Chas. Dean, Daily Star, 21 January 1921. Dean’s letter called on thegovernment to allow Chinese women to come to Newfoundland. Dean appeared tobelieve that the Chinese immigration act banned women, which it did not. That belief
may have been widely held in Newfoundland.
65 “Magistrate’s Court,” Daily Star, 5 December 1917. The article said that the man was looking
for a clergyman who would marry them. It seems they did get married, as they appear asa couple in the 1935 Newfoundland census; see Notes from 1935 Newfoundland Census,
Margaret Chang Papers, MG 364, box 1, file “Newfoundland Census,” PANL.
66 “Fire Claims Two Victims,” Evening Telegram, 19 May 1919. According to the article, they
had a young daughter who survived because she was staying at someone else’s housethat night.
67 Tenth Census of Newfoundland and Labrador, 1935, Vol. 1, Table 18 (St. John’s: Department
of Health and Welfare, 1937), 27.
68 Notes on 1935 Census, Margaret Chang Papers, MG 364, box 1, file “Newfoundland
Census,” PANL. It is hard to tell how many of the Chinese immigrants were businessowners versus employees, as census takers called everyone working in laundries“laundrymen.” They usually, however, differentiated restaurant owners from restaurant
workers.

20

Wrightheritage69 were living in the Dominion and that 12 of them were married to, or
had been married to, white Newfoundland women (one couple was separated).70
Six couples were living in St. John’s and the rest were in other communities in
Newfoundland. In both 1935 and 1945 the women were, on average, a decade
younger than their Chinese-immigrant husbands, who were either restaurantor laundry owners thus indicating that the more established immigrants had
more to offer the younger women. All but two of these couples had children(and most couples had more than one child), suggesting these relationships
were long-standing.71
Some of the white, Newfoundland-born women who married Chinese
immigrants may well have met these men while visiting their restaurants. For
women, however, spending time in restaurants owned by men from China
carried some risks. As Chenier argues, police and community authorities
viewed white women who visited Chinese-immigrant-owned restaurants
regularly as morally suspect.72 The perceived moral danger of white womeninteracting with men of Chinese heritage led the Ontario, British Columbia,
and Saskatchewan governments to prohibit white women from working inbusinesses owned by people of Chinese heritage during the 1920s and 1930s.
Also, the well-known case of Velma Demerson in Ontario, charged withand convicted of “incorrigibility” in the 1930s because she was living with
her Chinese-immigrant boyfriend, reveals the willingness of authorities tointervene.73 Such cases were rare, however, and authorities in Newfoundland
never banned white women from working in businesses owned by Chinese
immigrants. Nevertheless, fears and assumptions about the moral impact ofthe presence of men of Chinese heritage were present in early-20th-century St.
John’s.
These racialized assumptions about Chinese immigrants and the threats
posed by transgressive female sexuality appeared in a 1926 newspaper reportabout the Newfoundland Constabulary’s visits to several St. John’s restaurants.
The Evening Telegram claimed the Newfoundland Constabulary had
69 Census of Newfoundland and Labrador, 1945, Vol. 1, Table 28 (“Population of
Newfoundland by Ethnic Origin”) (Ottawa: Dominion Bureau of Statistics, 1945), 105.
70 Notes on 1945 Census, Margaret Chang Papers, MG 364, box 1, file “Newfoundland
Census,” PANL.
71 In all, there were 15 different couples identified in these notes made on both 1935 and1945 censuses.
72 Chenier, “Sex, Intimacy, and Desire,” 32.
73 Velma Demerson, Incorrigible (Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2004).

Chinese Immigrants and Restaurants in St. John’s

21

These racialized assumptions about Chinese immigrants and the threats
posed by transgressive female sexuality appeared in a 1926 newspaper reportabout the Newfoundland Constabulary’s visits to several St. John’s restaurants.
The Evening Telegram claimed the Newfoundland Constabulary had
investigated several of the restaurants owned by Chinese immigrants for “notoperating on a healthy moral plane.” The police, claimed the writer, had foundsituations at two of the restaurants that “were not all that could be desiredin the interests of morality.” Suggesting the restaurant owners were allowing
sex trade work on their premises, the article noted that “quite a number ofgirls of questionable character were frequenters of the two places, as well as anumber of married men, who made periodical calls in their motor cars.”74 The
author’s comments about married men suggested that the activities at theserestaurants were threatening to the middle-class family, while also reminding
the readers that motor cars were also spaces with sexual possibilities. The
author acknowledged that the police had found no evidence to lay charges,
but assured readers that police would “keep a close scrutiny on those who
frequented the places.”75 With its outraged tone and language, the article
ref lected the way racialized constructions of men from China, as well asassumptions about female transgressive sexuality, were used to define Chinese
immigrant-owned restaurants as morally dangerous spaces.
While the newspaper’s reporting on the cafés focused on femaletransgressive behaviour, most of the crime taking place at Chinese immigrantowned restaurants was committed by local white men. Since their first arrival
in Newfoundland, Chinese immigrants had faced racialized harassment andviolence from young white men and boys.76 As Heron argues, “Working-classmale bodies were the claims to class pride within demeaning wage labour,
gender superiority over allegedly weaker women, and in an age of imperialist
excess, racial triumph over the ‘lesser breeds.’”77 After Chinese immigrants
began opening restaurants, magistrates’ reports reveal that at least several
incidents a year came before the courts (and an unknown number of others
would have been unreported). For example, a report from September 1920
described a local white man, reportedly drunk, who “ran amok,” breaking
74 “Chinese Restaurants Under Police Surveillance,” Evening Telegram, 30 October 1926.
75 “Chinese Restaurants Under Police Surveillance,” Evening Telegram, 30 October 1926.
76 Just a few of dozens of examples are as follows: “Teasing the Chinaman,” Evening
Telegram, 11 April 1904; “Charged with Larceny,” Evening Telegram, 26 December 1908; and“Chinaman Robbed,” Evening Telegram, 10 September 1907.
77 Heron, “Boys Will Be Boys,” 8.

22Wrightthe impact of male violence on the lives of Chinese immigrant café owners andstaff. Besides local white men, transient seafaring labourers also spent timein the Chinese immigrants’ cafés and sometimes acted out destructively. For
example, in 1927, the Evening Telegram reported that Chewy Lee, then managerof the Dominion Cafe on Water Street, brought charges against a sailor from
Barbados for throwing a chair at him.79 In 1936 a ship’s engineer and a fireman,both from the United Kingdom, received fines for attacking Hong Yung, anemployee of the People’s Restaurant.80
The Chinese immigrant-owned restaurants of St. John’s became a particularconcern to both military and civilian authorities during the Second World War.
A relatively small city, St. John’s population swelled when its strategic position
for the defence of the North Atlantic brought thousands to the region.81
Through the Lend-Lease Agreement, the Americans built an army base, Fort
Pepperrell, north of Quidi Vidi Lake, just outside downtown St. John’s. Canada,
as well, had both navy and air force personnel stationed in and around the city.
While the American and Canadian military provided recreational facilities
for their members, many service personnel still found their way to the public
eating and drinking spots of St. John’s.
The Americans in particular had a large impact on the social and economic
life of wartime St. John’s, reflecting the “imperial” relationships the UnitedStates had with nations and regions it came to control and influence. Historians
looking at the United States as “empire” have argued that whether through its
military or corporate representatives, the United States interacted with theseother peoples and regions through unequal power dynamics of race, class,and gender.82 American authorities attempted to define and control relations
between their own military personnel and employees and the local, “native”
population. Historians examining wartime St. John’s, including Steven Highand Ruth Haywood, have argued that both military and civilian authorities

79 “Magistrate’s Court,” Evening Telegram, 23 November 1927.
80 “Magistrate’s Court,” Evening Telegram, 30 March 1936.
81 For background on St. John’s during the war, see John N. Cardoulis, A Friendly Invasion:
The American Military in Newfoundland, 1940-1990 (St. John’s: Breakwater Books, 1990)
and Steven High, ed., Occupied St. John’s: A Social History of a City at War, 1939-1945.
(Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2010).
82 See Daniel E. Bender and Jana K. Lipman, eds. Making the Empire Work: Labor and UnitedStates Imperialism (New York: New York University Press, 2015) and Julie Greene, “Buildersof Empire: Rewriting the Labor and Working-Class History of Anglo-American Global
Power,” Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas 13, no. 3-4 (December2016): 1-10.

Chinese Immigrants and Restaurants in St. John’s

23

actively monitored and tried to control social interactions in public spaces in
the city during the war.83 Young women, Haywood argued, “became the siteof a moral panic over ‘sexual delinquency’,” particularly as authorities feared
enlisted men would contact sexually transmitted diseases.84 In an attempt tocontrol women, both social welfare workers and police began making regular
visits to public spaces where women and men would meet, including hotels
and restaurants. The spots owned by the Chinese immigrants received close
attention.
The American military also acted on its own to monitor and control its
enlisted men’s interactions with local populations by visiting, evaluating, andthen classifying the city’s restaurants and beer parlours. Shortly after arrivingin St. John’s in early 1941, the American military sent inspectors to over 40
establishments in the city to determine if they were what they consideredsafe for American military personnel to visit. They then produced a list ofrestaurants and beer parlours that Americans could visit, as well as thosedeemed off limits. In a letter to Newfoundland health authorities, Daniel J.
Berry, of the Medical Corps of the United States Army, explained their list
was based on health criteria including cleanliness, equipment, and personnel.85
Such a move so early in their tenure reveals the way the Americans were quick
to “take charge” in their interactions with their host community.
While Berry claimed their inspectors applied objective criteria in creating
their list, the restaurants deemed “acceptable” and “banned” fell strongly along
racial and class lines. Of the 16 restaurants on the “banned” list, at least 13 were
owned or operated by Chinese immigrants.86 The only confirmed non-Chinese
immigrant-owned restaurant on the list was the Crosbie Hotel on Duckworth
Street, which had formerly been owned by the well-known political family.87

83 Ruth Haywood, “’Delinquent, disorderly, and diseased females’: Regulating Sexuality
in Second World War St. John’s, Newfoundland” (MA thesis, Memorial University of
Newfoundland, 2002); Steven High, “Rethinking the Friendly Invasion,” in High, Occupied
St. John’s, 151-90. See also Jessica Steffler, “Morals and (Im)morality in Second World War
Newfoundland: American Servicemen’s Relations with Local Newfoundland Women,
1941-1945” (MA major paper, Memorial University, 2018).
84 Haywood, “‘Delinquent, disorderly, and diseased females’,” ii.
85 Daniel J. Berry to H.M. Mosdell, 20 February 1941; Memorandum, Headquarters,
Newfoundland Base Command, US Army, St. John’s, Newfoundland, 11 February 1941, GN
38 S4/2/4, file 8, PANL. The letter from Berry explained that they had created a list of
banned restaurants while the actual restaurant list was on the separate memorandum.
86 Memorandum, Headquarters, Newfoundland Base Command, US Army, St. John’s,
Newfoundland, 11 February 1941, GN 38 S4/2/4, PANL.
87 For a history of the Crosbie Hotel, see O’Neill, Oldest City, 376.

24

WrightAs well, the banned restaurants owned by Chinese immigrants were primarily
in the working-class neighbourhoods of New Gower Street and Water StreetWest. Meanwhile, of the 13 hotels and restaurant deemed acceptable for
American service personnel, only four were owned by Chinese immigrants.
These included Ming Gong Au’s (Charlie Gong) London Cafe, the American
Café owned by the Tom family, and Tom Chong’s White Lily, all located in the
more upscale area of Water Street, side-by-side with the banks and department
stores.88 Whether or not the enlisted men actually heeded these directives is
unclear, but the list itself offers insights into the way ideas about race and classshaped military authorities’ attempts to define and delineate public spaces in
the city.
Local police and health authorities also drew on racialized conceptions ofChinese immigrants, as well as concerns about working-class female sexuality,
in their interactions with local restaurants. Early in the war, the Newfoundland
Constabulary began making regular visits to the city’s restaurants and cafés,
and occasionally referred cases to the health authorities.89 One example canbe seen in a series of reports in late December 1940 and January 1941 between
two Newfoundland Constabulary officers and the Chief Officer of Health A.
Bishop, who discussed a couple of restaurants owned by a Chinese immigrant.90
They depicted the restaurants as small, cramped, dirty, and smelling of the“smoke from frying pork.”91 In describing the restaurant owner himself, they
drew on racialized constructions of people from China as dirty and intractable,with Bishop claiming “We have been continually after him but we have been
unable to make him improve.” Despite blaming the restaurant owner, however,Bishop admitted that the restaurants were so busy and constantly packed withcustomers that it would have been difficult to keep the places clean.92
While cleanliness and health concerns were behind the complaints about
the two restaurants, the police officers and the health official also emphasized
88 Memorandum, Headquarters, Newfoundland Base Command, US Army, St. John’s,
Newfoundland, 11 February 1941, GN 38 S4/2/4.
89 P.J. O’Neill to Commissioner for Justice and Defence, 26 April 1943, GN 13/1/B Box 240,
PANL.
90 M. White to P.J. O’Neill, Chief of Police, Newfoundland Constabulary, 16 December 1940,
GN 13/1/B box 240, PANL; see also Haywood, “‘Delinquent, disorderly, and diseased
females’,” 130-3.
91 GN 13/1/B, PANL: A. Bishop to Secretary for Public Health and Welfare, 4 January 1941; M.
White to P.J. O’Neill, Chief of Police, 6 December 1940; and Leo Roche, Acting Sergeant, toP.J. O’Neill, Chief of Police, 11 January 1941. See also Haywood, “‘Delinquent, disorderly, anddiseased females’,” 130-1.
92 A. Bishop to Secretary for Public Health and Welfare, 4 January 1941, GN 13/1/B, PANL.

Chinese Immigrants and Restaurants in St. John’s

25

what they saw as the moral danger of these spaces. All three men pointed to the“foreign seaman and their lady friends” (as Bishop described them), who theyclaimed packed the place every night.93 Describing them as “foreign seamen,”the officials invoked both a fear of strangers and stereotypes about the sexual
behaviour of seafaring men. The two police officers identified the women in
the restaurants as sex workers, calling them “our local street girls,” and “known
to some of the police as common prostitutes.”94 Whether or not they actually
were sex workers is unknown, but the reports suggest that groups of womenin the company of “foreign” sailors in a café owned by a Chinese immigrant
could easily be labelled that way. Adding to the moral concern, one of theofficers also warned that the restaurant owner was advertising for a “girl” towork as a waitress, suggesting it was inappropriate for a white woman to bein that environment.95 Despite the clear attempt to define these restaurants as
dangerous, the fact the restaurants were reportedly busy suggests they werefilling a niche in the city – whether it was an affordable bite to eat or a place tosocialize or find companionship.
As it happened, a stabbing incident at the Paramount Lunch in early
January 1941 brought public attention to the presence of white women in
Chinese immigrant-owned cafés. According to newspaper reports, a whitefemale employee of the Paramount Lunch, stabbed the Chinese immigrantowner with a knife. Two Evening Telegram articles offered slightly contradictory
accounts of the relationship between the woman and the restaurant owner. One
article claimed the woman, who worked at the cafe and lived in rooms upstairs,
stabbed the owner “in a fit of jealousy,” implying she was in a relationshipwith him.96 In the other article a police officer told the Magistrate’s Court thatthe woman had told him that she was running the cafe, and that she and therestaurant owner had had a “falling out.”97 While we do not know the precise
nature of their relationship, the newspaper coverage offers insights into the

93 A. Bishop to Secretary for Public Health and Welfare, 4 January 1941, GN 13/1/B, PANL.
94 Leo Roche, Acting Sergeant to P.J. O’Neill, Chief of Police, 11 January 1941 and M. White to
P.J. O’Neill, Chief of Police, Newfoundland Constabulary, 16 December 1940, GN 13/1/B,
PANL.
95 M. White to P.J. O’Neill, Chief of Police, Newfoundland Constabulary, 16 December 1940,
GN 13/1/B.
96 “Chinaman Stabbed During Altercation,” Evening Telegram, 11 January 1941.
97 “Magistrate’s Court,” Evening Telegram, 11 January 1941.

26

Wrightmoral scrutiny that women who spent time in Chinese immigrant-owned
restaurants could face.98
While the stabbing incident at the Paramount Lunch was dramatic, local
police were also interested in even the more mundane activities at these places.
According to Chief of Police P.J. O’Neill, the Newfoundland Constabulary sent
plainclothes officers into the city’s restaurants and beer parlours throughout
the war period – taking brief notes on who was there and how they were
behaving. O’Neill sent eight of these reports to Newfoundland government’s
Commissioner for Justice and Defence, apparently trying to reassure thegovernment official that the police had the city under control.99 O’Neill wrote:“We hear a lot about disorderly conduct in the restaurants and beer parlours . . .
and while we realize that the town isn’t quite as orderly as we would like to see
it, I still think that taking all the circumstances into considerations, conditions
are not so bad.”100 The reports covered eight evenings in late April and early
May of 1943, and the officers made between one and two dozen visits eachnight.101 All but a few of the restaurants they visited were owned by Chinese
immigrants.
These reports suggest the police officers making the restaurant visitswere trying to keep track of the military men while monitoring the civilian
women for signs of behaviour outside middle class sexual norms. 102 Militarymen (identified by nationality and branch of service) and seafaring labourers(merchant marines and “sailors”) made up more than 60 per cent of all the caféand restaurant patrons.103 That they outnumbered locals reveals how big an
impact the military had in the social life of the city. After noting the militarymen, the Newfoundland Constabulary officer A. Pike listed the number ofwhite civilian males but made no further notes about them; this suggests the98 “Magistrate’s Court,” Evening Telegram, 7 February 1941. The article suggests that therestaurant owner recovered from his wounds and the woman received a five-month jailsentence.
99 P.J. O’Neill to Commissioner for Justice and Defence, 26 April 1943, GN 13/1/B, box 240,
PANL.
100 P.J. O’Neill to Commissioner for Justice and Defence, 26 April 1943, GN 13/1/B, box 240,
PANL.
101 A. Pike, Sergeant, to P.J. O’Neill, Chief of Police, GN 13/1/B, PANL: 19 April 1943, 20 April
1943, 21 April 1943, 22 April 1943, 24 April 1943, 4 May 1943, 8 May 1943, 11 May 1943.
102 A. Pike, Sergeant, to P.J. O’Neill, Chief of Police, GN 13/1/B, PANL: 19 April 1943, 20 April
1943, 21 April 1943, 22 April 1943, 24 April 1943, 4 May 1943, 8 May 1943, 11 May 1943.
103 A. Pike, Sergeant, to P.J. O’Neill, Chief of Police, GN 13/1/B, PANL: 21 April 1943, 4 May 1943,
8 May 1943. While the American military had tried to stop American service personnel
from visiting specific restaurants, Pike found American soldiers at several of the “banned”
restaurants.

Chinese Immigrants and Restaurants in St. John’s

27

police were not concerned about them. While women comprised just 10 per
cent of all café patrons, the officer made detailed notes about each one. Pike
described the women as either “old ladies” or “girls.” He made no further
comments on the “old ladies,” but for each of the “girls” he added a qualifierthat noted if they were “respectable-looking” or were simply “unknown” topolice. Pike described approximately half, or 36 of the 78 women identified, as“respectable” or “respectable-looking,” suggesting they met middle class normsof female appearance and behaviour and were not threats to the social order.
Pike described a further 20 “girls” as “unknown,” a more neutral term thatneither identified them nor ruled them out as possible sex workers. Almost
all of the “respectable” women were found in two restaurants owned by local
white residents, suggesting that the space itself may have influenced how theofficer perceived them. Aside from the “respectable” and “unknown” women,
he mentioned several women by name. In one case he implied the woman wasa known drinker,104 and he described another as “on the street.”105 While we
do not know whether the women knew the police were watching them, thesereports underscore the way authorities defined and constructed the women
spending time in the restaurants owned by Chinese immigrants.
Besides offering insights into authorities’ concerns about the restaurants
owned by Chinese immigrants, the Newfoundland Constabulary reports alsooffer a snapshot of social life during the war. On 8 May 1943, for example, abusy Saturday night, Pike saw seventeen naval men, four civilian men, andfour “respectable-looking girls” at the Good View Cafe on Water Street.106 Thatsame evening, the staff at the Red Rose Cafe on New Gower Street was serving
four American sailors, six Merchant Marines, and two civilian men. Nearby,at the Lily Cafe, eight naval men, four civilian men and two “old ladies” were
having refreshments. Ten young boys were eating chips at the Universal Cafe,
while fifteen sailors and four girls “unknown” to the officers were patronizing
the Western Cafe on Water Street. While we know little of the conversations orinteractions on that Saturday night, apart from Pike’s assurances that generally
people were sober and well-behaved, his reports offer a glimpse into these newsocial spaces of St. John’s. The restaurants were heterogeneous, hosting men
and women, Chinese immigrants and local white people, military and civilian,young and old. These diverse social spaces were part of the neighbourhoods,
104 A. Pike, Sergeant, to P.J. O’Neill, Chief of Police, 24 April 1943, GN 13/1/B, PANL.
105 A. Pike, Sergeant, to P.J. O’Neill, Chief of Police, 19 April 1943, GN 13/1/B, PANL.
106 A. Pike, Sergeant, to P.J. O’Neill, Chief of Police, 8 May 1943, GN 13/1/B, PANL.

28

Wrightand they should be part of the way we think about the social history of St.
John’s.
While the restaurants and cafés owned by Chinese immigrants wereplaces where people interacted peaceably, they were also occasionally sites ofviolence – much of it instigated by military men. Steven High observed thatpublic drinking and violent behaviour were features of wartime St. John’s, withlocal men and military servicemen fighting in and around the city’s bars andbeer parlours.107 Magistrates’ reports from the St. John’s newspapers suggest
violent incidents involving military service people also occurred regularly in
Chinese immigrant-owned restaurants.108 Property damage and theft wereamong the most common charges, as Chinese immigrants brought complaints
and sought charges against men who broke windows, threw beer bottles, orstole from them. For example, in March 1943 a member of the Royal Canadian
Air Force was convicted and fined for breaking a fan and a chair at a Chinese
immigrant-owned restaurant on Duckworth Street.109 In another incident in
December 1941, a Newfoundland naval rating and a Canadian soldier werecharged with disorderly conduct for fighting at Sing Lee’s Good View Cafe after
the Canadian supposedly made “disparaging remarks” about Newfoundland.110
According to the article, one man threw the other through the café window,
causing $27 in damages. In the summer of 1945, Sing Lee brought charges
against two Royal Navy men for eating 80 cents-worth of chips and not paying
for them.111 And sometimes servicemen were charged with assaulting Chineseimmigrant restaurant owners and workers, such as the Canadian seamen
convicted in January 1943 for attacking a café employee.112 During the war,
the Chinese immigrants were increasingly bringing cases to court themselves.
In September 1944, for example, a Chinese-immigrant restaurant proprietor

107 High, “Rethinking the Friendly Invasion,” in High, Occupied St. John’s, 171.
108 As part of the American Leased Bases agreement, the American military had fulljurisdiction over criminal cases involving American personnel, even if the incident
occurred off-base. Incidents involving American soldiers were not prosecuted in
Newfoundland courts. See High, “Rethinking the Friendly Invasion,” in High, Occupied St.
John’s, 176.
109 No title [article describing charges against a Royal Canadian Air Force member], Evening
Telegram, 29 March 1943.
110 “Magistrate’s Court,” Evening Telegram, 29 December 1941. “Naval rating” is the term forjunior enlisted personnel.
111 “Magistrate’s Court,” Evening Telegram, 27 June 1945.
112 “Magistrate’s Court,” Evening Telegram, 15 January 1943.

Chinese Immigrants and Restaurants in St. John’s

29

asked for a bond against two “foreign seamen” who he claimed had caused a
disturbance and threatened him.113
On Christmas night 1941, Newfoundland navy men committed one of themost severe cases of racialized violence against Chinese immigrants during
the war.114 According to the Evening Telegram, a group of Newfoundland navy
men were walking the streets when they looked through the windows of theImperial Cafe on Water Street and saw men of Chinese heritage having a
private party. The navy men, who had been drinking, smashed the glass front
door of the café and began attacking the people inside. Other navy men arrived
from the ship’s company, creating a disturbance that had a reported 150 men
fighting in and around the restaurant. While the Chinese immigrants hid or
escaped to the upper floors, military police came in to control the violenceand order all men back to their ships. The attack led to a public outcry overthe violence and some blamed the lack of social facilities for service personnel
in the city.115 In response, city officials agreed to meet with members of theChinese immigrant community about their concerns.116
While men, and particularly military men, perpetrated most of the violence,newspaper reports suggest women occasionally appeared before the magistrate
for their actions in Chinese immigrant-owned restaurants. In December 1941,
for example, two young women were found guilty of throwing a bottle througha restaurant window when they and their male companions were refusedservice.117 In another case, in February 1942, a Chinese immigrant restaurant
owner reportedly called police to remove four young women for “loose anddisorderly” conduct.118 The women, according to the report, escaped from
custody while waiting for the police van to arrive but were later caught, andthey received fines. And at a restaurant on New Gower Street in November
1943, reported the Evening Telegram, a woman “who frequented the place”
knocked over an American sailor by throwing a bottle at him.119 Sometimes
the cases involved theft or fraud; a case in point was the 17-year-old girl charged
with passing a counterfeit $10 bill to Tom Sing, the proprietor of the American
113 “Magistrate’s Court,” Evening Telegram, 15 September 1944.
114 “Chinese Cafe Gutted by Naval Ratings,” Evening Telegram, 27 December 1941.
115 Letter to Editor, “Suggest Wet Canteen for Sailors,” Evening Telegram, 30 December 1941;
Letter to Editor, Daily News, 30 December 1941.
116 “Meeting Chinese Residents in City,” Daily News, 3 January 1942.
117 “Magistrate’s Court,” Evening Telegram, 23 December 1941.
118 “Magistrate’s Court,” Evening Telegram, 26 February 1942.
119 “Here, There and Everywhere: Hit by Bottle,” Evening Telegram, 11 November 1943.

30

WrightCafe on Water Street.120 She claimed she was doing it for a Canadian soldier.
These examples are relatively rare, but they illustrate the rougher edges ofurban St. John’s and of some of the people who were part of that world during
the disruptive years of the war.
Besides bringing cases of assault and vandalism to the local courts, Chinese
immigrants also organized to protest a regulation banning booth seating inrestaurants. The ban, introduced in the 1943 Health Act, was aimed primarily
at the Chinese immigrant-owned restaurants, another example of the way that
racialized constructions of “the Chinese” intertwined with fears about female
sexual behaviour. While Chief Health Inspector A. Bishop had claimed theban was for cleanliness reasons, the Newfoundland Constabulary had earlier
complained the booths “obstructed” their views of the patrons when they madetheir nightly patrols.121 When he brought the issue to city council in October
1940, the chief of police claimed the “Chinese restaurants” harboured “girls
looking to attract foreign visitors.”122
According to Bishop, the Chinese immigrant restauranteurs objected tothe ban because authorities were not enforcing it equitably – specifically, thatthe Health Department had not demanded that the Newfoundland Hotel also
remove their booth seating. In a memo to the secretary for the Department of
Public Health and Welfare, he admitted that his office had issued notices toseveral Chinese immigrant restaurant owners, but they had not issued one to
the Newfoundland Hotel. Bishop claimed the Chinese immigrant restaurant
owners were “irritated” about the inequity, adding they had “united together
in an effort to fight against the order.” According to Bishop, Davey Fong, sonof Moo Sic Fong, founder of the King Cafe, was leading the fight, and that thegroup had also hired lawyer Gordon Higgins to help them. Higgins had become
an unofficial legal advisor to members of the Chinese immigrant community,and he was in the Nickel Theatre photograph taken during the visit of theChinese Consul to Canada in 1940.123 He was also the son of William Higgins,
120 “Magistrate’s Court,” Evening Telegram, 19 May 1941.
121 A. Bishop, Chief of Health Inspection to Secretary, Department of Public Health andWelfare, 11 September 1943, GN 38 S6/5/2, file 5, PANL; see also Haywood, “‘Delinquent,disorderly, and diseased females’,” 132-3.
122 “Chinese Cafes Subject of Complaint,” Evening Telegram, 16 October 1940.
123 A. Bishop, Chief of Health Inspection, to Secretary, Department of Public Health andWelfare, 11 September 1943, GN 38 S6/5/2, PANL. Bishop claimed he sent notices to justa select number of restaurants owned by Chinese immigrants, not all that had booths. It
suggested they were doing it as a test, to see how the restaurant owners reacted. In 1946,
at least 18 of 27 total restaurants listed in the phone book were owned by ChineseChinese Immigrants and Restaurants in St. John’s

31

who had attended the grand opening of Moo Sic Fong’s restaurant in 1919.124
Bishop claimed Gordon Higgins told him the Chinese immigrant restaurant
owners would not remove their booths while the Newfoundland Hotel kept
theirs.125 Furthermore, Higgins argued he would emphasize the inequity if
the Health Department tried to take them to court. It seems that the threat
was enough for the authorities to back away from enforcing that particularregulation, as nothing further in the records suggests they went forward withthe plan to enforce the removal of restaurant booths.126 Having been subjected
to decades of racialization and unequal treatment, the men who had come from
China were pushing back against the latest attempts to label and define them.
The war years also gave the Chinese immigrants a chance to embrace apublic role through fundraising activities. Chinese immigrants raised funds
first for the Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945) and then for the wider Second World
War, and they did so in very public ways. They founded a branch of the Chinese
War Relief Association and they also worked through their community clan
associations: the Tai Mei Society, the Hong Heing Society, and the Chinese Cooperative Society.127 The names of restaurants and laundries owned by Chinese
immigrants appeared in newspaper articles, listing their donations to various
causes such as Chinese War Relief, the Newfoundland Patriotic Association,and War Savings Certificates.128 They held large gatherings (covered in thelocal press) and invited local dignitaries such as Mayor Carnell and lawyer
Gordon Higgins to give speeches.129 At one such event Mayor Carnell praised
the Chinese immigrants as “good citizens,” saying he hoped their work would
help foster better relations between them and the local white residents.130
Indeed, this was the kind of public recognition and respectability Kim Lee
immigrants.
124 “King Cafe Opens,” Daily Star, 22 August 1919. William J. Higgins later became a judge.
125 A. Bishop, Chief of Health Inspection, to Secretary, Department of Public Health andWelfare, 11 September 1943, GN 38 S6/5/2, PANL.
126 Commissioner for Finance to J.C. Puddester, Commissioner for Health and Welfare, 15
September 1943, GN 38 S6/5/2, file 5, PANL. This letter indicates the manager of the
Newfoundland Hotel had lobbied the Commissioner for Finance to ensure the new
regulations were not applied to them.
127 “Chinese Consul Says Farewell to Friends Here,” Daily News, 21 October 1940; “Chinese
War Relief Association,” Daily News, 2 August 1941. For information on the Tai Mei Society(Au family) and the Hong Heing Society (Hongs, Jins/Gins), see Callanan, Last Chinese
Laundry.
128 “Subscriptions to the Newfoundland Patriotic Association,” Evening Telegram, 29 June
1940; “YMCA Appeal for War Work in China,” Evening Telegram, 4 January 1943.
129 “Fighting with Guns of Dollars,” Daily News, 5 June 1942.
130 “YMCA Appeal for War Work in China,” Evening Telegram, 4 January 1943.

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Wrightand others had been seeking for years.
Kim Lee was one of the prominent figuresin the Chinese immigrant-community’s
public fundraising, along with Davey Fong,Charlie Dean, and Ming Gong Au.131 Thesemen were also among the first generationof restaurant owners, and in that iconic
October 1940 picture taken in front of the
Nickel Theatre they were standing in aplace of honour in the front row alongside
the Chinese Consul to Canada Dr. Shih.
Whether they were presiding overfundraising events during the war, or FIGURE 3 – Hong Family, 1954 – Mon(Gene) Hong and family in St. John’s.
ser ving customers plates of fish and Jin
From left: Melvin, Gene’s son; Genechips in t heir restaura nts, Chinese Hong; Edna (Mansfield), Gene’s wife;
infant Robert Hong; and Ken, Gene’s
immigrants were a visible part of the younger brother. Gene and Edna met at
everyday life of St. John’s. While racism the United Nations Restaurant in the
1940s.
had limited their options in employment, Source: Robert Hong family photo.
Chinese immigrants in St. John’s quickly
transformed the commercial landscape with their laundries and particularly
their dozens of restaurants. They invited the men and women of the city into
these establishments, defining them as clean, modern, and exciting places. The
restaurants were contested spaces, however, as various civil authorities, throughtheir words and actions, framed them as dangerous to the moral and social
order of the city. Racialized stereotypes about people of Chinese descent, as
well as broad assumptions about the sexuality of working class women, ledauthorities to monitor those restaurants, particularly during the Second World
War. Despite those portrayals, the people of St. John’s came to these new public
eating places – men and women, working class and middle class. A few local
white women married Chinese immigrant restaurant owners, and they raised
families with them. Not everything was peaceable, however, as young men
sometimes made racialized attacks on the immigrants from China and therestaurants they owned and worked in. The restaurants were complex social
spaces, and looking at their history offers a glimpse into the relationships and131 “Chinese Consul Says Farewell to Friends Here,” Daily News, 21 October 1940. Ming Gong
Au (Charlie Gong) owned the London Cafe on Water Street. After the visit from Dr. Shih,the Chinese Consul to Canada, the entire group went to the London Café for a banquet.

Chinese Immigrants and Restaurants in St. John’s

33interactions between Chinese immigrants and local white residents as well as
the class, gendered, and racial dynamics underlying those relationships andinteractions.
These restaurants, along with the laundries and other small businesses,
would also provide a foundation for the future of the men who had come to
Newfoundland from China. After Newfoundland joined Canada in 1949, thehead tax ended and the path to Canadian citizenship became possible. As well,
the Chinese Communist Revolution also meant that travelling back and forth
to their communities of origin became more difficult for Chinese immigrants
in Newfoundland. By the early 1950s, many men who had immigrated to
Newfoundland from China were receiving Canadian citizenship, and they wereapplying to bring families to their new home. Those laundries, and particularly
the restaurants, provided the economic means for those families, as well as
for the men who were raising families with their Newfoundland-born wives
and children.132 While all of those restaurants founded by Chinese immigrants
during the period from the 1920s through the 1940s have closed or changed
hands, their stories remind us of the diverse and complex urban environmentof historic St. John’s.

MIRIAM WRIGHT est professeure agrégée d’histoire à l’Université de Windsor. Elle a participé
récemment à des projets de recherche sur l’histoire des sports et des communautés racialiséesau Canada.
MIRIAM WRIGHT is an associate professor of history at the University of Windsor. She has recently
been involved with projects on the history of sports and racialized communities in Canada.

132 See Wright, Exhibit Guide – “Taking Root,” 13-18.