New-York tribune., 1920-11-22
New. Tong War
Seen i'm Murder
OfLaundryman
Bullet Bearing the Dreaded
Signs of Hip Sing Band
Found After Shooting in
Doyer Street Poolroom
Victim a War Veteran
Ieung Yung a Marked Man
Since Draft Called Him;
Wife Alone Mourns Him


Leung Yung was murdered last night
in Chinatown by Smiling bullet,
fred by Hip Sing gunman, but he
died a victim of the American ideals
he absorbed at camp, rather than as
the appointed victim of the Hip Sing
Tong.
His murder in the pool room of the
Lee brothers, just above the old Chi
rese Theater on Doyer Street, is the
first to occur in Chinatown for years
and is regarded by the police as per
haps a portent of coming tong war.
1t threw the Chinese of the crowded
district into a frenzy of excitement
and the reserves were called from the
Elizabeth Street police station
For the first time in years the occu-
pants of seats in the sightseeing
busses got a real thrill. There were
dozens of them strolling about the
street when the shot resounded just
above the "bloody angle of Doyer
Street. They were glad enough to
climb back into their seats under the
protection of double line of bluecoats
end head for the plain white lights Of
Broadway.
Occident Background
Although the sightseers got only
confused impression of shot in the
gloom of crooked street and a tumble
of shrill-voiced, blue bloused figures
darting here and there beneath street
lamps and the police obtained only
fragmentary story OF the eventful life
Of Leung Yung, the laundryman, there
was evidence that this murder, which
harked back to the unregenerate days
Of Mock Duck, the Hip Sing hatchet
man, was not the ordinary Chinatown
shooting, which concerns only things
Chinese.
The Occident, with its Caucasian
ideals. was thrust on the stage as q
background for the shooting when the
number of Leung Yung, laundryman,
of II Pell Street, New York, was drawn
from the great glass globe at Wash
irgton by biindfolded clerk of the
War Department in 1917.
At that time Leung Yung. though
American by birtr., was Chinese in
every thought and instinct He was
then twenty-five years old, had made
the pilgrimage to China to visit the
tombs of his ancestors and there duti-
fully had married the woman of his
parents choice and begotten a son to
perpetuate the name Leung in the
Only land which Leung Yung regarded
as his own.
In accordance with Chinese conven-
tions of this Western land, Leuns
Yung had taken to himself a white
woman, Josephine Meyers, or Scar face
Josie, as incautious foes sometimes
called her, and with her was living in
Chinatown. employed by the day in
store of the Hip Sing Tong and by
which involved the use of opium and
dominoes.
The war and the draft and the fate
full number that came from the glass
globe changed much. of this habit of
life. Eventually Leung Yung came
before the local draft board was found
physically and mentally fit and received
the postcard which called him to the
eolors of the land in which he was
born, but which was still alien to him.
Trained at Camp Upton
He went to Camp Upton OF his
military career not even Josie Meyers
could or would tell the details last
night. What chiefly stood out in
Josies memory was that "Lee" went to
Camp Upton chop head" and returned
completely cured of the opium habit.
There was evidence also that he was
cured of other habits, among them that
of being Chinese tong man. That
evidence transpired in the inner circle
Of the Hip Sing Tong, and only its
faint shadow is to be perceived by
Caucasian eyes.
such evidence lies in the fact that at
the time of the Chinese New Year, last
February, when all debts are paid and
all Chinese hail each other as broth
ers, Leung Yung was expelled from
the Hip Sing Tong. The word went
through Chinatown that Leung Yunq
was "squealer," though Josie Meyers
protested with tears running down her
cheeks that she had no idea why Lee"
was expelled.
Expelled he was, however, and sinis-
ter little bulletins concerning him ap-
peared now and then on the rad bill
boards which give Chinatow1 most of
its news. Some were merely ribald
comment and some blandly asserted,
after announcing the expulsion of
l.eung Yung from the honorable tong,
that the gods looked unkindly upon
Leung Yung and undoubtedly his fur
ther stay in this community would not
he blessed.
:. All Chinatown knew-even Josie
Meyers admitted knowing it-that
Leung Yung had been warned by the
Hip Sing Tong to leave town. All
chinatown knew, and none better than
Leung 4ung and Josie Meyers, what
such notice meant in the days of Mock
Duck.
Crowd Sees Shooting
But Leung Yung, who wore America n
clothes on the outside and American
ideals on the inside, swore vividly that
the day of Mock Duck had passed and
20 bunch Of Chinese was going to run
nm out OF Chinatown. He had to, sur
render ms position in the Hip Sing
store, or course, but he maintained his
residence on Pell Street, just across
me way from the headquarters of the
Sip Sing Tong, and started a laundry
ne prospered, not even the army
osving succeeded in graduating Chi
nese industry and thrift from, his ma
AAre AZ night he was to be found
generally shooting pool, either in the
CONS OF the Lee brothers-who are
Nnreans and neutral in any tong fueds
or IN those at the corner of Doyers
and Pell streets
he was shooting pool at the Lee
hrothers' place, I53s Doyer Street,
about O'Clock last NIGHT The weaL,