 Chinese New
Year
Ushering in the Year of the Snake with a bang, Deadwood’s Chinese New
Year celebration has roots in the gold rush era when the narrow gulch
was home to a substantial Chinese population.
Until 1912, the colorful festival welcoming the new year, a
deafening din of firecrackers, gongs, bands, parades and dances,
continued for a week or longer in the Chinese section that covered
several blocks of Deadwood’s lower main street.
Revived in 1991, the 10th annual Chinese New Year
celebration in Deadwood brings back the firecrackers, Lion Dancers and
ceremonial costumes of that earlier era for a one-day gala event on
February 10, 2001.
Between 1848 and 1900 some 200,000 Cantonese were brought into
the United States by labor contractors. Put to work at menial jobs in
mining camps and on railroad construction crews, they moved east from
California in the wake of new gold strikes.
In 1893 a local newspaper proclaimed, “Deadwood has for her
size perhaps the largest colony of Chinese east of San Francisco.”
Just how many
Chinese were packed into the 2 ˝ blocks of Deadwood’s Chinatown is a
matter of conjecture. The 1880 Lawrence County census recorded 213
Chinese, most of them young men in their 20s and 30s, in the total
population of 13,334.
However,
census records of the time were less than accurate and the Chinese
themselves, many of whom
had entered the country illegally, were very secretive about actual
numbers.
Most of Deadwood’s Chinese either returned home or moved on to
larger cities as the gold rush waned.
But Wing Tsue Wong, a merchant and dealer in luxury items,
brought in his family, sent his children to Deadwood schools and
was a prominent and respected businessman of the community for nearly 40
years.
According to a family biography compiled by his grandson, Wing
Tsue took his family back to China in 1902, then had problems
re-entering the United States two years later. Intervention by a U. S.
Congressman allowed him to return to Deadwood. In 1919 Wing Tsue made
his final trip back to Canton, where he died in 1921 at the age of 75.
Wing Tsue’s descendants have visited the Black Hills several
times during the past few years. Grandson Kam Leung, Manhattan Beach,
California, organized a reunion in Deadwood last summer for 13 members
of the immediate family. He addressed the annual meeting of the Society
of Black Hills Pioneers and the entire family participated in the Days
of ’76 parade.
Just two months after the Deadwood reunion, Kam Leung, 76, died
unexpectedly of a massive heart attack. LeRoy S. Wong is currently
completing the family biography his father had been working on for
several years.
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