My Mother. My mother did not tell us much of her past and I and my siblings missed the opportunities to ask her while she was alive. In April of 2001 on a trip to Kota Kinabalu, State of Sabah in Malaysia, I with my brothers and sisters found out my mother's background from our cousins on our mother’s side. Apparently, she was an adopted child of a Chinese couple who migrated from Sandakan, Sabah to Hong Kong. Her mother gave her up for adoption after her father and brother passed away; her mother was alone and found it hard to provide for herself and her daughter. My mother was raised by her adopted parents in Hong Kong. How my father met my mother is still a mystery. I can only guess that he met her while he was recruiting for an assistant to help him in his magic performance. They were a perfect match, she seemed to like the spotlights as much as he did. She became his assistant in his magic show. In his magic performance, she would be levitated, saw in half, pierced with swords or disappeared on command.
My Father. I wrote an article of my father which was published by the Deadwood Magazine on March of 2007.
Magic Man
A knack for show business made the youngest son
of Deadwood’s most noted Chinese merchant an international star and a fugitive.
By Edward Wong
Hidden deep within the jungles of Malaysia, the new home of the Tong Quong Wong family was beyond modest. With the entire globe embroiled in World War II, this branch of Deadwood’s most well-known Chinese family had been forced into a primitive dirt-floor hut barely as large as most modern bedrooms. It was hard to know which was the bigger threat: the constant hunger that greeted them every day when they awoke, or the Japanese patrols that might discover their American heritage.
Indeed, although Tong Quong spent only a small portion of his childhood in the United States, he was proud of his American citizenship. The youngest son of Fee Lee Wong, a prominent frontier merchant in Deadwood’s Chinatown, Tong Quong (called TQ by family members and friends) was born in Deadwood in 1895. He attended grammar school for one year before leaving for China in 1902 with the rest of the Wong family. Tong Quong’s father planned the trip to China so that the children would get a better understanding of the Chinese language and Chinese culture.
Tong Quong and his siblings started Chinese school late and had a difficult time catching up. He stayed in China for 10 years before returning to the United States in 1912 at the age of 17. In Deadwood he faced the same dilemma as he did in China. He found himself in a class with much younger students because he was so far behind in his English. He tried to catch up but found it very disheartening. He quit school after three years to help his father tending the Wing Tsue Emporium store in Deadwood.
Tong Quong returned alone to China in 1920 at the age of 25. His parents decided that it was about time for him to settle down. He went through an arranged marriage and brought his wife Mee Lin back to the United States the following year. Between 1921 and 1928 he tried various jobs as a salesman, restaurant owner and even as an interpreter for the American President Lines that traveled between Hong Kong and Seattle. He was not very successful nor was he happy in any of these jobs. Two children – Mildred and Waldo – were born during these years.
A Talent for Magic
During his travels, Tong Quong became fascinated with magic. He began by
learning a few magic tricks and enjoyed entertaining his friends with his
sleight of hand. He enjoyed performing magic and soon gained enough
confidence that he felt he could earn a living as a magician. He spent his
time and money studying magic tricks. He learned all the illusions of those
days and practiced his hand tricks until he could perform them
instinctively. He used cards, ropes, handkerchiefs, coins and rings, but
his specialty was with cigarettes. He could make cigarettes appear or
disappear, turn a cigarette into a cigar, pick pack after pack of cigarettes
from his top hat, push a cigarette in one ear and pull it out of the other ear,
or pop it out of the cigarette holder.
Tong Quong first broke into show business by performing as a stage attraction before a feature movie. But he was ambitious; he wanted to be the main attraction rather than as a sideshow. He worked out a plan, and returned to China in 1928 with his wife and two children. As he began recruiting acrobats to perform in his new magic show throughout 1929, his second son Mathew was born. In 1930 he left his family in China and returned to the U.S. with a troupe of 14 acrobats. He used the stage name of Wan Wan San, and his troupe was known as the Wan Wan San Company. From 1930 to 1933, the Wan Wan San Company entertained in theatres all over the East Coast.
As the visas of the troupe were about to expire, he returned to China with the troupe in 1933. He disbanded the old troupe and began to organize a new troupe of singers, dancers, acrobats, cyclists, musicians and comedians. The new Wan Wan San Company became a vaudeville show, and Tong Quong had carefully geared the performance toward Asian audiences. He found that it was easier and more profitable for him to perform as an American magician in Southeast Asia than it was to perform as a Chinese magician in America.
For the next two decades, the Wan Wan San Company traveled throughout Southeast Asia performing in cities and towns in the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, Burma, Malaysia, Hong Kong and Singapore. He had as many as 40 performers in his troupe. The highlight of the show was always his magic performance, assisted by his second wife, Sue Woon. Occasionally, he would have an added attraction, such as the time he recruited an American cowboy as a sharp shooter to perform in his show. It was a grueling nonstop schedule of performances and constant traveling throughout the year.
A
Fugitive in the Jungle
As the years progressed, the Wan Wan San Company performed at theaters throughout Southeast Asia. Although many
theaters closed as World War II commenced, Tong Quong wasn’t easily deterred.
Ever resourceful – and adhering to the old mantra “the show must go on” – Tong
Quong bought a circus tent and used it as his portable theater. However,
when Allies bombings intensified during the closing years of the war, no amount
of optimism or clever tactics could attract patrons to Wan Wan San Vaudeville
show. With cities under siege and the civilian population under constant
curfews, times were tough for all entertainers. Tong Quong had no choice
but to disband the troupe and went into hiding with the family.
At first, the Allied bombings were the family’s biggest concern. However, the occupying forces of Japanese soldiers became increasingly harsh toward the civilian population as the war progressed. As an American citizen, Tong Quong had to exercise special care. If the Japanese soldiers ever discovered his American background, he almost certainly would be tortured or killed.
Unfortunately, keeping his citizenship secret was a difficult task. As a young man, Tong Quong had foolishly tattooed a bald eagle with an American flag on his forearm. To hide the tattoo, he had to constantly wear a long sleeve shirt - an uncomfortable task in the hot and humid equatorial climate of Southeast Asia. Fortunately, the Japanese soldiers never suspected him.
For more than a year, Tong Quong and his family lived on a small patch of land carved out of the jungle in the Sandakan region of Sabah state, an area now part of Malaysia. They lived in a hut that was divided into two sections that was shared with another family. Each section was approximately 300 square feet. The hut was built on a dirt floor with a wooden raised platform of about 20 inches high. This wooden platform was the only furniture, and it was used as a bed for the whole family as well as a storage area.
Food was hard to come by. The family had to plant cassava and ate tapioca as their staple food. There was no meat except for the chicken they raised and the occasional snake, turtle or fish they caught. Tong Quong determined that the chicken coop was his best hiding place, and he used it to store his American passport and currency. He stuffed the potentially incriminating items in a corked bottle and buried it under the chicken coop. During this difficult period, the whole family was undernourished and underweight.
Back
to America
When the Australian 9th Division landed in nearby Brunei and
liberated the area in June 1945, the Japanese occupation finally came to an
end. Tong Quong came out of hiding with his family and reported his whereabouts
to the U.S.
embassy. By this time, he had lost all his possessions, including his tent,
show props and personal affects. Without the funds to organize a
vaudeville show or the props to perform in a theatre, he took the family to Singapore where
he earned a living by performing in amusement parks.
Gradually
Tong Quong was able to recover economically and prepared to return to the United States. With
the money he received from reparation for his loss during the war and his
earnings from the amusement parks, he was able to bring his entire family to
the United States in 1953
settling in San Francisco.
Now almost 60, Tong Quong officially retired, but performed occasionally for
charities at special occasions. His wife, Sue Woon, worked at sewing
factories and bakeries. The couple enjoyed traveling during the last years of
their lives, and made visits to their previous homes in Deadwood and Southeast Asia. Tong Quong passed away on
All
of Tong Quong’s children settled in northern
Below are photos of the family taken 60 years apart in 1946 and in 2006.
|
1946 2006 |
 Standing from left to right: Frank, Helen, George, Janice and Tommy. Seating from left to right: Lily, Mom, Anna, Dad and Edward. Not in photo are William, No. 3 son, and youngest daughter Rose |
Standing from left to right: George, Rose, Frank and Anna. Seating from left to right: Lily, Tommy, Janice and Edward. Not in photo are William and Helen |
We are International. We were hardly in America. As the oldest of the ten children, Edward is the only one born in America (New York City, NY), all the others were born all over Southeast Asia. Tommy was born in Hong Kong, George, Helen and Rose were born in Singapore, and those who were born in Malaysia were Janice in Penang, William in Sandakan, Frank in Sibu, and Anna in Tawau. Lily was born on board a ship during travel. She has dual citizenship, American and Canadian; the ship is registered Canadian
