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A Willow Tree Becomes a Forest: The Story of Hop Lee
“A Willow Tree Becomes a Willow Forest” is a work of narrative nonfiction set in the Pacific Northwest from 1877 through 1925. It is a story of the American West with a twist and provides a new narrative for those interested in historical works.
Set in Oregon in the 1800s, the protagonist is a teenage Chinese boy who came to America in 1877 armed with a brush, a blank journal, a fortune teller’s scroll that foretold his life’s journey, and a burning desire to become American. Nineteen-year-old Low Sun Fook, aka Hop Lee, arrives in Oregon in 1877 to begin a journey that covers five decades in his adopted country. Along the way, he acquired and cultivated good friendships with Salem publishers, bank presidents, politicians, and hop farmers.
Using source documents, including a 150-year-old fortune teller scroll, Hop Lee’s hand-written journal, and a box of 100-year-old photographs, the story of this Chinese American pioneer turned businessman comes to life on the book’s pages.
We watch him grow from arrival in Albany, Oregon’s Chinatown, through a disastrous stint as a cook for a railroad gang run out of camp for burning the rice, through his days learning his ticket to the American dream as a Chinese laundryman. Along the way, the ever-ambitious and enterprising Hop Lee runs headlong into Anti-Chinse racism with the Chinese Exclusion Act and the massacre of Chinese miners at Deep Creek in Eastern Oregon. Hop befriends a young Nez Perce warrior in the last adventure by disguising him as a Cantonese. Yellow Fox and Hop have a friendship that transcends cultures and spans decades.
Hop’s laundry business in Salem, Oregon, is squarely in the crosshairs of the White laundry owners who started a campaign called Bust the Trust to drive the Chinese out of the dirty clothes business.
Realizing the need to diversify their portfolios, Hop Lee and fellow immigrant merchant George Sun learn the art of hop farming in the fertile Willamette Valley. They participate in the Northwest’s Rise of the Chinese Hop Men , a nearly forgotten chapter in our history. In their haste, they run into the Women’s Temperance Union and Prohibition, depressing the price of hops.
After almost three decades as a bachelor in America, Hop decides to try to find an American-born Chinese wife, a tall order in a country where there are 20 Chinese men for every woman. So, Hop takes the train to San Francisco and uses a matchmaker to find the rare jewel – the American-born Chinese girl. What happens next is the journey and the tale of how this single Willow Tree became a Willow Forrest.
While seeking his elusive dream of citizenship, Hop Lee was, in his heart, a true American who believed in the spirit and possibilities of his adopted country. His story embodies the tale of the bold, bright, determined immigrants who proudly built America with their sweat, imagination, and ingenuity. Those who stayed created the ripples that gave us life as individuals and as a nation of nations.
Set in Oregon in the 1800s, the protagonist is a teenage Chinese boy who came to America in 1877 armed with a brush, a blank journal, a fortune teller’s scroll that foretold his life’s journey, and a burning desire to become American. Nineteen-year-old Low Sun Fook, aka Hop Lee, arrives in Oregon in 1877 to begin a journey that covers five decades in his adopted country. Along the way, he acquired and cultivated good friendships with Salem publishers, bank presidents, politicians, and hop farmers.
Using source documents, including a 150-year-old fortune teller scroll, Hop Lee’s hand-written journal, and a box of 100-year-old photographs, the story of this Chinese American pioneer turned businessman comes to life on the book’s pages.
We watch him grow from arrival in Albany, Oregon’s Chinatown, through a disastrous stint as a cook for a railroad gang run out of camp for burning the rice, through his days learning his ticket to the American dream as a Chinese laundryman. Along the way, the ever-ambitious and enterprising Hop Lee runs headlong into Anti-Chinse racism with the Chinese Exclusion Act and the massacre of Chinese miners at Deep Creek in Eastern Oregon. Hop befriends a young Nez Perce warrior in the last adventure by disguising him as a Cantonese. Yellow Fox and Hop have a friendship that transcends cultures and spans decades.
Hop’s laundry business in Salem, Oregon, is squarely in the crosshairs of the White laundry owners who started a campaign called Bust the Trust to drive the Chinese out of the dirty clothes business.
Realizing the need to diversify their portfolios, Hop Lee and fellow immigrant merchant George Sun learn the art of hop farming in the fertile Willamette Valley. They participate in the Northwest’s Rise of the Chinese Hop Men , a nearly forgotten chapter in our history. In their haste, they run into the Women’s Temperance Union and Prohibition, depressing the price of hops.
After almost three decades as a bachelor in America, Hop decides to try to find an American-born Chinese wife, a tall order in a country where there are 20 Chinese men for every woman. So, Hop takes the train to San Francisco and uses a matchmaker to find the rare jewel – the American-born Chinese girl. What happens next is the journey and the tale of how this single Willow Tree became a Willow Forrest.
While seeking his elusive dream of citizenship, Hop Lee was, in his heart, a true American who believed in the spirit and possibilities of his adopted country. His story embodies the tale of the bold, bright, determined immigrants who proudly built America with their sweat, imagination, and ingenuity. Those who stayed created the ripples that gave us life as individuals and as a nation of nations.
494 pages, Paperback
Published October 23, 2023
1 person is currently reading
3 people want to read
About the author
Russell N. Low
9 books2 followersRussell Low is a physician with a passion for discovery and storytelling. His discoveries in the medical field have changed the way that his colleagues world-wide practice medicine and image disease. Discovery of his own roots began 30 years ago through the stories of his parents and their siblings. Growing up in Central California, more American than Chinese, his connection to Chinese culture and history was limited and incomplete.
Discovering the 1903 Hong family photograph among the belongings of 100-year-old great Uncle Kim sparked a decades-long search for the stories behind the photograph. These are the stories presented in Three Coins. In his searches, Russell came across a 130-year-old newspaper notice titled “Villainous-looking Chinese after a Chinese Girl.” In the article, he recognized his great-grandparents’ names, but the romantic drama it uncovered shook the core of his family’s belief in who they are and how they came to be Americans. Russell frequently lectures on Chinese-American history, and his family’s story has been featured on the History Channel, National Public Radio, the Voice of America, and the Smithsonian Museum of American History.
Russell lives with his wife Carolyn Hesse-Low, an avid and well-known plein air artist, in La Jolla, California where they raised their two sons Ryan and Robert.
Discovering the 1903 Hong family photograph among the belongings of 100-year-old great Uncle Kim sparked a decades-long search for the stories behind the photograph. These are the stories presented in Three Coins. In his searches, Russell came across a 130-year-old newspaper notice titled “Villainous-looking Chinese after a Chinese Girl.” In the article, he recognized his great-grandparents’ names, but the romantic drama it uncovered shook the core of his family’s belief in who they are and how they came to be Americans. Russell frequently lectures on Chinese-American history, and his family’s story has been featured on the History Channel, National Public Radio, the Voice of America, and the Smithsonian Museum of American History.
Russell lives with his wife Carolyn Hesse-Low, an avid and well-known plein air artist, in La Jolla, California where they raised their two sons Ryan and Robert.
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December 6, 2023
Russell Low’s “A Willow Tree Becomes a Forest” is a narrative, non-fiction, feel-good, must-read story of a young Chinese man’s search for “The American Dream” for himself and his family. At the same time, Low does not whitewash the dark side of the immigrant story.
Low Sun Fook is born in in China’s Guangdong province in 1858. Arriving in America in 1877, he has a simple goal, “I wish to be an American.” Known as Hop Lee, he eventually settles in Salem, Oregon. Hop becomes a successful laundryman, a poultry seller and a farmer of hops (the magic ingredient behind many of our favorite brews). He attains wealth and becomes a respected citizen by all.
Whether Low is hilariously describing how the young Hop is run off his first job as a railroad cook when he “burns the rice” or when Low in excruciating detail describes Hop’s “long walk home” carrying his believed-to-be murdered son, this is a page turner of a book interspersed with both humor and gut-wrenching events in the life of Hop Lee.
Much of this meticulous-researched book (do not be intimidated by its 494 pages) includes original letters, documents and images that enhance Low’s thoughtful, insightful and descriptive writing. One can even learn the technique of how to spray water by mouth over a clean shirt at a Chinese hand-laundry. The shirt steams as it comes into contact with the heated flat iron pressing out all the wrinkles.
Low intersperses historical events affecting the Chinese community, such as the San Francisco earthquake of 1906, World War I and the Spanish Flu of 1918, etc., and the how the U.S. government extends the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 by the Geary Act which adds the onerous requirement that Chinese residents of the United States carry a resident permit, that is, “to be licensed like a dog.”
The relationships among his arranged-marriage wife, his beloved Ah Kay (31 years younger than Hop) and his ten children break the Asian father-husband stereotype of emotional reservation, as Hop Lee lovingly displays affection and expresses his feeling towards his family. But make no mistake, there is always work.
As a second-generation Chinese American I can personally relate to the importance of family and community in Hop Lee and his family’s journey of trying to “fit in” or even a step further, “belonging.”
Hop Lee cannot vote; he cannot become a citizen. He cannot own land; thus, he knows he must find an American-born Chinese wife and place property in her name. You decide whether Hop Lee attains his goal of “being an American.”
Still, “We are stronger as individuals and as a nation because of this immigrant spirit born from the diversity which is at the heart of our nation,” Russell Low states in the book’s afterword.
Ed Shew is the author of “Chinese Brothers, American Sons.”
Low Sun Fook is born in in China’s Guangdong province in 1858. Arriving in America in 1877, he has a simple goal, “I wish to be an American.” Known as Hop Lee, he eventually settles in Salem, Oregon. Hop becomes a successful laundryman, a poultry seller and a farmer of hops (the magic ingredient behind many of our favorite brews). He attains wealth and becomes a respected citizen by all.
Whether Low is hilariously describing how the young Hop is run off his first job as a railroad cook when he “burns the rice” or when Low in excruciating detail describes Hop’s “long walk home” carrying his believed-to-be murdered son, this is a page turner of a book interspersed with both humor and gut-wrenching events in the life of Hop Lee.
Much of this meticulous-researched book (do not be intimidated by its 494 pages) includes original letters, documents and images that enhance Low’s thoughtful, insightful and descriptive writing. One can even learn the technique of how to spray water by mouth over a clean shirt at a Chinese hand-laundry. The shirt steams as it comes into contact with the heated flat iron pressing out all the wrinkles.
Low intersperses historical events affecting the Chinese community, such as the San Francisco earthquake of 1906, World War I and the Spanish Flu of 1918, etc., and the how the U.S. government extends the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 by the Geary Act which adds the onerous requirement that Chinese residents of the United States carry a resident permit, that is, “to be licensed like a dog.”
The relationships among his arranged-marriage wife, his beloved Ah Kay (31 years younger than Hop) and his ten children break the Asian father-husband stereotype of emotional reservation, as Hop Lee lovingly displays affection and expresses his feeling towards his family. But make no mistake, there is always work.
As a second-generation Chinese American I can personally relate to the importance of family and community in Hop Lee and his family’s journey of trying to “fit in” or even a step further, “belonging.”
Hop Lee cannot vote; he cannot become a citizen. He cannot own land; thus, he knows he must find an American-born Chinese wife and place property in her name. You decide whether Hop Lee attains his goal of “being an American.”
Still, “We are stronger as individuals and as a nation because of this immigrant spirit born from the diversity which is at the heart of our nation,” Russell Low states in the book’s afterword.
Ed Shew is the author of “Chinese Brothers, American Sons.”
Displaying 1 of 1 review