Ah Quin

Ah Quin (originally Tom Chong Kwan, Chinese simplied:湯崇權; 1848 – 1914) was a Chinese-American who emigrated to the United States in 1868 and kept a detailed diary of his experiences over 25 years, between 1877 and 1902. He worked in a number of professions that were landmark Chinese-American experiences of the era: as a cook, merchant, and in the mining and railroad industries. The 11-volume diary is the earliest known English-language manuscript written by a Chinese immigrant to the United States and an important source of information chronicling the Chinese experience in nineteenth-century America, during the "Age of Chinese Exclusion".

Early life Ah Quin was born in the Kaiping District of Guangdong Province in southern China on December 5, 1848. He was the eldest of three siblings. He knew some English before coming to the United States, which he learned at an American missionary school. In June 1878 he asked his boss to cut off his queue, a significant symbol of his Chinese heritage, so he could "just look like the white people."

In 1878 he returned to California, and while in San Francisco was offered a job as a labor recruiter for the California Southern Railroad being built between San Diego and Barstow, California. He moved to San Diego in 1880, and in addition to working for the railroad, he opened a variety store in the Stingaree district near the waterfront. The area was notorious for its saloons, gambling houses, and brothels, but also was where the small Chinese community was located. Ah Quin's store catered to that community, offering "Chinese and Japanese fancy goods, teas, cigars & notions."

During the entire period, and for long stretches of the next two decades, Ah Quin kept his diary. The diary is written primarily in English, but some excerpts or notations are in Chinese. Researcher Susie Lan Cassel speculates that part of his motivation for keeping the diary was simply to practice his English. Some passages may have been written in Chinese to maintain privacy. For example, a note about a white man who he felt disrespected him is in Chinese. He recorded recipes almost entirely in Chinese. On every entry he wrote the Gregorian calendar date and the equivalent date in the Chinese calendar, as if to maintain his dual connections. They were even more rare because of the San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906, which destroyed nearly the entire city, killed 3,000 people, and destroyed much of the written record of Chinese-America of the time. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 prohibited all immigration of Chinese laborers for 10 years. Numerous anti-Chinese massacres and expulsions occurred in this period: the Los Angeles Chinese massacre of 1871, the San Francisco riot of 1877, the anti-Chinese riot in Denver of 1880, the expulsion of Chinese from Eureka, California in 1885, the Rock Springs, Wyoming massacre of 1885, the Chinese Massacre Cove killings of 1887, among others.

Death and legacy Ah Quin died on February 8, 1914 when he was struck by a motorcycle in San Diego.

The diaries were discovered by Ah Quin's great-grandson Dr. Thomas Quin Kong, in leather-bound volumes, in his mother's closet after she died in 1977. He later wrote a novel based on a fictionalized account of the struggles of four generations of his Chinese-American family, entitled "Tian Ming: Destiny", published in 1999. Kong donated the diaries to the San Diego History Center.