Remembering Madera's Chinatown Madera Tribune Tuesday, May 17, 2005 by Bill Coate “There was a time when the alley streets of Madera, which to the Chinese were main thoroughfares, teemed with maidens, children and busy merchants,” wrote a Madera Mercury reporter in 1923. By the time he wrote his article, however, there were only a few tumbled down shacks, with less than a dozen men and no women or children living there. It was on June 24, 1923 that the reporter took a ride to Madera’s Chinatown. After leaving the news office, he crossed the southern pacific tracks at Yosemite Avenue, traveled west until he reached G Street and then turned north. As he made the corner, the newspaperman reached his destination, the remnants of Madera’s old Chinatown. Bordered at one time by I Street, Central Avenue, F Street (Gateway Drive), and West Yosemite Avenue, this abode of Madera’s Chinese residents was now a shadow of its former self. The first structure that the writer met had once been a Chinese hotel, but was at the time entirely “unoccupied and extremely dilapidated.” In the next block, near where City Hall and the Madera Valley Inn are now located, several buildings stood and most of them, although run down, were still occupied. The main one in this array of weathered structures was the “China Store.” The reporter pulled over and stopped. The China Store was the congregating place for the few Chinese who were left in Madera. Inside he saw “quantities of rice, packages of tea, tobacco, chopsticks, quaint little flowered bowls, and pretty, embroidered, tiny slippers made by China girls.” Surprising to the modern reader is the fact that inside this Chinese establishment was a large photograph of William Conley, taken just after he had become the first Superior Court Judge of Madera County in 1893. The reporter, with the characteristic hyperbole of the time, wrote that Conley “looked down upon the assembled remnants of the Chinese population in the loving kindness of the friend who participated in the affairs of long ago, meeting out justice and mercy to these hearts that knew no other land and had drifted to western shores and were a part of the great melting pot of this corner of California.” From the China Store, the reporter went a bit further north to perhaps the most important spot of Madera’s Chinatown - the Joss House. The late Mildred Eaves, long-time historic sites chairperson of the Madera County Historical Society, remembered that the old Chinese place of worship stood at 718 North G St., now an empty lot. The Joss House was built in 1888 and stood on G Street until the 1930’s. When the reporter arrived on that summer day in 1923, he was given a guided tour through the “Chinese Churchey House’” by Jake Jaun Tong. The inside was described as musty and dark, “reeking with the odor of the punk stick burned yet on certain occasions before the altar.” There, an image of the god the Chinese worshipped could be found behind the altar. He was well preserved and in days had been given little bowls of rice and tea. It was reported that whenever the Chinese wanted to know when “will come the rain,” the image was consulted. As the reporter walked to the rear of the temple, he found a Chinese “hospital.” Broken jugs and vases that contained “Chinese medicine” were found in the deep, dried grasses in the backyard, which at the time was secluded by a broken down fence. Returning to the inside, the visitor took note of the bronze, wooden, and clay candlesticks. A large brass bowl full of sacred ashes reposed beneath elaborate bouquets of paper flowers, “brilliantly hued, ages old, but still retaining color.” Strange stools, which were once used as chairs at the meetings, were piled in the corners. Scattered around in other corners were the old instruments of a Chinese band, and in various places were honor rolls written in Chinese. These rolls included the names of donors who helped build the temple. The one item left in the almost abandoned Madera Joss House that most impressed the reporter was a religious tapestry. It had been placed above the altar years ago, but still retained the lovely color of the embroidered threads of dragons and “curious emblems of Chinese understanding woven into the silken folds.” The reporter left the Chinese place of worship and returned to the east side of the tracks. He wrote his story which was entitled “Chinatown is now only a Remnant.” He reminded his readers that “when Madera was in its early days, Chinatown extended down to what is now the imposing Lincoln Grammar School (presently the Madera County Government Center). Little by little, one by one, the dwellings and business houses of the race that haunt our shores and throng our western coast cities are tumbling down or are being torn away.” By the beginning of the next decade, Madera’s Chinatown had no buildings at all. However, not everything was lost. Sheriff John Barnett saved that beautiful Joss House cloth, and it is now displayed at the Madera County Courthouse Museum, along with other memorabilia from Madera’s Chinatown. • • • Bill Coate can be reached by visiting www.twistintime.com

File Photo The Yee Chung family, with Mrs. Yee Chung shown in the middle of the second row, as they appeared in the 1920s. Shown here with his wife are all of Yee Chung's children and grandchildren.   File Photo Yee Chung, shown in this photograph, was a leader in Madera's Chinese community. Although he never lived in its Chinatown, many of his customers in the fruit business no doubt did.