George Sun's Speech at Hal Patton's 50th Features in our Current understanding of Chinatown

100 years ago a 50th birthday party for a prominent Salemite was front page news.

January 13th, 1922

January 13th, 1922

A snippet of speech given by one of the guests at that party has featured in an important retrieval of history. When the Library's Online History was actually online (this link is to an archived copy) it was quoted in a longer version. Excerpts are cited both on a recent utility interpretive wrapper and in a history piece about our new alley names at Salem Reporter from last fall:

In 1922, Hal D. Patton invited George Lai Sun, among many others, to speak at his fiftieth anniversary. These are Sun's words about his time in Salem: "I like Salem because all people treat me nicely. Then my children all grow up. They can vote but I have been here so long, for fifty-four years next June, I ought to be a citizen. I ought to be voting too. I see some country- man come over to this country; he stay not very long, three or four years; he can vote. Why I be here fifty-four years altogether, why I cannot vote? I ought to be citizen too. They must make mistake, something wrong."

George Sun quoted at the Patton party
Interpretive sign on State and High

The passage functions very strangely, it seems to me. At the very least it is deeply ambiguous. Is the focus on "people treat me nicely" or on "they must make mistake, something wrong"? And this ambiguity, this ambivalence deserves to be unpacked. What is really going on in this passage? I do not think its meaning is at all self-evident. So far in our retrieval of a history of Chinatown it has been left alone, merely quoted, never interpreted.

Sun's attendance, perhaps as token, perhaps as more, again very ambiguous, was even highlighted in advance press about the affair.

In inviting old time friends, Mr. Patton has not overlooked George Sun, Chinese merchant, who now lives at Marion and Front streets. They grew up together in Salem, the Chinese merchant of today beginning to grow at about the time Mr. Patton did.

The party was news also in Portland, and the Sunday Oregonian had a dispatch from Salem on it, and devoted a subheading to Sun.

Oregonian, January 15th, 1922

The party generated still more coverage here in Salem, and on the 14th they talked about "Elder Salem Citizens," relating them to the history of the country and state:

General W. H. Byers was the oldest resident of Salem who attended the Hal D. Patton birthday Shrine mosque. He was born in 1834, about nine years after Jefferson and Adams died, and when Jason Lee was attempting to interest people in the Oregon country.

To have generated so much coverage the party was clearly a big deal, and it was a nostalgic moment in the maintenance of a kind of civic identity in the context of city, region, and nation.

I think there is more to say about it in general, and there is certainly more to say about Sun's role and speech, and perhaps we will come back to it.

February 6th, 1922

A month later, there was another dinner party with speeches, this time for Dr. Lai Yick. Hal Patton and George Sun were also involved, and there might be things to say about a comparison between the two dinners.

George Sun, often called the mayor of Chinatown here, gave an impressive demonstration of the workings of the Oriental mind in his reminiscent address.

But what even does that mean?

The morning paper the next day was a little more descriptive.

George Sun also told of his arriving in the city in 1869 and how he was in the Benett [Bennett] hotel fire and barely escaped with his wife. Lai Yick, being a cousin of George Sun, came to Salem and for a number of years served as clerk for Sun. [link to Bennett hotel added]

Parsing out what I read as both sincere friendship and deeply held, easy, and casual racism is very difficult, and these dinner parties and the relations implied by them deserve closer reading. (Maybe there is more in the new OHQ article.)

Sun has a full and varied life, and deserves a longer biographical treatment, even with the limitations of sources. Here he is in a longer article on hop-picking, a report of an arrest for gambling, and his obituary. There is more, of course.

September 4th, 1894

December 13th, 1913

December 20th, 1932

(And for more on Hal Patton, see Virginia Green's 2003 piece in Historic Marion, "Lifelong Companions: The Patton Brothers," which includes more on the 1922 birthday dinner.)