Name/Title
Linda Mak Oral History InterviewEntry/Object ID
RLG_112Scope and Content
[00:00:05] Daniel Keough
Do you want to just say your name and introduce yourself?
[00:00:08] Linda Mak
Yes. I'm Linda Mak, and I'm the daughter of Luella Wong Mak, who was one of the residents of actually all three sites of Ming Quong.
So she was in Los Gatos for a little bit of the time. And I guess I am talking about her experiences or what I think she had as
experiences. So what I wanted to do first was give an overview of her life and then I'll talk about Ming Quong, her life at Ming Quong,
of all three areas, probably most of it. Most of what I'll say is about her Los Gatos experience. And then when she moved back to
Oakland and then I have some thoughts on what my sister and my niece thought about her, what she, what my mother gained from
her life at Ming Quong. So I'll end with that, I guess.
[00:01:14] Daniel Keough
And do you want to start with just, when was your mother born?
[00:01:18] Linda Mak
My mother was born on April 10th, 1927, and she was born in Oakland. Her father was an immigrant from China. His father had
come from China earlier and was kind of the scribe that wrote letters home to people in the village for the Wong Association. And he
had eventually he had three sons, but he had a son, came to the United States, saved his money for seven years, went back to
China for a little bit, had my grandfather, or his wife had my grandfather, and then came back and then saved his money again and
went back to China a third time. And I'm not and he had a third son and I'm not exactly sure whether he stayed or what happened
after that. But my grandfather came to the United States when he was a boy or a young man. I'm not quite sure when. He left his
mother and his little brother and never saw his mother again, he never went back to China. And in the middle of that, his younger
brother was old enough to, got to be old enough to travel. He'd come over in my grandfather's name, so he'd be traveling back and
forth, and then he would go home and see his mother. So eventually he came to the United States to live and stayed. And so my
grandfather had an arranged marriage to my grandmother and my. Excuse me. Yeah, it was my grandmother. I never knew her. So
who was Lily Chan Wong. And she was actually born in the San Joaquin Valley. And I believe that her mother also was. So that
family was in the United States for quite a long time. And unfortunately, nobody who's still living knows what my great grandmother's
name was, so we were kind of stuck. They lost all of the birth records in a big fire in I think it was in Walnut Grove in the early 1900s.
And so all of the records are gone. And when my mother was inquiring, trying to find out who her grandmother was as an adult, they
said, well, you know, her relatives would say, well, we called her "yi ma", which is second mother or and my mother called her "paw
paw", so nobody knows. And then she kind of disappeared. So anyway, my mother was the third child of Wong, Young Gim Wong,
and Lily Chan Wong. She had two older brothers that were born in Yuma, Arizona, because I suspect that my grandmother might
have had tuberculosis this whole time, and they went to Arizona to kind of help her lungs. And then they came back to California. So
my mother's oldest brother is about five years older than she was. And the second brother and then his name was Albert. The
second brother is Dewey, and he was about three years older. And then after my mother was born, there was a another daughter,
Maribel. And she was a year younger than my mother, and she's still alive, actually. So that was kind of their family.
[00:05:31] Linda Mak
And then in 1930, my grandmother died of tuberculosis and that left my grandfather with these three young kids. I think my oldest
uncle was eight and then my second uncle was five and my mother was two, almost three, and her little sister was one. So he, my
grandfather was faced with what he was going to do with these kids. And one possibility was to send them back to China to live with
his family in the village. And my great grandmother. Oh, no. Yeah, my great grandmother wanted to take care of them in Stockton. So
that would have been their grandmother. And the other was they had these homes available. Actually, my mother was too young at
the time, but the two boys were old enough to go to Germany. So my grandfather bought tickets on the ocean liner to take them back
to China. And then he changed his mind and he sent the two boys to Chung Mei. And the two girls went to live with their maternal
grandmother in Stockton. And during that time she was, my mother was living with her grandmother. She ended up with a really bad
case of pneumonia and was getting sicker and sicker. And finally they took her to a western medicine doctor and she got well. And
after that she was pretty, she believed in Western medicine, more than oriental medicine. So that was always kind of an interesting
thing. We were pretty much we went to the western medicine doctors and very rarely to the herbalist. So after she recovered, I think
she was about five then and my grandfather decided that they, the two girls probably would be better off living where they could get
access to better health care. So he decided to send them to Ming Quong. And the first Ming Quong that they went to, my mother was
five, my aunt was four. And she, my aunt was a little bit too young to go and they went. So he took them to the site at Mills College,
which was a Julia Morgan designed building. And it was just off the I think across the street from Mills College. And so he brought
them there and begged to have my aunt accepted also. And the administrator said, we don't want any more separation in this family,
so we'll take her, too. So he had both of his daughters at the Mills College Ming Quong, and they lived there for a bit. My mother
started school in Oakland and went to John Swett Elementary School and about in third grade she ended up with a bad case of
pneumonia again. So she recovered from that. And the teachers at the Mill's College site thought that she might be better off in the
Los Gatos climate, and so they had her transferred to Los Gatos and so she moved into the Sunshine Cottage, which was what they
called it. But her sister was still in Oakland at the time. And my mother was a little bit older than most of the residents of the Sunshine
Cottage. I think they were kind of younger kids, younger girls. So she ended up going to fourth, fifth and sixth grade at Los Gatos
Elementary. And she used to talk about going back and forth to school and all the dogs barking at her. And she was really afraid of
dogs and she remained afraid of dogs until she died. So I don't know whether that was because she was the only one going to school
at that time or she was kind of alone. I don't know. But anyway, so she she spent those years in Los Gatos. And meanwhile the boys,
I think, were still at Chung Mei and then they left. So it sounded like different relatives would take them in. Then they would move to
another relative. I got that from my cousin. Anyway, but my mother was really proud of her brothers the whole time. She used to
daydream a lot about getting a house and taking care of my grandfather and her brothers and her sister and working and keeping
house and stuff.
[00:11:17] Linda Mak
So she was really proud. I sent you a picture of them at the christening of the San Yet Sun which was a cargo ship, I think, and they
both went to Rocky Point, the Merchant Marine School. One of them didn't graduate. He got married, but the other one did and was
an officer in the Merchant Marines. So she was really proud of him. And then they remained pretty close. They were still very close
into their old ages until they died. My aunt still, as I said, is still alive. But the other three, including my mother, have died. So my
mother then went to the Oakland Ming Quong and went to Lincoln School in Oakland. They had moved from the Mills site to
downtown excuse me, Chinatown. And that site now is covered by BART stuff. BART bought that building and site, but it was close
to the Chinese Presbyterian Church and also then, kind of close to Oakland High and Oakland Tech. So my mother went to Oakland
High School and in 1945, in January, she had skipped a grade, half a grade. Somewhere along the line she graduated and she was
all set to go to USC. Except my sister and I used to discuss it. Well, maybe she should have gone to Los Angeles because we think
she would have been a good actress.
[00:13:16] Linda Mak
But anyway, she met my father, who was a friend of my oldest uncle. And that kind of derailed her college plans because in
December of that year, they got married. And part of what she did to earn money, because at the age of 16, Ming Quong encouraged
the girls to get jobs as nannies or housekeepers for room and board with some of the richer families in Oakland. So she did that for a
bit. But she never liked housekeeping either. So that didn't that wasn't a career path for her. She ended up taking the civil service
exam and got a job during the summers as a file clerk for the Department of Navy. And so she was doing that on and off and was
kind of doing that when she met my father. So she just kind of continued that for a while. She had a kind of group of jobs, but they got
married. And he was, he wasn't really interested in going to college. I think I'm going to go through some of the things that Ming
Quong kind of taught the girls. And he was not the kind of man they would have selected for her or approved of, but they seem to be
okay with him. Well, one thing was he wasn't Christian, and that was kind of a big thing at Ming Quong. But they I guess they ended
up being okay with him because between the time that she met him and I think she lost her job and had moved out of her brother's
house, she needed a place to stay. They let her come back for a few months until she got married. So in her input line, they have her
down from 1933 to 1943 or something like that, and then back there for a couple of months in 1945. And she was kind of unusual.
And a couple of years later, I was born and by 1953, my sister was born. So, she had two daughters. She was working. And she
worked for the Navy. She made her way up to budget analyst and a supervisor. She supervised, I think at one point she supervised
100 people, which was quite amazing. And she worked for the Navy for about 36 years and then retired early. She could have retired
at 60 or I think if you had 30 years and you were 55, you could retire. So she was 58 and decided to pick up the college idea again.
So she went to Laney College in Oakland and got her AA and then she decided that she wanted to apply to Mills College. And one of
the reasons was that she had lived on campus there at Ming Quong, which was now turned into a graduate student dorm and also
when my father was young, his his father was like the head cook for the dorms at Mills College. So my dad had spent some of his
boyhood years helping his father in the kitchen there. So that was another thing that she that was pretty neat. That was during the
Depression. So I guess my grandfather was lucky he had a job, but money was tight. So she finished her degree at Mills. Sorry. She
got her degree from Mills College in 1986 and also, it was kind of interesting because she took a lot of courses that she normally
wouldn't have, things like ceramics, and she learned a lot about computers, but just enough to get her papers done. Nothing really
terribly exciting, but she really enjoyed being in college then. It was a good experience for her, although my husband said she was
sort of finding herself. And if you're, if you haven't found yourself by the time you're 21, you probably should stay lost. He said she was
pretty reasonable until she went to college. So in 1999, my dad passed away from mesothelioma. He had worked in the, he actually
had been a Merchant Marine during World War II and he worked in the shipyards after he was discharged and got probably got into a
bunch of asbestos. So he had been kind of her rock and, you know, structure. And now that was gone and it was really hard for her.
[00:19:56] Linda Mak
She tried to create some of her own structure and she ended up, Oh, wait, let's see, I forgot about her Masters degree, which was
before this, but I'll go back to that. She ended up teaching substitute teaching in the San Leandro School District for a bit and also
teaching crafts at the Marina Senior Citizens Center. So she had always wanted to be a teacher, but when it came time for her to go
to college, the girls that had gone through Ming Quong before her and had gone and tried to get teaching jobs, discovered that they
were discriminated against. And so they convinced her not to go into teaching. So she did get her teaching in, which was was nice.
But anyway. Yeah, so let me go back to her counseling degree. When my niece was ready to go to preschool, my sister wanted her
to go to the Cal State Hayward, which is now East Bay Preschool Center there. And so she convinced my mother to go get a to try to
get her master's degree because she had finished up her bachelor's degree by then. So she did. She got into the program and she
ended up getting her master's degree in 1993 from Cal State Hayward. And her thesis was she did a study on Living in Ming Quong:
A Retrospective Look at Orphanage Experience. And in it, she described her experience. And she got questionnaires filled out from
about five, five other women that she knew that had gone through the same experience. So a lot of what I have to say about Ming
Quong is actually from the thesis. So anyway. So she eventually, she moved out into a senior living center. And then she kind of
really fell apart and started acting like she was sick. We're not quite sure that she really was because a lot of the time she was really
lucid and knew everything that was going on. And then all of a sudden it was like she was putting on a show. So eventually we had to
put her in the memory care facility and that was in Colma, and she died there in 2018. So that's kind of, that was kind of her life,
although there was a lot more that I didn't cover in there. Let me talk about her ongoing experiences and then some of the things that
she had discussed then and then some of the things that that my sister had observed and stuff.
[00:23:32] Linda Mak
So as I said, that she went to, she was at Ming Quong in 1933 and then went to the Los Gatos Ming Quong in 1935 to 1938, and she
went to the Los Gatos Elementary School. Let's see. She was almost the only Chinese girl in the school. And the others were also
from Ming Quong. But there weren't very many, because, as I said before, they were younger children, younger girls. She ended up
going into fourth grade there and was a little bit behind. I think the Oakland schools weren't as rigorous or it could have been because
she was sick during part of third grade. But anyway, she was behind and it turns out she had a pretty competitive nature. So she
made her way back and got herself to the pretty close to the head of the class, if not the head of the class. And so I think somewhere
during that period of time, she kind of got herself back, got herself to where when she got to Oakland, she was ahead of whatever
class she was in that time. And one of the things that she talked about was during the summers they slept out. It was a kind of a
sleeping porch that was screened in. And they would spend their summer nights sleeping out in the sleeping porch. And that seemed
to make a big impression on her. I think she was trying to tell us we should sleep outside during the summer. I don't know. She would
often threaten me when I was young that she would send me to Ming Quong when I was a little sassy or a little belligerent. And she
said, They'll put some discipline in you.
[00:25:55] Linda Mak
And then all of a sudden, she stopped. And I think that was probably when the Presbyterian Church decided that the facility was no
longer needed. And then Ming Quong merged with the East Field Ming Quong. And so that was kind of funny. I didn't realize that she
had stopped it just when I was thinking back on it. She would never threaten me with that again. And she used to talk about being
punished a lot there and she would end up in the Mickey Mouse room. So this was after she died. I met some women that had been
at the Los Gatos home, and I said, Well, what about this Mickey Mouse room? And my mother said, she spent a lot of time there
being punished. And they said "punished? No, that was part of the infirmary." And so I don't know whether, I think my mother was in
the Mickey Mouse room a lot. I don't know whether she was punished or whether she was just sickly or pretending she was sick and
got put kind of in isolation there. And that could have been her method of getting some attention. Because when she got older, after
my dad died, she started coming down with kind of interesting maladies. Anything that her brother or sister got she'd have. So that
was when we were thinking that she was acting a lot.
[00:27:43] Linda Mak
And then in 1938, she transferred to the new Oakland, the Chinatown Oakland Ming Quong, and she made a comment that when
she was in Los Gatos, she was the only Asian, so she felt kind of an outcast. I don't know whether she was or not. I mean, she was
kind of shy a little bit. And when she was in Lincoln School in Chinatown she felt like she was an outcast because she was an orphan,
and lived in the home. So she felt kind of out of the population at both places. But she did very well in school. I think that was when
she she was in Lincoln School. And I think they skipped her up half a grade. And then she went to Oakland High. I think she was
disappointed she didn't go to Oakland Tech, but because that's where half of Chinatown went to the other school in Oakland. Well,
there were a number of them, but there were two that mainly served that area was Oakland High and Oakland Tech. And she did
very well. She said she got straight A's in ninth grade and one of her teachers recommended that she go into the college prep
program and so she was doing that. And that was when she had the talk with the other past members that had lived in Ming Quong
and said Yeah, you're going to have a hard time getting a job.
[00:29:34] Linda Mak
So she said that she went back to her counselor and said, you know, I think I ought to go into business, the business program. And
she said there was no further discussion that. The counselor said, yes, put her in the business program, which I thought was kind of
interesting and she mentioned it. So I think she may have thought that was too, that they didn't try to talk her out of it or anything like
that. And then around the age of 16, I talked about how Ming Quong encouraged girls to look for jobs so that they could leave and go
along. And so she got a job as a nanny slash housekeeper for room and board. And I believe it was in Piedmont. And she used to
mention seeing the famous violinist Yehudi Menuhin walked down the street to the bus stop with his violin. So that was kind of a key
thing in her life. I think she was watching a little boy who was about eight. So at that point she left Ming Quong. And when that nanny
job ended, she moved in with the brother and sister in law. And then I mentioned that she went back to Ming Quong briefly, and then
in the 11th grade she took and passed the civil service exam and was a clerk for the Department of Navy.
[00:31:19] Linda Mak
She ended up at one point right before she got married, The summer before she got married when she met my father, she had a job
as a file clerk with the Navy, and I think she was daydreaming a lot. And her boss said, you know, I'm going to have to let you go.
You're not getting your work done. And she says, But I don't want to ruin your career, so I'm going to put down the reason for you're
leaving is insufficient work. And the next person can figure out whether it was because you weren't working or whether I didn't have
enough work to give you. And my mother took that as a sign. She never, never, ever in the rest of her work career did insufficient
work. And she was always on top of everything and doing more than she had to do. So that was a big lesson. And she told us that
one, too. So my sister and I never did that either. Well, maybe not. Not never, but I mean, it was always, always kind of part of our
character not to skimp on work. And you had asked about some of the outside things that she had done. And so oh, and I had I sent
some pictures of her in Ming Quong. There weren't many, but I think there's one of her sister.
[00:33:06] Grace Song
I found a picture of your aunt. School picture? Let me come over there.
[00:33:17] Linda Mak
Oh. Jumping up and down.
[00:33:22] Grace Song
It says "Marybelle Wong"
[00:33:23] Linda Mak
Yeah, that would be she.
[00:33:24] Grace Song
I think that's her here, number nine.
[00:33:28] Linda Mak
Yeah, it looks. It could be. Oh, that's interesting.
[00:33:32] Grace Song
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, on our website. But I couldn't find your mom.
[00:33:38] Linda Mak
She was older. So it could have been whoever was in that class sent it to you. So she was very active in the Chinese Presbyterian
Church, and they went to church at the Oakland Ming Quong every Sunday. That was kind of part of their thing. And so she served
as a deacon and an elder at that church, which was part of the ruling body. And it was interesting that my dad was really adamant
that my sister and I go to Sunday school all the time. Every Sunday, Sunday school in church then, which I did until I went off to
college. And he always drove us because my mother didn't drive and he'd sleep in the car. And it turned out we found out right before
he died, he was an atheist. So it was important for him to get us to church. And I was kind of. Well, it was. It's good to have some
religious background. So I was glad that he did do that.
[00:35:01] Grace Song
I have a question actually, they didn't have a Chinese congregation here, though, in Los Gatos, so she would go to the Presbyterian
Church?
[00:35:07] Linda Mak
I don't think so. I guess, she never talked about that. And I think she probably wasn't very aware because she was younger when she
was here. So it was probably Sunday school. But I'm sure that they did something because they were very, it was a religious
organization. So I wanted to share. She had written up as kind of a daily schedule, I think it may have been for the the Oakland the
older Oakland girls. But this is from her, her thesis. So they would wake up at 6:30 and get out of bed, air their bedding, wash their
face, brush their teeth, dress and comb their hair. Then breakfast call was at 7:00. They'd eat breakfast with manners, and they had
half an hour to do that. And then they had to be excused from the table when they finished. This is the weekday schedule. Everyone
ate the same menu and sat around round tables of eight persons, more or less with the teachers serving and eating with with each of
the tables, probably making sure that the girls weren't playing round. After breakfast, they'd fix their own beds, do their assigned
chores, and then they had to request an inspection to make sure that they did their chores. And then they'd get ready for school,
which was public school, and the chores were assigned in rotation and determined by the age of the child, so they wouldn't have
some little five year old washing dishes or something like that. But they got some chairs to dust when they were young, and it turns
out they were like choir chairs. We ended up with one of them in our house.
[00:37:04] Linda Mak
So it brought it must have brought back good memories for her. I don't know. I had to keep it. I still have it in my house. And they'd
change each month. The chores would change each month and they'd be posted on the bulletin board so that everybody knew what
they were supposed to do. Then they had lunch call at 12 and they'd eat lunch, wash and dry and put the dishes away. I'm not sure
whether this was whether they got to go home for that, because she also mentioned bringing a bag lunch to school. So I don't know.
And after public school ended, they attended Chinese school at 4:00 and they had dinner, call it 6:00, and they'd eat dinner, share
and talk about the day's activities. And then after dinner, they completed their kitchen duties if they were assigned them. And then
they had an evening prayer meeting at seven. They had homework and study hall after the prayer meeting until nine. And then it was
bedtime and they went to bed at various times by age, so they'd get ready for bed, lights out and no talking. And if they didn't behave,
there were disciplines for breaking the rules and they would they'd be things like they got lectured and scolding from the teachers.
They were ordered to sit or be by themselves to think or read. They'd be assigned extra chores, they'd be deprived of special
privileges. But she said that they never experienced any yelling, hitting or spanking by the teachers.
[00:38:53] Linda Mak
And she also had a list of do's and don'ts. And the first thing was, be a good Christian, love God, study and follow Christ's teachings.
And then it was love everyone as we are all God's children, be thankful, be grateful, always listen and obey the teachers. And I'm just
sort of reading some. Always be on time. Keep self and clothing clean. Cleanliness is next to godliness. Do your homework. Get
good grades in school. Don't get angry. Don't be sad. Don't be sad and get depressed. Don't argue or fight. I don't think mental health
was a big thing at Ming Quong. So we discovered that after. Let's see, it was like, don't be boy crazy. It must have been for the older
girls. And don't act inappropriately. That would draw attention to you. That was the last one. So that was kind of the things she
discovered life at Ming Quong. And then I was going to go through some of the things that I kind of remember that we were taught,
you know, when I was growing up that were kind of things that I'm pretty sure she got from Ming Quong because it turned out I
thought they were kind of normal things, but it turns out they weren't. But anyway, so on Saturdays instead of totally ignored,
remember my mother worked during the week and so on Saturdays we divided, the three of us, my mother, sister and I would divide
up, there were about 12 chores that we had to do every Saturday, and we'd divide them up. So we'd get they had to be done. And I
guess this is the best way she decided she could do it fairly. So I think my sister got to pick first because she was the youngest, and
then I got to pick one and then she'd pick one. And then my sister got her second pick. And so it went around until we picked them all.
And usually then we the next week I would get to pick first. And so we, we traded around that way. And there were certain things that
my sister couldn't do because she was younger. Like, I don't think anybody would want her ironing or something at the age of five. So
we get our chores done. We'd get them done as quickly as we could. And then we'd go on with the rest of Saturday, which always
had something planned. We'd either go down to downtown Oakland and go shopping. We always had to take the bus because my
mother didn't drive. She didn't actually get her license until she was in her fifties. Although she was trying to learn the whole time I
remembered growing up. And then another thing I remember was apparently this was special to my family, my sister and me. We got
we got table etiquette lessons and she picked it up from the home because they wanted the girls to be able to function well in polite
society. And so they taught them table manners and how to set a table. So I learned, I knew which fork to use if there were multiple
forks and how to set the table with multiple utensils of the same type. And so when I later, when I went out to eat at a fancy restaurant,
which they sometimes took us out to, you know, we weren't totally lost. And it turns out that my cousin that I had been talking to is the
son of one of her brothers, said, Yeah, she pulled us aside, you know, we'd have family dinners and she teach us how to have table
manners. And I went, Oh. So she was actually teaching this on purpose so that, you know, I benefited from that. That was a good
thing to know. And when the Ming Quong girls got together as women, they all had kind of seemed to have the same sense of humor.
They were a little bit goofy. They would talk about things that they had done wrong. Like one time somebody invited a bunch of
women over their Ming Quong friends over for dinner with their husbands. They were going to have a Thanksgiving dinner. And
when it was time to eat, she opened the oven and the turkey hadn't... she forgot to thaw out the turkey. So, I mean, so they all
thought that was funny. They chuckled about it and go on their merry way. So I think that was how they must have gotten over
adversity and doing things that they thought maybe were kind of dumb things to do, but they learned from it and just moved on, which
is kind of neat. So I was going to talk a little bit about some of the things that my sister had noticed unless you have any questions so
far.
[00:44:59] Daniel Keough
I have a couple, but you can continue.
[00:45:02] Linda Mak
Finish this off. Finish this off. Okay, so we for her celebration of life, we had at the the Chabot Science Center and Planetarium, which
we thought was kind of a neat thing just because I liked it anyway and we thought my mother would because it was an unusual place
and she had kind of, stars were a meaningful symbol to her for some reason. So my sister said that my mom loved to help others in
one of her jobs after she retired and got her m... [truncated due to length]Collection
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