Blogging from Shanghai, part 5

When my father first immigrated from China in 1915, he could have stayed in San Francisco, but he went on to settle initially in Phoenix. He worked in a restaurant, where local customers taught him English. He had an outgoing personality, and one of his customers, the owner of a local flour mill, was so impressed, that he lent my father $1000 (a fortune at the time!) and advised him to open a supply store for miners in a mountain community southeast of Phoenix. My father took the advice, and made his way to an area called Queen Creek. He set up shop, recruiting a couple other cousins, and within a year, he paid back his benefactor. That’s how my family ended up in what became Superior, Arizona, and that’s where I spent the first eighteen years of my life.

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