Siskiyou, CA - Chinese Display
When the Chew family decided to open the Ming Terrace Restaurant in Red Bluff, many Chinese friends from all over helped out. The Wong On family’s son Harry On helped buy the registered and later helped the Red Bluff Chew family buy a car.
It’s wonderful to see that the local Siskiyou County Museum has taken the time to place their Chinese artifacts on display. There’s three displays on the second floor.
Admission: $3
Located at 910 S Main Street, Yreka, CA 96097
Phone: 530-842-3836
The best part is that this is one of the rare museums to actually temperature control their display casing. Their first display has a very ornate hat. What I loved most is that these items are from the 19th Century Chinese. They have a wide collection reflecting the day-to-day lives, types of tools for their jobs, and basically the stuff we all had at home.
If you are like me, from a 19th Century family, you will definitely find these things in 公公 Gung gung, 爺爺 Yeh yeh, or 外婆 Po Po’s hiding places. The thin fine silk tells you the Cheongsam and matching shoes are made in the village. The butcher knives with the sacred family surname, is from the family restaurant, along with tea, ginger, and soy sauce jars. There’s also the fine porcelain from the Qing and Song dynasties, specific to Jiangxi and Jianyang, provinces. The small snuff ‘like’ bottles are actually medicine bottles, which would have contained a little bit of various herbs from Doctor’s like the Chew family. Typically, one would go to Dr. Bo Do Hong, he would diagnose you and prepare a cure of herbs to drink like hot tea. Today, this is the equivalent of taking aspirin with a glass of water. The abacus was used as a calculator and it helped people like the herb doctor or merchants to keep track of the cost to charge their customers.
Yonder, there’s a small memorial for the Chinese cemetery with one headstone. It is mostly in dire need of some love but nonetheless, this is a sacred place and should be visited. The Chinese funeral rituals dates back to the imperial period. For the Chinese sojourners, it is with great pride and honor to have your body exhumed and taken to the motherland for an ancestral burial. For those who were not exhumed, means you are not buried with your ancestors and that is a big sacrifice. These lands must be forever protected and it is our duty to honor their lives for making an eternal sacrifice and remaining in America.
