SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 2021
BAKER CITY HERALD — A5
BAKER COUNTY HISTORY
Royal Cafe:
50 YEARS ON MAIN STREET PART 1 OF 6
Federal Chinese Exclusion Acts
Eng/Ong/Wong family dinner in Royal Cafe in 1960. From left to right: Marjorie Fong Eng, Jimmy Eng, Lily & Michael
Eng, unknown, Arthur Fong, Gan Ong, Gary Ong, May Ong, Allan Eng, Harry Eng, Jack Eng, who no doubt took the
photo. One of his photos is on the wall. All fi ve of the cafe owners are present: Jimmy, Gan, Allan, Harry, and Jack.
Harry died a year later.
Six-part series explores role of Chinese
immigrants in Baker County history
By GARY DIELMAN
For the Baker City Herald
Editor’s Note: This is the
fi rst in a six-part series of
articles written by Gary Diel-
man, a longtime Baker Coun-
ty historian, that explores the
vital role that Chinese immi-
grants played in the county’s
history. The series focuses on
the families who owned the
Royal Cafe on Main Street in
Baker City from 1936 to 1990.
The series will continue over
the next six weeks, publishing
in Saturday issues.
In 1935, fi ve related
Chinese businessmen from a
small village in southeastern
China came to Baker City
after having engaged in busi-
ness ventures in Walla Walla,
Washington, and Pendleton.
In Baker City they began
by acquiring a second-story
restaurant at 2009 Main
St. called The Chinese Tea
Garden. Soon they started a
new restaurant at 1910 Main
St. named Royal Café. That
café remained under family
ownership for more than half
a century.
The operation of the Royal
Café was unlike any other
business in Baker City. The
original fi ve co-owners — Al-
lan Eng (1900-1978), Harry
Eng (1900-1961), Gan Ong
(1902-1994), Jack Eng (1904-
1972), and Jimmy Eng (1906-
1982) — presumably shared
equally in the profi ts.
All were married but lived
like bachelors in small apart-
ments above their café. Their
wives continued living in
China, sometimes for decades,
due to U.S. immigration laws,
which since 1875 forbade
Chinese women from coming
to the U.S.
China’s help in defeating
Japan during World War II
fi nally led to relaxation of the
ban. Only then did the wives
begin coming to Baker City to
join their husbands, but that
did not happen immediately,
because the new law allowed
only 105 Chinese to immi-
grate to the U.S. per year.
The Royal Café was a prof-
itable business. After the end
of WWII, as the owners’ wives
arrived, sometimes a decade
or more later, the owners one
after the other began buying
or building houses, mostly in
the affl uent Grandview area
of Baker City.
Eventually retirements
and deaths brought great
changes to the Royal Café
business. By 1965 Jack Eng
and Allan Eng were the last
of the original fi ve owners of
the Royal Café still living in
Baker City. Jack brought on
board as co-owner his son,
Henry Wong, who had worked
in the business since coming
from China to Baker City as
a teenager in 1940. Jack and
Henry expanded the Royal
Café by adding the Shangrila
Lounge and they started a
sister Royal Café in Ontario.
When Jack died in 1972,
Henry assumed the title
President of the Royal Café,
assisted by his wife, Annie
Wong. In January 1978 Henry
died at age 50. Succeeding
Henry as President, Annie
ran the café until 1990, when
she sold the business and
retired. She lives with a sister
and niece in New Mexico.
Baker County Library Historic Photo Collection
Grandfathers Lee and Eng holding infant twin
grandsons Paul and Richard (or Richard and Paul),
parents Gooey Eng and Faye Lee Eng and daughter,
Mary Lou, oldest, Dorothy, youngest, not yet born. Birth
years: 1948, 1949, 1950. Probably taken in Gooey and
Faye’s house at 1425 Court St.
Immigration
In the early 1800s, when
Europeans arrived in the
area we call Oregon, 60 Na-
tive American tribes had been
the sole human occupants
for over 12,000 years. All the
rest of us Oregonians are
immigrants or offspring of
immigrants.
From its start in the early
1840s, more than 300,000
people emigrated to Oregon
from other states and foreign
countries following the “Emi-
grant Road,” later known as
the Oregon Trail. Although
the Oregon Trail led the emi-
grants through future Baker
County, no one settled any-
where in the eastern half of
Oregon until the early 1860s.
The eastern portion of Oregon
was considered too far from
markets in the populated
area west of the Cascade
Mountain Range, which was
the actual goal of the slogan
“Oregon or Bust.”
Not until gold was
discovered in October 1861
in future Baker County did
nonnative settlement in
Eastern Oregon begin. First
came persons of European
extraction, followed shortly
thereafter by Chinese, mostly
from Canton, China. Not long
after Baker City was platted
in 1865, a block-long area
called Chinatown within a
block of the business district
sprang up on both sides of
Auburn Avenue from Resort
Street to Powder River.
On the very eastern edge
of Baker City, Chinese resi-
dents established a cemetery,
where they buried their loved
ones temporarily. After about
fi ve years, under the supervi-
sion of a relative, friend, or
the family association, they
dug up the remains, dried
the bones, and shipped them
back to the cemetery of their
home village in China.
By 1940, almost all
Chinese residents had left
Baker City’s Chinatown. In
the Chinese cemetery there
remains a single granite
tombstone. Today a small
pagoda imported from China
about a decade ago and an in-
terpretive sign commemorate
the former Chinese cemetery.
Downtown there exists
not one Chinese building to
remind one that Baker City’s
Chinatown ever existed. The
predominant building in
Baker City’s former China-
town is today the headquar-
ters of the Baker City Police
Department on Auburn
Street next to Powder River,
where the Chinese Joss
house (Chinese temple) used
The Page Act of 1875 was the fi rst federal law
ever passed directed at a single ethnic group. It was
a reaction to Chinese women coming to the U.S. to
be prostitutes or concubines. If they had children
while in the U.S., the children would automatically
become U.S. citizens under the 14th Amendment,
passed shortly after the end of the Civil War.
Beginning around 1850, as Oregon was being
settled, Cantonese Chinese men began immigrat-
ing to Oregon seeking better paying jobs to support
their families back in China. They came primarily
from the Pearl River Delta in southeast China. In
reaction to complaints that Chinese working for
less pay brought down worker wages, Congress
passed the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which
banned the entry of Chinese laborers to the United
States for 10 years. Chinese merchants, diplomats,
professionals, and students were exempt.
In 1892, Congress passed the Geary Act, which
renewed exclusion of Chinese laborers for an ad-
ditional 10 years. Plus, it required every Chinese in
the United States to carry a Chinese Certifi cate of
Identity, which included a photo and a list of dis-
tinguishing physical characteristics, such as moles
and scars. In 1902, the Chinese Exclusion law was
renewed and made permanent. It was not repealed
until 1943 as a gesture of goodwill to China, which
was an ally of the U.S. fi ghting the Japanese dur-
ing WWII. Chinese could emigrate to the U.S., but
limited by a Congressional quota set at 105 Chinese
persons per year.
The War Brides Act of Dec. 28, 1945, allowed
alien spouses and natural and adopted children
of members of the U.S. Armed Forces to enter the
U.S. as non-quota immigrants after World War II.
The Act expired in 1948.
Baker County Library Historic Photo Collection
Royal Café exterior, northeast corner of Main & Court around 1960. The door
between Royal Café and Kennedy Building has 1910½ Main address, led to the 2nd
fl oor apartments.
to stand. Only old photos
survive to document over 70
years of Baker City’s lively
Chinatown.
The demise of Chinatown
was followed by Chinese res-
tauranteurs choosing to set
up businesses in Baker City.
During the fi ve decades cov-
ered by this six-part series,
the number of restaurants
in Baker City has remained
consistently around 15,
including an average of two
or three operated by immi-
grants from China.
Gracie Toy operated a
restaurant in Baker from the
1930s until 1970. The Baker
Café at 1826 Main St., oper-
ated by Mon Lee, wife Huie
Fung Tan, and their four chil-
dren, was a Chinese-run res-
taurant for 18 years (1940-
1958). After the Lee children
graduated from Baker High
School and moved to the San
Francisco area, the parents
soon followed.
The longest tenured
Chinese restaurant was the
Royal Café at 1910 Main
St. The Royal Café and the
Chinese restaurateurs who
operated it for over 50 years
are the focus of this series.
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