Lew Hing
Encyclopedia
Lew Hing (May 1858 in Canton
, China
– March 7 1934) was an American
businessman and industrialist. His formal married name was Lew Yu-ling.
After immigrating to the United States
from China
in 1871, Lew became a pioneer in the canning
industry. He owned four canneries in California
, in the cities of San Francisco
, Oakland
, Monterey
, and Antioch
. His canneries supplied Herbert Hoover
’s American Relief
program following World War I
. In the San Francisco Bay Area, Lew also owned a shipping company, two hotels, and an import-export business. In Mexico
, he owned a cotton plantation. He was Chairman of the Board of Directors for the China Mail Steamship Company, and President of the Bank of Canton
. He was also a real estate developer. Today, his legacy is being carried on in the Pacific Cannery Lofts in Oakland by Holliday Development, where dedications are made in his honor in one of his original buildings for the Pacific Coast Canning Company.
.
Before Lew Hing was born, his father had journeyed to San Francisco to find prosperity. He didn’t find it. Rejecting conscription as a laborer, as well as the debauchery of San Francisco’s Barbary Coast
lifestyle, he camped along the shores of San Francisco Bay until the frustration of disappointment and loneliness caused him to return to China after two months. A few years later, Lew Hing would cross the ocean to San Francisco and fare much better.
In 1868 an older half brother of Lew Hing ventured to San Francisco to start a small metal shop on Commercial Street. With the success of his shop, in 1871 he urged his 12-year-old half brother, Lew Hing, to immigrate to America to join him in his growing business.
A few months after Lew arrived, his half-brother planned a brief vacation back to Canton to visit his family. His square rigged sailing vessel was off the coast of Japan when it caught fire and sank, causing all aboard to perish at sea. This left the young Lew Hing, at age 13, alone in San Francisco, without family or money.
Despite his grim circumstance, the growing Chinese community that would later become known as San Francisco’s Chinatown was beginning to form familial associations that provided leadership and social opportunities among the Chinese immigrants to America. Men with the same surnames would help each other as brothers. This was the beginning of Family Associations in Chinatown, and it was through such association that the young Lew Hing was able to survive.
It was with such Family Association guidance that Lew continued working at his deceased brother’s metal shop, while attending a local church mission to learn to read and write English. In doing so, he also learned to do his own bookkeeping and accounting. Never afraid to work long hours, he also accepted odd jobs for extra money. His industrious and entrepreneurial spirit carried him through these difficult years.
and how to avoid food poisoning. It was a natural next step for Lew to combine his metalwork with his food preservation skills to join in the new industry of canning foodstuffs.
At age 18 in 1877, Lew Hing founded his first cannery with another metalworker of Family Association ties, Lew Yu-tung. The cannery was located at the northeast corner of Sacramento and Stockton Streets in San Francisco and took up the first two stories of the building with the basement as storage. Lew Hing and other Family Association members lived on the third floor.
In the 1880s–1890s, canning food was still a new concept. Lew Hing had embarked on a long period of trial and error before the cannery could reliably produce safe and edible canned foods. When food was not preserved properly or the cans were not fully sterilized (for example, each can had to be soldered individually by hand), noxious bacterial action would ruin the product, causing cans to swell and even explode. Eventually, Lew Hing developed safer and more effective formulas for canning various fruits and vegetables. These formulas were never documented since they were Lew Hing’s trade secrets and were kept from rival canneries. Canned fruit items became a very good seller in Chinatown as many Chinese made purchases to take back to China. Soon, the products were purchased by Westerners and sales expanded outside San Francisco’s Chinatown.
Always on the cutting edge of progress, Lew built his new cannery as the first concrete building in the industrial part of Oakland, plus he insisted on the most advanced machinery for mass production of his products. Also, in contrast to San Francisco, Oakland had space for a larger cannery as well as providing the Southern Pacific railroad tracks directly to the cannery dock for easy shipping of Lew’s Buckskin brand canned goods throughout the United States. Products included asparagus, cherries, apricots, peaches, pears, and grapes. Tomatoes were the most popular. Always a stickler for quality, each morning, Lew would go to the Tasting Room and open, inspect, and taste batches of food processed the day before. Eventually, Buckskin canned goods would make their way throughout the Western hemisphere.
In 1906, Lew Hing was able to make substantial assistance to Bay Area earthquake
victims. He opened his cannery to the homeless and also provided tents elsewhere for temporary shelter. He hired cooks to provide meals. Following the earthquake, many San Franciscan’s relocated to Oakland, including several Chinese. As with several ethnic groups, Chinese were compelled to remain in ethnic clusters. Lew assisted these Chinese with finance and leadership by organizing neighborhoods, including the area that became Oakland’s Chinatown. As a consequence, he became involved with many Oakland Chinatown organizations, making contributions to their many causes and forming business alliances in relation to the Pacific Canning Company.
As the Pacific Canning Company prospered, Lew Hing diversified his interests into many other areas, including a personal interest in the Loong Kong Tien Yee Association, an organization for the families of Lew, Quan, Jung and Chew, and fostered the group in both Oakland and San Francisco.
In 1907 Lew returned to San Francisco for added business interests. Given his natural leadership in the Chinese community, he became President of Bank of Canton
, located at the northeast corner of Montgomery and Sacramento Streets. In the same year he also entered the hotel business, building The Republic Hotel on Grant Avenue (near Sacrament Street). However, his San Francisco interests had to be juggled with his work as president and owner of Pacific Coast Canning Company in Oakland. Always a careful and punctual man, he devised a schedule that allowed him to spend half of each work day in San Francisco, half in Oakland.
By 1911, Lew Hing’s Pacific Coast Canning Company had become one of Oakland’s largest businesses, providing over 1,000 jobs during the peak canning seasons. Employees were usually from the local Portuguese, Italian, and Chinese communities. Lew Hing was the Bay Area’s single largest employer of Chinese.
In 1912 Lew built his second hotel, originally named the Mun Ming Lue Kwan, at 858-870 Clay Street, between Grant and Stockton Streets. Still in existence, the name has since been changed to The Lew Hing building in honor of Lew.
In 1915, Lew accepted the position of Chairman of the Board of Directors for the China Mail Steamship Co. Ltd., whose office was in the same building as his Bank of Canton office.
In 1917, Lew Hing expanded his cannery business by investing in the Bayside Canning Company, a sardine cannery at Monterey’s famed Cannery Row. It was said that the sardines were so plentiful in Monterey Bay that they actually swam their way into the cannery.
By World War I, Pacific Coast Canning Company was regularly exporting convenient canned goods to Europe. This provided an easy source for Herbert Hoover’s food rehabilitation program for Europe. Lew Hing’s efforts were now helping the United States to win the war.
From 1916 to 1921, Lew Hing was the principal owner of a cotton plantation known as Wa Muck in Mexicali, Mexico. For laborers, he conscripted hundreds of Chinese from China who would pass through San Francisco and go directly to Mexico by rail. Lew Hing set aside a few city blocks of land on the plantation for shops to accommodate the needs of Chinese workers. The remains of this impromptu Chinatown still exist in Mexicali.
In 1928, at age 70, Lew Hing established his fourth cannery, the West Coast Canning Company, along the shores of San Pablo Bay in Antioch, California.
After a rich career in canning, shipping, hotels, banking, and other industries, Lew Hing considered his most worthy contribution to be the swimming pool for the youth at the San Francisco Chinese YMCA
, built in 1925. After more than 80 years, the pool that Lew Hing built remains the only swimming pool in San Francisco’s Chinatown.
Inventive and industrious throughout his life, Lew Hing was very progressive for his time. He was also a man of high principles. Coming from his very humble beginning, he had great compassion for Chinese immigrants in America because he understood them well. He was a well-respected gentleman who generated much business in the community and created many job opportunities for the Chinese in the Bay Area. He contributed in upgrading the quality of life for Chinese immigrants in their ordeal of assimilation
and integration into the Western ways of life in these United States.
He also related well to the Caucasian community, as indicated when he often attended formal civic events and was included in the inner circle of San Francisco’s long-time mayor, Jimmy Rolph. Lew became very American in his ways, never again desiring to return to China.
Guangzhou
Guangzhou , known historically as Canton or Kwangchow, is the capital and largest city of the Guangdong province in the People's Republic of China. Located in southern China on the Pearl River, about north-northwest of Hong Kong, Guangzhou is a key national transportation hub and trading port...
, China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
– March 7 1934) was an American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
businessman and industrialist. His formal married name was Lew Yu-ling.
After immigrating to the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
from China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
in 1871, Lew became a pioneer in the canning
Canning
Canning is a method of preserving food in which the food contents are processed and sealed in an airtight container. Canning provides a typical shelf life ranging from one to five years, although under specific circumstances a freeze-dried canned product, such as canned, dried lentils, can last as...
industry. He owned four canneries in California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
, in the cities of San Francisco
San Francisco, California
San Francisco , officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the financial, cultural, and transportation center of the San Francisco Bay Area, a region of 7.15 million people which includes San Jose and Oakland...
, Oakland
Oakland, California
Oakland is a major West Coast port city on San Francisco Bay in the U.S. state of California. It is the eighth-largest city in the state with a 2010 population of 390,724...
, Monterey
Monterey, California
The City of Monterey in Monterey County is located on Monterey Bay along the Pacific coast in Central California. Monterey lies at an elevation of 26 feet above sea level. As of the 2010 census, the city population was 27,810. Monterey is of historical importance because it was the capital of...
, and Antioch
Antioch, California
Antioch is a city in Contra Costa County, California. Located in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area along the San Joaquin-Sacramento River Delta, it is a suburb of San Francisco and Oakland. The city's population was 102,372 at the U.S...
. His canneries supplied Herbert Hoover
Herbert Hoover
Herbert Clark Hoover was the 31st President of the United States . Hoover was originally a professional mining engineer and author. As the United States Secretary of Commerce in the 1920s under Presidents Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge, he promoted partnerships between government and business...
’s American Relief
American Relief Administration
American Relief Administration was an American relief mission to Europe and later Soviet Russia after World War I. Herbert Hoover, future president of the United States, was the program director....
program following World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
. In the San Francisco Bay Area, Lew also owned a shipping company, two hotels, and an import-export business. In Mexico
Mexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
, he owned a cotton plantation. He was Chairman of the Board of Directors for the China Mail Steamship Company, and President of the Bank of Canton
Bank of Canton
Bank of Canton was the first Chinese-owned bank in Hong Kong. At the time, all the other banks in Hong Kong were foreign, primarily British, including the locally incorporated but British-run Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation....
. He was also a real estate developer. Today, his legacy is being carried on in the Pacific Cannery Lofts in Oakland by Holliday Development, where dedications are made in his honor in one of his original buildings for the Pacific Coast Canning Company.
Early life
Lew Hing was the second of three children born to his father’s third wife (after the first two wives died). Lew had an older sister and a younger brother, as well as half brothers and sisters. His ancestral roots were in the county of Toy San, district of Sun Ning, village of Liao and province of Kwong-tung, China. He received his formal education in Hong KongHong Kong
Hong Kong is one of two Special Administrative Regions of the People's Republic of China , the other being Macau. A city-state situated on China's south coast and enclosed by the Pearl River Delta and South China Sea, it is renowned for its expansive skyline and deep natural harbour...
.
Before Lew Hing was born, his father had journeyed to San Francisco to find prosperity. He didn’t find it. Rejecting conscription as a laborer, as well as the debauchery of San Francisco’s Barbary Coast
Barbary Coast
The Barbary Coast, or Barbary, was the term used by Europeans from the 16th until the 19th century to refer to much of the collective land of the Berber people. Today, the terms Maghreb and "Tamazgha" correspond roughly to "Barbary"...
lifestyle, he camped along the shores of San Francisco Bay until the frustration of disappointment and loneliness caused him to return to China after two months. A few years later, Lew Hing would cross the ocean to San Francisco and fare much better.
In 1868 an older half brother of Lew Hing ventured to San Francisco to start a small metal shop on Commercial Street. With the success of his shop, in 1871 he urged his 12-year-old half brother, Lew Hing, to immigrate to America to join him in his growing business.
A few months after Lew arrived, his half-brother planned a brief vacation back to Canton to visit his family. His square rigged sailing vessel was off the coast of Japan when it caught fire and sank, causing all aboard to perish at sea. This left the young Lew Hing, at age 13, alone in San Francisco, without family or money.
Despite his grim circumstance, the growing Chinese community that would later become known as San Francisco’s Chinatown was beginning to form familial associations that provided leadership and social opportunities among the Chinese immigrants to America. Men with the same surnames would help each other as brothers. This was the beginning of Family Associations in Chinatown, and it was through such association that the young Lew Hing was able to survive.
It was with such Family Association guidance that Lew continued working at his deceased brother’s metal shop, while attending a local church mission to learn to read and write English. In doing so, he also learned to do his own bookkeeping and accounting. Never afraid to work long hours, he also accepted odd jobs for extra money. His industrious and entrepreneurial spirit carried him through these difficult years.
Marriage and children
In 1877, Lew Hing married Chin Shee (July 1860 – July 1947) in San Francisco. They had three sons and four daughters, each born in San Francisco.- Lew Yuet-yung, aka Mrs. Quan Yick-sun (1879–1967)
- Lew Gin-gow (1885–1943)
- Lew Yuen-hing, aka Mrs. Ho Chou-won (1889–1978)
- Lew Wai-hing, aka Mrs. Ng Min-hing (1890–1969)
- Thomas Gunn-sing Lew (1894–1974)
- Lew Soon-hing Rose, aka Mrs. Francis Moon (1898–1993)
- Ralph Ginn Lew (1903–1987)
Early career
Though he was never as skilled in metalwork as his older half-brother had been, he nonetheless learned the basics, such as soldering. In addition, among his odd jobs he helped a European woman make her fruit jams for storage in glass jars. This taught Lew about food preservationFood preservation
Food preservation is the process of treating and handling food to stop or slow down spoilage and thus allow for longer storage....
and how to avoid food poisoning. It was a natural next step for Lew to combine his metalwork with his food preservation skills to join in the new industry of canning foodstuffs.
At age 18 in 1877, Lew Hing founded his first cannery with another metalworker of Family Association ties, Lew Yu-tung. The cannery was located at the northeast corner of Sacramento and Stockton Streets in San Francisco and took up the first two stories of the building with the basement as storage. Lew Hing and other Family Association members lived on the third floor.
In the 1880s–1890s, canning food was still a new concept. Lew Hing had embarked on a long period of trial and error before the cannery could reliably produce safe and edible canned foods. When food was not preserved properly or the cans were not fully sterilized (for example, each can had to be soldered individually by hand), noxious bacterial action would ruin the product, causing cans to swell and even explode. Eventually, Lew Hing developed safer and more effective formulas for canning various fruits and vegetables. These formulas were never documented since they were Lew Hing’s trade secrets and were kept from rival canneries. Canned fruit items became a very good seller in Chinatown as many Chinese made purchases to take back to China. Soon, the products were purchased by Westerners and sales expanded outside San Francisco’s Chinatown.
Middle years
Lew’s original cannery thrived for over two decades. Then, in 1902, at age 44, he decided to close the cannery and retire to Canton. However, within a year Lew returned to the Bay Area, opening the Pacific Coast Canning Company at 12th and Pine Streets in Oakland.Always on the cutting edge of progress, Lew built his new cannery as the first concrete building in the industrial part of Oakland, plus he insisted on the most advanced machinery for mass production of his products. Also, in contrast to San Francisco, Oakland had space for a larger cannery as well as providing the Southern Pacific railroad tracks directly to the cannery dock for easy shipping of Lew’s Buckskin brand canned goods throughout the United States. Products included asparagus, cherries, apricots, peaches, pears, and grapes. Tomatoes were the most popular. Always a stickler for quality, each morning, Lew would go to the Tasting Room and open, inspect, and taste batches of food processed the day before. Eventually, Buckskin canned goods would make their way throughout the Western hemisphere.
In 1906, Lew Hing was able to make substantial assistance to Bay Area earthquake
1906 San Francisco earthquake
The San Francisco earthquake of 1906 was a major earthquake that struck San Francisco, California, and the coast of Northern California at 5:12 a.m. on Wednesday, April 18, 1906. The most widely accepted estimate for the magnitude of the earthquake is a moment magnitude of 7.9; however, other...
victims. He opened his cannery to the homeless and also provided tents elsewhere for temporary shelter. He hired cooks to provide meals. Following the earthquake, many San Franciscan’s relocated to Oakland, including several Chinese. As with several ethnic groups, Chinese were compelled to remain in ethnic clusters. Lew assisted these Chinese with finance and leadership by organizing neighborhoods, including the area that became Oakland’s Chinatown. As a consequence, he became involved with many Oakland Chinatown organizations, making contributions to their many causes and forming business alliances in relation to the Pacific Canning Company.
As the Pacific Canning Company prospered, Lew Hing diversified his interests into many other areas, including a personal interest in the Loong Kong Tien Yee Association, an organization for the families of Lew, Quan, Jung and Chew, and fostered the group in both Oakland and San Francisco.
In 1907 Lew returned to San Francisco for added business interests. Given his natural leadership in the Chinese community, he became President of Bank of Canton
Bank of Canton
Bank of Canton was the first Chinese-owned bank in Hong Kong. At the time, all the other banks in Hong Kong were foreign, primarily British, including the locally incorporated but British-run Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation....
, located at the northeast corner of Montgomery and Sacramento Streets. In the same year he also entered the hotel business, building The Republic Hotel on Grant Avenue (near Sacrament Street). However, his San Francisco interests had to be juggled with his work as president and owner of Pacific Coast Canning Company in Oakland. Always a careful and punctual man, he devised a schedule that allowed him to spend half of each work day in San Francisco, half in Oakland.
Later years
By 1910, Lew Hing had entered the import-export trade, first as an investor with Sing Chong and Fook Wah Companies which imported art goods from China. Then, in 1910, Lew Hing began his own import-export business, shipping wholesale Chinese food items from Hop Wo Cheung in Canton, China to Hop Wo Lung, a store on Grant Avenue in San Francisco.By 1911, Lew Hing’s Pacific Coast Canning Company had become one of Oakland’s largest businesses, providing over 1,000 jobs during the peak canning seasons. Employees were usually from the local Portuguese, Italian, and Chinese communities. Lew Hing was the Bay Area’s single largest employer of Chinese.
In 1912 Lew built his second hotel, originally named the Mun Ming Lue Kwan, at 858-870 Clay Street, between Grant and Stockton Streets. Still in existence, the name has since been changed to The Lew Hing building in honor of Lew.
In 1915, Lew accepted the position of Chairman of the Board of Directors for the China Mail Steamship Co. Ltd., whose office was in the same building as his Bank of Canton office.
In 1917, Lew Hing expanded his cannery business by investing in the Bayside Canning Company, a sardine cannery at Monterey’s famed Cannery Row. It was said that the sardines were so plentiful in Monterey Bay that they actually swam their way into the cannery.
By World War I, Pacific Coast Canning Company was regularly exporting convenient canned goods to Europe. This provided an easy source for Herbert Hoover’s food rehabilitation program for Europe. Lew Hing’s efforts were now helping the United States to win the war.
From 1916 to 1921, Lew Hing was the principal owner of a cotton plantation known as Wa Muck in Mexicali, Mexico. For laborers, he conscripted hundreds of Chinese from China who would pass through San Francisco and go directly to Mexico by rail. Lew Hing set aside a few city blocks of land on the plantation for shops to accommodate the needs of Chinese workers. The remains of this impromptu Chinatown still exist in Mexicali.
In 1928, at age 70, Lew Hing established his fourth cannery, the West Coast Canning Company, along the shores of San Pablo Bay in Antioch, California.
Legacy
Lew Hing was a pioneer in California industry. The Lew Hing building remains in San Francisco’s Chinatown, and Oakland’s Chinatown owes incalculable gratitude to Lew. The Pacific Coast Canning Company’s building remains, though empty, at 12th and Pine Streets in Oakland. In 2006 this site will be torn down and replaced by housing, though a commemorative plaque will include Lew Hing’s name and importance to the site. This site has been opened as the Pacific Cannery Lofts.After a rich career in canning, shipping, hotels, banking, and other industries, Lew Hing considered his most worthy contribution to be the swimming pool for the youth at the San Francisco Chinese YMCA
YMCA
The Young Men's Christian Association is a worldwide organization of more than 45 million members from 125 national federations affiliated through the World Alliance of YMCAs...
, built in 1925. After more than 80 years, the pool that Lew Hing built remains the only swimming pool in San Francisco’s Chinatown.
Inventive and industrious throughout his life, Lew Hing was very progressive for his time. He was also a man of high principles. Coming from his very humble beginning, he had great compassion for Chinese immigrants in America because he understood them well. He was a well-respected gentleman who generated much business in the community and created many job opportunities for the Chinese in the Bay Area. He contributed in upgrading the quality of life for Chinese immigrants in their ordeal of assimilation
Cultural assimilation
Cultural assimilation is a socio-political response to demographic multi-ethnicity that supports or promotes the assimilation of ethnic minorities into the dominant culture. The term assimilation is often used with regard to immigrants and various ethnic groups who have settled in a new land. New...
and integration into the Western ways of life in these United States.
He also related well to the Caucasian community, as indicated when he often attended formal civic events and was included in the inner circle of San Francisco’s long-time mayor, Jimmy Rolph. Lew became very American in his ways, never again desiring to return to China.