This page focuses on how and why early North American Chinese died and on the ways in which their countrymen handled those deaths, the rituals they followed, how the dead were buried, and why and whether they were dug up again later and sent back to China.
Three articles on causes of death will be found here: (1) Violent Deaths in British Columbia, (2) Chinese Suicide in Washington State, and (3) Causes of Chinese Deaths in Washington State. The articles introduce two major historical problems: the high incidence of tuberculosis and the high rate of suicide among early Chinese in North America.
The reader will also find articles on three cemeteries, Mountain View in Walla Walla, an unidentified early cemetery in Portland, and Victoria's beautiful Harling Point. A follow-up article on ethnic subdivisions at Harling Point has been added. It contains data on Chinese subgroups whose presence in the Pacific Northwest has not been previously reported.
Those wishing to pursue the subject of cemeteries further should look at Terry Abraham's on-line cemetery list, http://www.uiweb.uidaho.edu/special-collections/papers/ch_cem.htm and his Chinese Cemeteries Study Discussion Listserve (see http://www.uiweb.uidaho.edu/special-collections/cemintro.htm)
Walla Walla: many Chinese dead were not sent home
落叶不归根 : 抓李抓嚹早期华人墓地
It is a truism among historians that before World War II the bodies of deceased Chinese were almost always shipped back from America to China. Indeed, the cemeteries of many U.S. cities contain very few Chinese graves earlier than 1940. And yet there are exceptions -- enough to raise doubts about the usual explanation, that all Chinese felt they must be buried at home in order to receive offerings from their descendents.
One such exception may be found in Wall Walla's Mountain View Cemetery, where a good many early Chinese graves exist at the northeast corner of the cemetery's Palm and Poplar Streets. More than 70 Chinese and six Japanese tombstones survive, arranged in six North-South rows. The earliest grave belongs to a Japanese lady of Buddhist faith, bearing a Meiji date equivalent to 1909. There is only one Chinese woman in the plot. She died in 1947.
Interestingly, about 30 of the burials occurred before 1940. Considering that Walla Walla cannot have had more than several hundred Chinese residents in the 1920s and 1930s (note 1), such a large number of Chinese graves seems to show that, in Walla Walla, a fairly large percentage of deceased Chinese stayed where they were first buried. While many must have been exhumed and sent back to their home towns in Guangdong, many others were not. Why? Not because of poverty. Mountain View is a middle-class cemetery without a charitable potter's field area for the very poor. Did most of the deceased not have families in Guangdong to take care of their graves? That is possible. It is also possible that Walla Walla, as a small city distant from the major Chinese population centers, lacked the usual sojourners' institutions charged with ensuring that the dead, after a suitable time in an American grave, would be dug up again and sent to China.
Today a stone monument, probably erected after the 1980s and engraved in both English and Chinese, stands next to an older brick burner for offerings [Note 2]. The latter was mentioned in a September 1952 issue of the Walla Walla Union-Bulletin.
Note 1. Acording to the Union-Bulletin (02/09/1947), Walla Walla' s Chinese population had declined from 800, presumably in the late19th century,
to about100 in the 1940s.
Note 2. A comprehensive list of offering burners in Overseas Chinese cemeteries has been compiled by Terry Abraham, at
Walla Walla: many dead Chinese were not sent home
落叶不归根 : 抓李抓嚹早期华人墓地
It is a truism among historians that before World War II the bodies of deceased Chinese were almost always shipped back from America to China. Indeed, the cemeteries of many U.S. cities contain very few Chinese graves earlier than 1940. And yet there are exceptions -- enough to raise doubts about the usual explanation, that all Chinese felt they must be buried at home in order to receive offerings from their descendents.
One such exception may be found in Wall Walla's Mountain View Cemetery, where a good many early Chinese graves exist at the northeast corner of the cemetery's Palm and Poplar Streets. More than 70 Chinese and six Japanese tombstones survive, arranged in six North-South rows. The earliest grave belongs to a Japanese lady of Buddhist faith, bearing a Meiji date equivalent to 1909. There is only one Chinese woman in the plot. She died in 1947.
Interestingly, about 30 of the burials occurred before 1940. Considering that Walla Walla cannot have had more than several hundred Chinese residents in the 1920s and 1930s (note 1), such a large number of Chinese graves seems to show that, in Walla Walla, a fairly large percentage of deceased Chinese stayed where they were first buried. While many must have been exhumed and sent back to their home towns in Guangdong, many others were not. Why? Not because of poverty. Mountain View is a middle-class cemetery without a charitable potter's field area for the very poor. Did most of the deceased not have families in Guangdong to take care of their graves? That is possible. It is also possible that Walla Walla, as a small city distant from the major Chinese population centers, lacked the usual sojourners' institutions charged with ensuring that the dead, after a suitable time in an American grave, would be dug up again and sent to China.
Today a stone monument, probably erected after the 1980s and engraved in both English and Chinese, stands next to an older brick burner for offerings [Note 2]. The latter was mentioned in a September 1952 issue of the Walla Walla Union-Bulletin.
Note 1. Acording to the Union-Bulletin (02/09/1947), Walla Walla' s Chinese population had declined from 800, presumably in the late19th century, to about 100 in the 1940s.
Note 2. A comprehensive list of offering burners in Overseas Chinese cemeteries has been compiled by Terry Abraham, at http://www.uiweb.uidaho.edu/special-collections/papers/burners.html
The earliest Chinese grave, dated April 1919, is that of Mr. Wei En 魏恩. Wei was a Taishanese from Guangdong. In fact, every Chinese buried at Mountain View Cemetery came from the Four Counties (= Siyi or Siyap) area of Guangdong: from Taishan 台山, Xinhui 新會, Kaiping 開平, and Heshan 鹤山. Taishan was the most popular place of origin, with Xinhui in second place. Like most other early Chinese immigrants to North America, all would have spoken the Taishan (= Toisan) dialect of Cantonese.
Chinese graves in Mountain View Cemetery, Walla Walla,
Washington State
Tombstone of Wei En, 1919
Tombstone of Japan-
ese woman, 1909
The following article is the first in a series on Chinese cemeteries in North America. The series is meant to be a supplement to Terry Abraham's on-line cemetery list <http://www.uiweb.uidaho.edu/special-collections/papers/ch_cem.htm> and to Abraham's Chinese Cemeteries Study discussion listserve (for information, see <http://www.uiweb.uidaho.edu/special-collections/cemintro.htm>). The series will eventually have its own page on this CINARC website
Chinese graves in Mountain View Cemetery, Walla Walla,
Washington State
The earliest Chinese grave in the cemetery, dated April 1919, is that of Mr. Wei En 魏恩. Wei was a Taishanese from Guangdong. In fact, every Chinese buried at Mountain View Cemetery came from the Four Counties (= Siyi or Siyap) area of Guangdong: from Taishan 台山, Xinhui 新會, Kaiping 開平, and Heshan 鹤山. Taishan was the most popular place of origin, with Xinhui in second place. Like most other early Chinese immigrants to North America, all would have spoken the Taishan (= Toisan) dialect of Cantonese.
Tombstone of Japan-
ese woman, 1909
Tombstone of Wei En, 1919
Portland 1908: A Long-Gone Memorial Stone
This image appeared in a popular West Coast magazine that regularly published anti-Chinese (and anti-Japanese) articles.
The central inscription on the stone reads "We honor you as though you were present." The text (and the sacrificial roast pig in the foreground) may be meant for all Chinese buried there rather than for one important man. Neither the memorial nor the cemetery still exist.
The caption reads, "Chinese Cemetery in Portland. Though callous as to the living, the Chinese are extremely regardful of the dead." No comment is needed.
Harling Point Chinese Cemetery, Victoria, B.C. 加拿大域多利哈宁角华人坟场
The historical data that follows is taken largely from the writings of the University of Victoria's David Chuenyan Lai, who not only played a leading role in preserving the cemetery but has studied it intensively (note 1), supplemented by personal communication with him. Data on individual tombs are from the editors' own observations
Encroachment by the sea had made Victoria's old Chinese cemetery at Ross Bay unusable by the end of the 19th century. So in 1903, deceased Chinese began to be buried at Harling Point, where the local Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association (CCBA) owned a vacant headland property of 3.5 acres. As elsewhere in Canada and the U.S., most Chinese burials at Harling Point were intended to be temporary. The dead usually were exhumed after a suitable number of years and “repatriated” to China for permanent burial. The last group repatriation was made in1937, after which the Japanese War made repatriation impossible. Hence, remains of BC Chinese began to accumulate in a storage vault at the cemetery until a permanent mass burial took place at Harling Point in 1961. The cemetery had already been closed to new individual burials since 1950, although a few tombstones bear early 1950s dates.
The layout is symmetrical around a central axis. At the base of the axis are the twin furnace towers, for burning paper offerings, and an altar; both made of concrete in 1903. The burials spread out on the East and West wings of the cemetery grounds. It is not clear if the cemetery was planned to be segregated by gender and place of origin. At present, judging by tombstones that are currently readable, most burials of women seem to be located in the northwest quarter. The southeast quarter seems to have been used by individuals from the Sze Yup (Mandarin Siyi, “Four Counties) area, while the northeast quarter contains a number of individuals from Panyu in the Sam Yup (Mandarin: Sanyi; “Three Counties”) area as well as Sze Yup individuals and others. [Note: the next article on this web page contains more data on ethnic subdivisions at the cemetery]
The oldest tombstone for a man is dated October 3, 1928, and belongs to Cheng Hing Yueng (鄭慶仰, Mandarin: Zheng Qingyang). In 1918, an issue of the Tai Hon Kong Bo newspaper reported that Cheng was a member of the Chee Kung Tong (Mandarin: Zhigong Tang) as well as the Dart Coon Club, with a consistent interest in building libraries for both organizations.
Two days after Cheng Hing Yueng's death, Mar Sue (official name馬心恭, Ma Sum Kung; Mandarin: Ma Xingong) followed in his footsteps. Although little is known about Mr. Mar, he apparently was well-to-do enough to give away a golden plaque at a friend’s 72th birthday party. Mr. Mar’s wife came from the Guo family and was buried near but not next to him in 1933.
Cheng Hing Yueng’s clansman, Cheng Kuei Kwang (鄭鉅光, Mandarin:Zheng Juguang), was so proud of his membership in the Chee Kung Tang, the Chinese Freemasons,.that in 1948 he carried that identity to the other world. On his concrete slab was engraved a Masonic emblem, the only one of the kind in the cemetery. In 1917, according to the Tai Hon Kong Bo, he had been elected a board member of the Chemainus branch of the Chee Kung Tang, a position he kept for several decades.
When the 60-year old Mr. Lam Kong Lup 林杠立 (Mandarin: Lin Gongli), died in 1929, he was given a splendid funeral. A parade with more than 30 cars and several hundred mourners was led by city police. His obituary stated that he was revered as an old timer doing honest business in Victoria. He ran a pharmacy, Kwong Shon Tai 廣信泰, with an in-house herbalist, from the 1910s onward. The shop apparently doubled up as a dried foods grocery too.
Not every grave was for a person of Chinese descent. The CCBA accepted Caucasian wives of Chinese as part of the community. A simple granite tombstone, marked “Louise Schmidt, wife of C. Die” (趙大, Mandarin: Zhao Da), stands in the general female quarter.
For an authoritative history, see David Chuenyan Lai, "The Chinese Cemetery in Victoria," B.C. Studies, No. 75, Autumn 1987. For more pictures see http://www.oldcem.bc.ca/cem_ch.htm and http://www.flickr.com/photos/ngawangchodron/sets/72157622534453666/
Cemetery Gateway
Burners for offerings, with the Olympic Mountains and the Strait of Juan de Fuca in the background
Of the 250+ tombstones in readable condition, most date to the 1930s and 1940s. The oldest tombstone in the cemetery belongs to a Ms. Wong (Mandarin: Huang) who married into the Ma family. She died in 1925 and was given a marble tablet. The second oldest resident in the cemetery was also a lady, a Ms Li, who married into the Wang family and died in 1927, remembered by a concrete slab. Her husband, Wong Bun Sing (王品成. Mandarin: Wang Pin-cheng), died five years later and was buried in a somewhat more splendid grave.
Tombstone of Ms. Wong, 1925
Tombstone of Ms. Li, 1927
Tombstone of Lam Kong Lup, 1929
Tombstone of Louise Schmidt, 1930s
One often hears that early Chinese immigrants were all Taishanese, meaning that they spoke the Taishan (Toisan) dialect of a group of four (now five) counties west of Guangzhou or Canton, the provincial capital. That is indeed where the majority of residents at Harling Cemetery, Victoria came from, as indicated by the inscriptions on the tombstones. People from those counties, colored green here, call themselves Szeyap or Siyap 四邑 [four-county] people, a way of evoking regional connectedness.
However, many non-Szeyap Chinese lived in Victoria too--in fact the early Chinese community there seems to have been more metropolitan than any other Chinatown in Northwest America. As shown by the Harling Cemetery tombstones, the second largest speech group were Cantonese, whose language was not mutually comprehensible with Taishanese. Standard Cantonese is spoken in Hong Kong and Guangzhou (Canton) and in the three counties colored magenta on the map. Immigrants from those counties called themselves Samyap 三邑 [three-county] people. Among them, Panyu folks were the most adventurous. The Harling cemetery shows a good many people from Panyu but none from Nanhai or Shunde.
Cantonese rather than Taishanese was probably the lingua franca used among Chinese in Victoria between 1880 and 1910. There are several reasons for thinking so. First, the English names of people and shops in Victoria often reflect a Cantonese reading. Second, as the tombstones show, Victoria had other Chinese language groups as well: from Zengcheng, Dongguan and Zhongshan, colored orange and yellow on the map. Although the people of those districts use certain terms and accents different from standard Cantonese, their dialects, unlike Taishanese, are understandable by Cantonese speakers. Third, the leading Chinese businesses in Victoria during those three decades, all of which dealt in imported Asian commodities, had to maintain connections with bankers and suppliers in China, Hong Kong, Macao, and Singapore. Taishanese, which is not widely understood outside the Four County area, would not have been a convenient business language.
It is unusual in the Pacific Northwest to hear about immigrants from Zengcheng, a place more famous for lychee fruit than for emigrants. However, Zengcheng people were among the early immigrants to California (Him Mark Lai 2004: p 41), so their presence in Victoria is not a real surprise. The same is true of immigrants from Dongguan county, whose gravestones are present at Harling Point but in numbers too small to be included in the following tables. Although rare in the Northwest, it made sense for a few to be in Victoria in the late 19th century, when the opium trade was at its height. As noted elsewhere on this website (click here) , Dongguan was the home county of the opium firms that became Macao’s Sing Wo Co., which established a branch, Sing Wo Chan, in Victoria in 1886.
Tombstone of Cheng Hing Yueng, 1928
Tombstone of Mar Sue, 1928
Tombstone of Cheng Kuei Kwang, 1928
The 1961 mass burials at Harling Point (from a storage vault at the cemetery–see the preceding article) were organized by county of origin. 841 Chinese were thus interred and a record made of names, dates, and birthplaces. The tombstones on individual graves also contain birthplace data. In 1986, 213 such tombstones were still readable. David Lai (1987: Tables 2 & 3), has tabulated information on counties of origin from both sources:
District Mass IndividualTaishan 310 63Kaiping 121 28Xinhui 112 24Enping 63 8Panyu 148 33Zengcheng 45 or 28Zhongshan 38 5 or 24Other 49 7It will be seen that no Hakkas (Mandarin: Keren) appear in the table, although as the Tam Kung temple shows, they were prominent in Chinese Victoria. This is because the Hakkas of southern Guangdong did not have a county of their own and hence would have been listed as natives of Panyu, Zengcheng, Zhongshan, etc. There is also no one listed as coming from Hong Kong or Guangzhou, due to the custom of claiming an ancestral home in a county-level town or village even though one's father, grandfather, and great-grandfather might have lived their entire lives in downtown Guangzhou or Hong Kong.
References: David Chuenyan Lai, "The Chinese Cemetery in Victoria," B.C. Studies, No. 75, Autumn 1987; Him Mark Lai, Becoming Chinese American, a history of communities and institutions, Altamira Press, 2004.
Ethnic Subdivisions in the Graveyard
Violent Chinese Deaths in British Columbia, 1879-1891
The suicide rate among Chinese in British Columbia was also high, as shown by data in the British Columbia Provincial Archives. The archives contain results of coroners' inquests for much of the province, from the late 1870s onward. These data are not comparable to the Washington State data because they do not include deaths due to disease, the inquests having been conducted only on deaths that were violent or otherwise potentially criminal. Deaths from disease, presumably certified by a doctor, were not the concern of Canadian coroners.
Hence, 12.2% of total Chinese deaths were due to suicide. This figure may be modified somewhat when we get data on the few Washington counties with Chinese populations (i.e., Jefferson, Kitsap, and Pierce) that are missing from the Archives database, but the general trend is clear. Many Chinese in the Pacific Northwest killed themselves: enough that suicide was the second leading cause of death, exceeded only by tuberculosis.
The question is, how unusual was this? Does it show that North American Chinese led lives so hard and desperate that suicide was often the only way out? Some historians would favor such an explanation. And yet one could also argue that a 12.2% rate of suicides to total deaths was and is not unusual for populations like that of Chinese sojourners--relatively young, healthy, and with a strong tendency to be born and become old elsewhere, so that the population did not experience the high mortality rates typical of early childhood and old age.
One modern population with similar characteristics is that of active-duty military personnel: healthy, predominantly male, and mostly between 20 and 50 years old, A recent study shows that between 1980 and 2005, the percentage of self-inflicted deaths to all deaths in the U.S. armed forces ranged from a low of 9.32% (in 2005) to a high of 24.04% (in 1995) [Note 2]. Seen in this light, a Chinese suicide rate of 12.2% seems tragic but not extraordinary.
The editors agree that the stresses in modern military life are quite different from those experienced by a sojourning Chinese laborer in 19th century North America, and we do not wish to minimize the hardships suffered by either group. The subject of American Chinese suicide involves a whole complex of historical social, cultural, and psychological issues that need further study. While suicide may turn out to have been a dominating problem for early Chinese immigrants, we do not want to press the panic button yet. Life for Chinese on this continent was indeed difficult. But was it difficult enough to cause an epidemic of mental instability, in a group of otherwise well-balanced individuals with a seemingly exceptional capacity for coping with danger, hardship, and loneliness?
Note 1: Data on causes of death have been compiled from the on-line Washington State Archives, http://www.digitalarchives.wa.gov/Search.aspx
Note 2: Anne Leland and Mari-Jana Oboroceanu, American War and Military Operations Casualties: Lists and Statistics, Congressional Research Service 7.5700 www.crs.gov RL32492, 2009
Note 3: The photo of Don Toy comes from the Chinese Exclusion Files at NARA (the National Archives and Records Administration). As far as we know, in spite of his evidently depressed state, he did not commit suicide.
In the course of compiling statistics from early death certificates on file in the Washington State Archives, the editors have come on an interesting fact. Between 1891 and 1907, in most counties with significant Chinese populations, the suicide rate for Chinese was very high.
A total of 114 deaths was recorded during 16 years [Note 1]. This is about what one would expect in a healthy population of several thousand persons, many of them moving in and out of the state, averaging 30-50 years old. What is unexpected, however, is that 14 of the total deaths seem to have been self-inflicted: 2 by hanging, 8 by opium poisoning, and 4 simply as "suicide." While it is conceivable that the two hanging cases represent murder, the eight cases of opium poisoning must represent deliberate ingestion--in those days, Chinese in North America smoked opium rather than swallowing or injecting it, and getting an accidental overdose via opium pipe, which needed several minutes of preparation per pipeful and at least 30-40 total pipefuls to induce death, was almost impossible.
Chinese Suicides in Washington State, 1891-1907 早期華裔自殺比率高
Don Toy, Laundryman, Tacoma, 1911: A life of quiet desperation?
The on-line index posted by the Archives contains only names, dates, and briefly stated causes of death. Much more could be gotten from the actual records, to be found on Reel 2372 of the provincial Attorney General's files, GR 1327. We have not been able to consult those yet. However, even the index alone tells us much more than is otherwise known about Chinese mortality in most other parts of North America during the 19th century.
62 total deaths of persons with Chinese names are recorded. 19 died of industrial accidents: underground mining and timber cutting23 died of other accidents, including drowning, some of which may have been industrial too13 committed suicide, almost all by hanging 2 are listed as "hung" and "was hung;" whether these were executions or suicide is not clear 2 were murdered 2 died from natural causesThe suicide rate is high (and would have been higher if coroners had examined deaths from opium--see above) while the murder rate is surprisingly low. Thousands of Chinese lived in or passed through British Columbia during this period. It is possible that local police and coroners listed some homicides as accidents out of sympathy for the murderers.
Chinese were not alone in suffering from accidents while at work. Whites and Indians (the coroners' records seem to use that term rather than specific ethnic names) also died while felling trees, catching fish, and so forth.
Only one Chinese woman is listed: Ling Gum in 1888. She was "asphyxiated from a charcoal fire in her stove."
Chinese cemetery in Victoria, B.C. See below.
Deaths, Cemeteries, and Death Rituals
塵土歸路: 墓地 葬仪
DISEASE 疾病
Appendicitis
Asthma
Beriberi
Bowel inflammation
Congenital debility [6 month-old girl]
Diarrhea
Heart disease 心脏病
Hemorrhea
Hepatitis, Interstitial
Hernia, strangulated
Hydrothorax
Indigestion
Influenza ("La Grippe")
Jaundice (and jaundice with hemorrhea)
Kidney cysts
Kidney (Bright's disease, nephritis) 肾病
Liver cancer
Locomotor ataxia [from syphilis?]
Lung, hemorrhea
Myelitis
Pancreatitis
Paralysis
Pneumonia
Rheumatism
Sarcoma
Scurvy
Septicemia
Stomach, strangulated
Stroke, aneurysm (apoplexy, cerebral hemorrhage) 4
Tuberculosis (consumption, phthisis) 肺病
Typhoid
Unknown
Uremia
Uterine cancer
ACCIDENT 意外事故
Killed by train
Killed by falling timber
Drowned
Crushed by elevator
Concussion of brain
Fractured skull
Asphyxiated by pois. gas
"Accidentally"
Poisoning, "probably"
Strangulation
Suffocation from coal gas
MURDER & EXECUTION 谋殺/问吊
Legal hanging
"Murdered"
Knife wound
External violence
SUICIDE 自殺
Hanging
Opium
"Suicide"
Note that the several entries assigned by us to the "Accident" category may actually have been murders (i,e., strangulation, poisoning, concussion of brain, and fractured skull) or suicides (strangulation). Back in the 19th century, keepers of death records on the county level may indeed have decided to cover up a murder or two, but as of now this cannot be proved or disproved.
The same sources that yield data on Chinese suicides (see above) also list other causes of Chinese deaths during the same period. The Washington State Archives do not contain death records for two countries with substantial Chinese populations, Pierce and Jefferson. However, the other high-Chinese counties are all represented. The statistics summarized here cover at least three-quarters of recorded Chinese deaths in Washington in the sixteen years under study.
True, a good many Chinese deaths were never recorded. We know this by comparing newspaper accounts with official death records, although we have no idea why (carelessness, laziness, or deliberate negligence?) or what proportion of deaths may be missing. But the incompleteness of the records is not a serious problem for our present purpose, which is simply to begin to understand why Chinese residents of Washington died. .As noted in the preceding essay, the Chinese population was predominantly male, healthy, and between 20 and 50. Hence, childhood diseases were rare among North American Chinese, as were illnesses of old age like diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and many forms of cancer. The low incidence of liver disease among local Chinese may be related to abstemious drinking habits and a low rate of alcoholism.
By far the leading cause of death was tuberculosis. We are not certain whether Chinese suffered more from TB than members of other ethnic groups, although we have heard it said that the Pacific Northwest had a higher incidence of the disease than most other parts of the country. The crowded living conditions of Chinese laborers may have made them vulnerable to tuberculosis. Did widespread opium use, which often involved the sharing of opium pipes, also make them vulnerable? Perhaps. Few contemporary physicians seem to have thought so, but it is a possibility.
Source: online Washington State Archives, http://www.digitalarchives.wa.gov/Search.aspx. Data in the above table come from each county listed in the website's "Death Records," obtained by checking surnames likely to belong to people of Chinese descent. Data from Jefferson and Pierce counties, which are not included in the state archive website, will be added later.
1
1
1
1
1
1
8
1
1
1
1
1
1
2
1
6
2
1
1
1
1
1
2
1
1
1
2
1
28
1
1
1
1
1
1
4
1
1
2
1
1
1
1
1
1
2
1
1
2
8
4
Causes of Chinese Deaths in Washington State, 1891-1907
華州早期華裔死亡因素
Accupuncure points for lungs and lung disease, including tuberculosis. From Chen Xiuyuan's famed Lingsuji Zhujieyao (ca.1800), probably used by early North American Chinese
陈修园. 灵素集注节要
