Chinese Laundryman in Westerville

[The Chinese laundry was part of the urban scene in the early twentieth century.]

Browsing through an old issue of the Otterbein College Tan and Cardinal, I saw an advertisement for a Chinese laundry in Westerville. From approximately 1917 to 1925, a certain “Hop Lee” ran a laundry at 12 North State Street. That conjures up all kinds of images, from the “No tickee, no shirtee” stereotype to laundries as fronts for opium dens. But I’ve married into a Chinese family, so I decided to look deeper.

Unfortunately, Chinese laundries do not lend themselves to research. Chinese immigrant men who ran laundries often were the victims of American mainstream prejudice. They kept very much to themselves, and thus appeared secretive and mysterious to outsiders.

Not surprisingly, Hop Lee mostly defies historical recovery. He was probably from southern China probably from near Guangzhou (Canton) or Hong Kong. His real name was probably Li. Many a Chinese man adopted the spelling Lee, closer to the pronunciation of Li to American eyes. Or, Hop Lee may not have been his real name. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was still in force, and men coming to this country sometimes used the names of dead relatives or friends who had been granted permission to enter.

The census of 1920 showed a 55 year-old Hop Lee living on Third Street in Columbus, with his younger cousin, Wing Haey (The spelling is probably phonetic). But this was not the same Hop Lee, a common name in the Chinese immigrant community.  Most Chinese laundrymen lived in or above their laundries.  Westerville’s Hop Lee appears to have done so.

Unfortunately, the most informative document on Lee is his 1919 death certificate.  “Our” Hop Lee was born in 1861.  His father was named Ching Lee.  We do not know the date of his emigration.  He was married, but his wife stayed in China.  Hop Lee was 58 when he died in Grant Hospital in Columbus, “following an operation for appendicitis.”  He was buried in Green Lawn Cemetery.

As I was just about to give up hope of finding anything more about Hop Lee, I spotted a quotation from him in a 1917 copy of the Public Opinion. Lee was quoted as saying he liked hot weather because it meant more laundry business. Unfortunately, he was quoted in stereotypical Chinese pidgin English, and we can only guess what wording he really used.

Whoever he was, Mr. Lee probably worked long hours for little pay. We can guess that he was lonely – the male female ratio among Chinese immigrants was 90% male to 10% female.  There is no evidence that his wife ever came to the States, even for a visit.  It was only postmortem that Hop Lee found companionship, of a sort.

In 1936, 17 years after his burial, Hop Lee and eleven other Chinese men were disinterred from Green Lawn.  According to the Columbus Dispatch, permission was granted to William Woo, a Columbus consular agent connected the Chinese consul in Cleveland.  Green Lawn Cemetery also approved the request.  The Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Society in Columbus helped pay for the trip, and a similar charity in China would also help pay once the dead men arrived in China.  The twelve dead men from Columbus would eventually join 200 other dead men of Chinese birth who had died in Ohio.

Traditional Chinese burial customs have radically changed since the 1949 revolution.  China’s population is such that most residents are cremated.  But in Hop Lee’s time, 3000 years of tradition was firm and prescribed burial near to one’s respected ancestors.  Hop Lee’s wish was granted too late for him to see, but his family, I hope, derived comfort from his bones resting in China, and that his time in Westerville was relatively short.

[Revised 2022]