Yee Chung’s family secret

For The Madera Tribune

Yee Chung with his Madera wife (left), and the wife he left in China.

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The year was 1865, and Yee Chung was headed for Gold Mountain, the Chinese name for America. He bid his wife and children goodbye and forever turned his back on Lung Yuet Tau, his ancestral home. Little did he know that many years later, the family he left behind, would become the subject of so much attention in Madera, California.

For the next few years Yee Chung labored in the gold mines of northern California. Then he went to work for the railroad. In 1872, when the Southern Pacific started laying its track up the San Joaquin Valley, Yee Chung was one of the hundreds of Chinese who were employed to do the job.

After the crews passed what is now Madera, the railroad built a switch and called it Borden. In a short time, a village grew up around the little depot, and Yee Chung decided to stay.