When he was just ten, my father, Harry Chong Lau, left his village on the outskirts of Tong Sui Town, in Yah Young County, Guangdong, to work for an uncle in Hong Kong. He left behind his mother, a younger brother, and a merchant marine father he rarely saw and barely recognized. In his teens, he left to work in Singapore in the mines, then later on a Norwegian ship that sailed between Hong Kong, Malaysia, Australia, and the West Coast of the United States. Meeting foreigners and seeing new places stoked his desire to live in America. On one of these trips, he jumped ship at San Pedro, California. When he missed the train to San Francisco, he took a later bus and ended up in Sacramento. He worked as a farmhand in the Courtland/Walnut Grove area.
