This is a serialization of short story collection, Staring into the Sun. Start here for more info and the full index.
Previous installment: Belonging, Part 2
September 1935
Had they known how their firstborn would turn out, they would have named her Ruby—hard, blood-red, and glinting—instead of delicate Rose. But the eldest was Rose, then came Jade, Lily, and Grace.
She is holding out for a third Red Dragon. Grace just discarded one, which leaves the fourth available in the wall, or with Lily or Jade. Mahjong is a welcome distraction from the news Joe told her this morning, almost as an aside as he was leaving the house, uncharacteristically in a rush and keeping his driver waiting outside.
The Soo Hoo women are petite and pretty, with jet-black bobbed and waved hair. They all frequent the same tailor in Chinatown who uses the Vogue Pattern Book as his bible. Their dresses, like paper dolls’ outfits, show off different details: cap sleeves with buttoned cuffs; a pleated bodice; a jaunty sailor’s neckerchief; a belt and large, militaresque buttons—a sartorial hint at the war to come.
Rose draws a tile, keeping its ivory face down. Without looking at it, her fingers make out the carving of a bird: it’s a 1 Bamboo. She reflects on her move, rubbing her thumb across the tile’s smooth ebony back. She keeps it and discards a 3 Circle.
This afternoon, like every Thursday, the sisters are sitting around a card table in Lily’s parlor. A lamp is on to brighten up the women’s post-luncheon rendez-vous, the natural morning light in the east-facing room already forgotten. Lily and her husband (the first Chinese attorney in California, as Lily proudly tells new acquaintances) live childless in their three-story home just north of Golden Gate Park. The house is painted a pale yellow that matches Lily herself: cheery but not overstated.
Jade says, “Looks like you’re ahead, Rose. Think you’ll win again?”
Rose snorts in reply, an unladylike noise she allows herself to make only among her sisters. Jade likes to goad her, gently-gently, but Rose won’t give her the pleasure of rising to it.
As Rose’s sisters take their turns, Joe’s announcement whirls in her head. She can’t keep it to herself for long—they’ll find out soon, one way or another. Better to tell them today and keep it under her control, demonstrating how pleased (excited? happy? nationalistic?) she is.
She draws again. The red dragon! Triumph ripples across her face. As good a moment as any, and maybe the distraction will help her win. She looks around at her sisters and says, “We’re going to China next year.”
“Good heavens!” Jade exclaims. “For how long? Is that safe?”
Rose forces a smile. “Joe just told me this morning. We haven’t worked out the particulars yet.” Her husband hasn’t returned to China since he left as a young man and somehow he’s gotten it in his head that now is the time to go.
Lily says, “Supporting China with the Fidelis Coterie is one thing, but actually going there is a different matter.”
Of course, the “Loyal Group” was Joe’s idea (as was figuring out its fancy-pants Latin name), in response to the Japanese army invading Manchuria in 1931 and attacking Shanghai a few months later. The sisters and their friends—every last one of them born in California, so “home” does not mean China—collected money and clothing to send to refugees. The first shipment set off one month after the Shanghai attack. A photo of Rose and Jade, wearing embroidered silk dresses and dark lipstick, made it into the Oakland Tribune with a quarter-page article and the headline, “Chinese Women Here Work for War Victims. Fidelis Coterie to Collect Money and Clothes to Send Stricken Countrymen.” They were identified as Mrs. Joe Shoong, President, and Mrs. Robert Lym, Social Secretary.
Rose knows that embarking a ship to China is a world away from rustling up some clothes and money. But she protests, “We’ll be absolutely fine. It’s going to be fun.” Fun, not the most plausible word she could have chosen. She remembers something Joe said. “The girls will attend a university there.” Her sisters’ doubts and fears, probably the same as hers, the ones she dare not share, are plain on their faces.
Grace asks, “Will you go to his village—what’s it called?—and see his mother? She’s not a woman of many words, is she?”
Rose pulls a sour face that makes them all laugh. The sisters are united in their dislike of Rose’s mother-in-law, who came over from China seven years ago and stayed with Rose’s family for a year, until she got lonely and returned home. The visit probably would have been even shorter if the two women had been able to understand each other better. The old woman spoke only the Long Du dialect, while Rose used the Cantonese of her parents. When Joe translated his mother’s comments to Rose, they were invariably criticisms of her cooking or mothering, so after a short time, she stopped asking.
Jade jabs Rose’s arm. “Aren’t you going to play your turn?”
“Okay, okay.” Rose puts her three Red Dragons on the table and says, “Pung!” Her advantage is now clear.
Jade scowls. By now, she’s used to losing out to her older sister. It wasn’t always that way, and she takes every opportunity to remind Rose that she leapfrogged her twice. Though she’s two years younger, Jade graduated from Girls’ High School first, since Rose had taken time out to work with her parents. Rose and Lily ended up graduating the same year, 1913, in the new building at Scott and O’Farrell. By then, Jade had again triumphed over her sister by marrying first. It was a slap in the face to Rose. The wedding out of birth order shook up cultural expectations, though their parents didn’t seem to mind enough to stop or delay it.
Rose’s consolation was that gangly Jade was the least attractive of the four girls. And her new husband worked as a federal interpreter at the Angel Island immigration station, hardly a promising occupation. Rose would wait for someone better to court her.
It didn’t take long.
Over the years that Jade was gaining ground on her, Rose would take a few minutes to bask in the morning light of the Soo Hoo apartment. She would watch the cable cars clacking past their building on Powell Street, starting their climb uphill toward California Street, where they would peak and hold their breath, like at the top of a deep inhale, and then exhale, braking all the way down to Union Square. She pictured the cable cars reaching their turnaround point on Market Street.
Shortly after Rose’s graduation, a tall, handsome man moved in above them. He looked to be about a decade older than Rose, early thirties. Even while carrying his few possessions past the ground-floor shop and up the stairs, he wore an impeccable suit, tie, and hat. That evening, he knocked on their door. When Rose’s father answered, the man extended his hand and said, softly yet confidently, “Joe Shoong. Pleased to meet you.” He caught Rose’s eye and smiled.
Once he had gone back upstairs, Rose’s father told her pointedly that he was the owner of the China Toggery, also known as Chung Hing, “rejuvenation” in Cantonese. Rose knew the dry goods store on Market Street—it was well-stocked and well-priced, often her first port of call when her mother sent her for clothes, linens, or sewing supplies.
“I heard he’s opening a second store in Sacramento,” said Rose’s father. Rose knew that Chinese men in San Francisco outnumbered Chinese women by about ten to one, and she had no doubt that Joe was the best pick of the lot.
When they got married three years later, she found it amusing that the Oakland Tribune reporter assumed that his full name was Joseph, having no idea that “Joe” was an Americanized “Zhou”—his last name said first in the Chinese way.
Wealthy Chinese Are United in Marriage
Americans and Chinese were guests last evening at the wedding of Miss Rose Soo Hoo, one of San Francisco's most prominent Oriental maids, and Joseph Shoong, wealthy Chinese merchant, at the Fairmont Hotel. The ceremony was performed by the Rev. William J. Fisher, pastor of the Richmond Presbyterian church.
Four hundred invitations were sent out by the couple. The decorations were the only Oriental feature of the event, the redroom and the banquet hall being designed in the style of the Occident.
The bride is the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Fong Soo Hoo. The Misses Lily and Grace Soo Hoo, sisters of the bride, were bridesmaids.
Joe’s apartment above the Soo Hoos became crowded with Rose, their three children when they arrived—two girls and a boy—and eventually Lily and her new husband too. It was cramped, but later Rose and Lily would reminisce about those times before their parents died as more fun and light-hearted, free of complications and worries.
In that apartment, the four adults played mahjong most Friday evenings. Joe outlined his strategy to Rose, “If you risk more, you can also gain more. Of course, you can lose more too. If you play it safe and go for chows—the straights—early on, you may win the hand, but it won’t score much, so in the end it’s not worth it. It’s like when you’re the East Wind: you can win double, but you can also lose double.”
Lily’s husband would always contribute some facts to the conversation. He knew everything—he got 96% on the bar exam, one of the best performances ever recorded. “Did you know that cattle shin bones are exported from Chicago to Shanghai? In China, they get bleached, carved, and paired with bamboo backs. Then they ship them back here, all to satisfy the Americans’ craze for our game. Tens of thousands of sets are getting produced like that.” Rose smiled at him blandly in thanks for his trivia. She was asking herself if she wanted to risk losing double in order to win double. Yes I do, she thought.
Eight years into their marriage, Rose, Joe, and their brood moved across the Bay to a glorious, five-bedroom house on Bellevue Avenue in Oakland. While the couple had no idea that their new home was designed by Julia Morgan, the first female architect licensed in California, they were acutely aware that it had to be purchased by a white friend on their behalf to get around racial covenants.
Rose wanted to leave the San Francisco apartment to have more breathing room, and ironically, that’s when she started going back into the city almost every weekday to see her sisters, to get some child-free air.
Jade is prodding her again. “Rose!”
Rose draws a tile, another 2 Bamboo. “Chow. I win!” Jade grimaces.
As the sisters prepare for their next game, tiles clacking, Grace says, “We’ll certainly miss you, Rose.” Then, with a teasing lilt to her voice, “Who’s going to be our fourth for the games?”
“I’m sure you’ll survive.” Rose reaches across the table to tickle her youngest sister. “You can play with three, you know. Just take out the character suit, the north wind, and the seasons.”
Grace pulls a mock-disapproving face, her mouth turned down comically. Then her expression becomes serious. “I just hope you’ll be okay.”
Though Rose often tags along on Joe’s work trips, visiting his dozens of stores and scouting out new locations (he’s never satisfied), China will be her longest journey by far.
Until now, the furthest trip was across the country, in 1929. She and Joe went by train to New York with his broker, the same one who procured a noisy ticker tape now installed in their marital bedroom. Good feng shui for wealth, if not love; its every infuriating “tick” is like a nail tapping into her skin. It makes Rose feel married to money instead of a man; though if forced to choose between man and money, she’d take the money.
By the time of the New York trip, Joe had expanded his chain of stores to eighteen scattered throughout the West, from San Francisco to Seattle, Sacramento to Salt Lake City. He renamed them the National Dollar Stores, put talented managers in place (all Chinese, many from his home village, Long Tow Wan), and started investing in property and the stock market.
It took four days to get to the East Coast. Joe bought the latest edition of the local newspaper at every stop; their headlines told him all he needed. He and the broker conferred, using terms Rose often heard but didn’t understand. She had never seen her husband so tense. She later found out why the two men scrambled to get off at each stop: the broker was following Joe’s orders to sell off all his holdings, a hair ahead of the stock market crash, and when the Shoongs returned home to Oakland, there was a check for one million dollars from the Bank of America waiting for Joe. Before depositing it, he took a photo of it to frame. It was his first million.
To be continued on 4 October 2025.
Wow, what a crescendo!! Love the way this is structured. Cool incorporation of the news item about the wedding.