15. Lung On, 1927

This photograph shows John Day merchant Lung On standing in front of a four-door sedan that he was selling. It was taken in 1927 by Oregon Journal photographer Edward Campbell.

Lung On was a prominent Chinese merchant in the eastern Oregon town of John Day for more than fifty years. He was born in China’s Guangdong Province sometime in the 1860s. Although trained as a traditional Chinese scholar, he yearned for adventure. He left China for America while still a young man, arriving in San Francisco in 1882.

In 1887, he moved to John Day, then home to the largest Chinatown in eastern Oregon. Not long after arriving in John Day, Lung On met a fellow Chinese immigrant by the name of Ing Hay, who was trained in traditional Chinese medicine. The two would become lifelong friends and business partners. In September 1888, Ing Hay and Lung On opened a general store and medical practice in the Kam Wah Chung building, a stone structure probably built in the late 1860s as a trading post and temporary fort along The Dalles Military Road.