THE CHINESE PEOPLE OF ROSSLAND - OLDTIMERS MEMORIES

• The Chinese first came to the Kootenay area as labourers for the Dewdney Trail in 1865. Dewdney used the Chinese to build the trail from the Columbia River west to the Hope Wagon Road.
• The Chinese worked mostly in a service nature in Rossland. There were the Chinese Gardens at the south end of St. Paul Street, extending down the valley past the Golf Course. At the top end of LeRoi Avenue and St. Paul Street, they had small stores where they carried and sold the requirements of their people. They also did laundry about town and worked as woodcutters, while some of them were employed on the railroads as sections men.
• They had their Chinese Masonic Lodge on Kootenay Avenue where they had a bit of entertainment. Most of the Chinese lived on their farms below town.
• The Chinese Gardens were beautiful gardens where they grew cabbages, carrots, beets, parsnips and other root vegetable, which they stored in root houses. During the winter months, they sold these root crops door to door and did the same with their laundry work. They worked on the honour system with each Chinese having a number of customers. They would never go and sell to their fellow countryman’s customers. Citizens had fresh vegetables every day and the prices were always fair. Most people would run an account and at the end of each month, they would pay the Chinaman for what the vegetables were worth. Sometimes the accounts were kept on the doorframes while others used a black book that had the customer’s name and you would mark down the prices of the vegetables that you had bought. There was no one out to steal much from the Chinese.
• The vegetables were all brought from the valley in large heavy baskets, one hanging from each end of a pole. In the morning, they would all start out and gather at the top of St. Paul Street and Columbia Avenue. They would have a short rest and then go to their respective areas of town to sell their produce.
• Another job that the Chinese did was the cutting of cordwood. They not only cut this cordwood into stove lengths around town but they also cut cordwood in the bush. They would pile hundreds and hundreds of cordwood on each side of the roads in the wooded area north of town. A lot of times, this cordwood was confiscated and the Chinese were never compensated in any way for it. One woodcutting crew had about 20 – 30 workers and they were paid ½ cent a day. They would saw wood for some of the residents in town and they had their own sawhorses and bucksaws. They could saw a cord to a cord and a half a day. 
• Their laundries were in different areas of town. One was down in the southeast part, another was in the southwest, one was on Washington Street and several were between St. Paul and Butte Streets on LeRoi Avenue. They all had their customers and no one would take laundry from one home that was being serviced by another Chinese. They also did the laundry for some of the hotels and the hotel’s boarders. The women used to say that no one could wash a white shirt and iron it like a Chinaman.

• There were about ten to fifteen stores where the first railway depot was located on LeRoi Avenue between St. Paul and Monte Christo Streets. There was also a Josh house and one store that sold nothing but herbs and Chinese medicine. Their stores were very drab.
• There was also a Masonic Temple in Chinatown. The design of that building was quite an oddity and it really stood out. There were a lot of dragons and different animals with long tails. They would have their band practices there and the children would stand outside and listen.
• The Chinese used to get a lot of turtles and the kids used to go down there and ride on the backs of these turtles. The turtles were brought in as a source of medicine. They would pay for bear gall and paws to use for medicine as well.
• The Chinese drank their own liquor, which they imported. They drank out of little saucers.
• They played Fan Tan with large tiles like dominoes. They would smoke from long bamboo water pipes.
• Their bunks didn’t have mattresses, just hard boards.
• The Chinese cooks were considered to be aristocracy to their fellow Chinamen. Some of them worked as cooks in private homes and could make up to $30 a month.
• There was a Chinese unemployment place were you could go and hire someone to dig your garden or to do odd jobs for $1 a day.
• The Chinamen were good citizens and they never bothered anyone. The Chinese were a good race of Chinese in Rossland and they were never any trouble. They were very beneficial to the people of Rossland. ‘I guess we gave them more trouble than they ever gave us because it used to be a frequent thing for the kids to tease the Chinese.’

• When a Chinaman died they were buried in one corner of the old Rossland Cemetery. Fellow Chinese would put a roast of pork with vegetables and other things for the deceased to eat from the next world. They would leave little Chinese dishes too. Sometimes, children would hide in the bush until the ceremony was finished and the Chinamen had left. Then they would pounce on the grave and have a great feed. One fellow asked a Chinaman ‘when do you think your friend is going to come up to eat that?’ and the Chinaman responded ‘Well, about the same time your guys come up to smell those flowers you’re putting on there.’ The bodies were disinterred and the remains were sent back to China for a Chinese burial. Just the handles and the remains of the caskets were left on the gravesite. It was the duty of the Chinese community to ensure that their bones were dug up after a suitable time and sent back to China for reburial in the ancestral graveyard.

Excerpts from interviews by Rossland Oldtimers - Ike Glover, Warren Crow and Harry Lefevre.

From the 1901 Census: