Old Missoula

Lewis Den Visits Old-Time Scenes and Friends

Former Chinese Merchant, Now Interpreter For Government, Talks of China

Lewis Den, who for the past 10 years has been employed by the government, as Chinese interpreter in the immigration service, is a Missoula visitor.

Twenty years ago he conducted a silk store where Judge Dyson now maintains his department of justice.

Lewis Den is one of the best-informed Chinamen in the country, speaking and writing the English language as fluently as a native born. In dress and manner he is thoroughly American. He takes great interest in the efforts of his countrymen to establish and maintain a republican form of government. Speaking of the recent revolution in China, he says: “The Chinamen are doing fairly well with their new government, but have been handicapped on account of international financial difficulties that has made it almost impossible to float the new Chinese loan.

“American customs and civilization are making rapid progress in my native country. All the inhabitants of China, with the exception of one single province, have dispensed with the old custom of wearing their queues. Of the 300 Chinamen living in and around Spokane, just two of the old-timers still wear the queue.

“The immigration laws are now so strict that no Chinamen, except a few genuine students and merchants, are being admitted. The Chinese population in the United States is rapidly diminishing.

“The type of the old-time Chinaman is disappearing. Practically all the old-timers in Missoula have gone. Fun Hi, Yuet Lung, Quong Wah John, old man ‘Murphy,’ Ah Ping and most of the old familiar Chinamen of Missoula are either dead or have returned to China. A few years more and the west will be only a reminiscence of the past. While he aroused the antagonism of the radical labor unionist, he really filled a place in the economy of the early settlement of this western country.

“I think, since Chinese immigration has ceased, that there is a very pronounced change of feeling toward my people. In fact, I think the old antagonism, among some people, has given place to a positive feeling of kindliness.”

The above article appeared in the Missoulian on January 17, 1915.

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