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Ching In’s children in an old Waipahu photo studio setting. Mrs. Yun Choy Au (“Apo”), Mrs. Yen Kam Lum, Ching Pui and Mrs. Yen Lun Tom. Ancestral Reflections Hawaii’s Early Chinese of Waipahu An Ethnic Community Experience, 1885 – 1935 by Douglas Dai Lunn Chong
CHING IN, one of the few first-generation vegetable farmers whose family could be traced, cultivated taro, rice, bananas and vegetables in the upper Waipahu-Waipi‘o area, in what is now the back road of Paiwa Street [near the current location of Waikele, the large outlet mall].
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Ching, who was born in March, 1840, in the Nam Long region of Chung Shan, came to Hawai‘i in 1874. He later settled in Waipahu with his bound-foot wife, Ching Lee Shee, following her arrival from China in 1884.  Great-great grandmother Mrs. Ching In (Ching Lee Shee). A year later, their beautiful daughter, Yen Lun, was born. Together the Chings raised a family of five children on their farm of several acres leased from the ‘I‘i-Brown Estate for $60 a year. They retired around 1910. Their children, all born in Waipahu, included three girls and two boys. One daughter married an O‘ahu Sugar luna, while another married a Nam Long rice planter from the windward side of O‘ahu. Ching Kwan Yut [sic (this is the spelling used in the book)], their eldest son, became an early Waipahu butcher while the younger son, Ching Pui, was a skilled carpenter for O‘ahu Sugar who later became a noted Honolulu contractor. Both brothers were well known Waipahu baseball players in their youth. |
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