{"id":9205,"date":"2023-04-19T17:29:31","date_gmt":"2023-04-19T17:29:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.deltastate.edu\/library\/?page_id=9205"},"modified":"2023-06-19T20:11:31","modified_gmt":"2023-06-19T20:11:31","slug":"bobby-and-laura-jue","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.deltastate.edu\/library\/bobby-and-laura-jue\/","title":{"rendered":"Bobby and Laura Jue"},"content":{"rendered":"[vc_row type=”in_container” full_screen_row_position=”middle” column_margin=”default” column_direction=”default” column_direction_tablet=”default” column_direction_phone=”default” scene_position=”center” text_color=”dark” text_align=”left” row_border_radius=”none” row_border_radius_applies=”bg” overlay_strength=”0.3″ gradient_direction=”left_to_right” shape_divider_position=”bottom” bg_image_animation=”none”][vc_column column_padding=”no-extra-padding” column_padding_tablet=”inherit” column_padding_phone=”inherit” column_padding_position=”all” column_element_spacing=”default” background_color_opacity=”1″ background_hover_color_opacity=”1″ column_shadow=”none” column_border_radius=”none” column_link_target=”_self” gradient_direction=”left_to_right” overlay_strength=”0.3″ width=”1\/1″ tablet_width_inherit=”default” tablet_text_alignment=”default” phone_text_alignment=”default” bg_image_animation=”none” border_type=”simple” column_border_width=”none” column_border_style=”solid”][divider line_type=”No Line”][vc_column_text]\n

Bobby and Laura Jue Oral History<\/strong><\/span><\/h1>\n[\/vc_column_text][divider line_type=”No Line”][page_submenu alignment=”center” sticky=”true” bg_color=”#008542″ link_color=”#ffffff”][page_link link_url=”https:\/\/www.deltastate.edu\/library\/manuscripts-and-guides\/” title=”Manuscripts & Subject Guides<\/strong>” id=”1682003038862-10″ tab_id=”1682003038863-8″] [\/page_link][page_link link_url=”https:\/\/www.deltastate.edu\/library\/guides-to-the-collection-page\/” title=”Collections Portal<\/strong>” id=”1682003038889-7″ tab_id=”1682003038889-1″] [\/page_link][page_link title=”Visit<\/strong>” id=”1682003038895-3″ tab_id=”1682003038896-2″ link_url=”https:\/\/www.deltastate.edu\/library\/departments\/archives-museum\/visit\/”][\/page_link][page_link title=”Make a Request<\/strong>” id=”1682003038902-9″ tab_id=”1682003038903-5″ link_url=”https:\/\/www.deltastate.edu\/library\/departments\/archives-museum\/requests\/”][\/page_link][page_link title=”About Us<\/strong>” id=”1682003038937-8″ tab_id=”1682003038938-5″ link_url=”https:\/\/www.deltastate.edu\/library\/departments-archives-museum-about-us\/”][\/page_link][page_link title=”Yearbooks Online<\/strong>” id=”1682003038949-7″ tab_id=”1682003038950-10″ link_url=”https:\/\/www.deltastate.edu\/library\/departments\/archives-museum\/yearbooks-alumni-magazines-delta-state-histories\/”][\/page_link][\/page_submenu][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row type=”in_container” full_screen_row_position=”middle” column_margin=”default” column_direction=”default” column_direction_tablet=”default” column_direction_phone=”default” scene_position=”center” text_color=”dark” text_align=”left” row_border_radius=”none” row_border_radius_applies=”bg” overlay_strength=”0.3″ gradient_direction=”left_to_right” shape_divider_position=”bottom” bg_image_animation=”none”][vc_column column_padding=”no-extra-padding” column_padding_tablet=”inherit” column_padding_phone=”inherit” column_padding_position=”all” column_element_spacing=”default” background_color_opacity=”1″ background_hover_color_opacity=”1″ column_shadow=”none” column_border_radius=”none” column_link_target=”_self” gradient_direction=”left_to_right” overlay_strength=”0.3″ width=”1\/1″ tablet_width_inherit=”default” tablet_text_alignment=”default” phone_text_alignment=”default” bg_image_animation=”none” border_type=”simple” column_border_width=”none” column_border_style=”solid”][vc_column_text]Jue, Bobby and Laura\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Tape 1 of 2\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 2\/4\/00<\/strong><\/p>\n

By: Kimberly Lancaster<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This is an oral history of the Chinese in the Mississippi Delta.\u00a0 The interview is being recorded with Bobby and Laura Jue.\u00a0 The interviewer is Kimberly Lancaster.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

KIMBERLY LANCASTER:\u00a0 It is February 4, 2000.\u00a0 This is Kimberly Lancaster.\u00a0 I am talking with Bobby Jue and Laura Jue.\u00a0 Dr. Quon is also here facilitating.\u00a0 Let\u2019s start by asking your parents\u2019 names, Mr. Jue.<\/p>\n

BOBBY JUE:\u00a0 My father\u2019s name was Jue Na Jue. My mother\u2019s name was Sit Ben Hoe.<\/p>\n

KIMBERLY LANCASTER: Where were they from?<\/p>\n

BOBBY JUE:\u00a0 MY father was from the Jue village from the Sunway China. My mother was from the Sigwee village in Sunway China.\u00a0 So they are generally from the same area.\u00a0 I think Laura\u2019s parents were from the same area too.<\/p>\n

LAURA JUE:\u00a0 Canton<\/p>\n

KIMBERLY LANCASTER: Canton<\/p>\n

LAURA JUE:\u00a0 Canton same in China same village.<\/p>\n

KIMBERLY LANCASTER:\u00a0 Same village.<\/p>\n

BOBBY JUE:\u00a0 Well same area.\u00a0 She is from the Lam village.\u00a0 So it is right outside of Hong Kong the country.\u00a0 Hong Kong is a city.\u00a0 They are out there in the country.\u00a0 The reason that I know this is because I took my mother back there fourteen years ago.\u00a0 I think.\u00a0 My mother, my brother, my niece, and myself, we took my mother back to the village that she was born in.\u00a0 That is the reason that I know.<\/p>\n

LAURA JUE:\u00a0 I think that was in 1985 or \u20184 something like that.<\/p>\n

KIMBERLY LANCASTER:\u00a0 Have you also been back?<\/p>\n

LAURA JUE:\u00a0 Well I make a trip back to Hong Kong a year after Bobby go back to China.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t go back in China, the country I mean.\u00a0 I just went back to Hong Kong.<\/p>\n

KIMBERLY LANCASTER:\u00a0 Is that where you grew up?<\/p>\n

LAURA JUE:\u00a0 I grew up in Macau.\u00a0 I moved to Macau a year and a half before I married.\u00a0 I grew up in Macau.\u00a0 Macau is another city that is close to Hong Kong.\u00a0 They come from Portuguese.\u00a0 It has been there about four hundred years.\u00a0 They just returned back to China.<\/p>\n

BOBBY JUE: Last year<\/p>\n

LAURA JUE:\u00a0 Last year<\/p>\n

BOBBY JUE: I think Hong Kong was given back to China two or three years ago.\u00a0 Then McCow was.<\/p>\n

LAURA JUE:\u00a0 I think in 1997 they returned Hong Kong back to China.<\/p>\n

KIMBERLY LANCASTER:\u00a0 What were your parents\u2019 names?<\/p>\n

LAURA JUE:\u00a0 My father\u2019s name was.\u00a0 You know Chinese people use the last name first second.\u00a0 The first name last.\u00a0 They did it like that.\u00a0 My last name is Lan.\u00a0 So my father\u2019s name was Lan Chor.<\/p>\n

KIMBERLY LANCASTER:\u00a0 Lan Chor<\/p>\n

LAURA JUE:\u00a0 Chor.\u00a0 My last name is Lan.<\/p>\n

KIMBERLY LANCASTER:\u00a0 Which is also the name of the village?<\/p>\n

LAURA JUE:\u00a0 No his last name is Jue.<\/p>\n

KIMBERLY LANCASTER:\u00a0 Oh<\/p>\n

LAURA JUE:\u00a0 It is different.\u00a0\u00a0 It is just like Hollandale and Arcola, but we both belong to Mississippi.<\/p>\n

KIMBERLY LANCASTER:\u00a0 I see it.<\/p>\n

LAURA JUE:\u00a0 You see it.<\/p>\n

KIMBERLY LANCASTER:\u00a0 Okay, why did your family leave China?<\/p>\n

BOBBY JUE:\u00a0 Well what I heard was that my grandfather came over first.\u00a0 He worked out on a railroad in California.\u00a0 Somehow he came down here and wound up in Arkansas first.\u00a0 Then he ended up in Mayersville, Mississippi.\u00a0 He had a grocery store there.\u00a0 Then my father, I still have an old key chain that he had, that he dated back in 1937.\u00a0 I heard he came around the mid thirties about\u00a0 \u201935.\u00a0 He came first.\u00a0 He had a store in Rolling Fork, which is about ten miles from Mayersville.\u00a0 Then from there he went to Greenville.\u00a0 He had a store on Lake St. in Greenville.\u00a0 From Greenville, he came to Hollandale.\u00a0 Before he came to Hollandale, they had some officials here.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know if the school officials or the mayor if they would let us got to school her first.\u00a0 My brother was one year older than I am.\u00a0 Then I had a sister.\u00a0 My sister was born here in Hollandale.\u00a0 He had to make sure we could go to school here before he built a store.\u00a0 So got approved that we could go to school here.\u00a0 So bought a lot across.\u00a0 Well what we would call across the tracks.\u00a0 He built the store there in 1948.\u00a0 I think it was 1948 or \u201949.\u00a0 That is how we got started here in Hollandale.<\/p>\n

KIMBERLY LANCASTER:\u00a0 In that building?<\/p>\n

BOBBY JUE: In that building.\u00a0 Then my brother was the first Chinese to go to school here in Hollandale High.\u00a0 I was the second one.<\/p>\n

KIMBERLY LANCASTER:\u00a0 What was his name?<\/p>\n

BOBBY JUE:\u00a0 Martin, well his name is really Martan.\u00a0 He spelled it Martin.\u00a0 They pronounced it Martan.\u00a0 He was named after a doctor that delivered him in Vicksburg.\u00a0 I heard my parents named him after that doctor.\u00a0 That doctor\u2019s name was Dr. Martan.\u00a0 So they named him after him.\u00a0 When he went to school they spelled Martin instead of Martan.\u00a0 So that is how he wound up being Martin instead of Martan.<\/p>\n

KIMBERLY LANCASTER:\u00a0 He was the first to integrate?<\/p>\n

BOBBY JUE:\u00a0 He was the first to integrate the school system in Hollandale.<\/p>\n

KIMBERLY LANCASTER:\u00a0 You were the second one?<\/p>\n

BOBBY JUE:\u00a0 I was the second one.\u00a0 He started in 1950.\u00a0 I started in 1951.\u00a0 Before I even started, all we spoke was Chinese at home.\u00a0 I really didn\u2019t know too much English until I got to school except what we learned around the store.\u00a0 It was kind of unusual you know you are going to school and you don\u2019t know English.\u00a0 I think that had to happen to our oldest daughter.\u00a0 When she went to school, she knew a lot of Chinese. That was what we spoke at home.\u00a0 After the first and second grade, she never did use it anymore.\u00a0 Now she understands a fair amount of it.\u00a0 Especially in our dialects, we speak a different dialect from John Paul.<\/p>\n

KIMBERLY LANCASTER:\u00a0 It is different, which dialect is there?<\/p>\n

BOBBY JUE:\u00a0 Ours is know as the Sun Wai dialect.<\/p>\n

LAURA JUE:\u00a0 Sun Wai dialect.\u00a0 Mr. Quon is a little different.<\/p>\n

BOBBY JUE:\u00a0 I think he is known as (Dialog in Chinese.)<\/p>\n

JQ:\u00a0 Yeah (Dialog in Chinese.)<\/p>\n

BOBBY JUE:\u00a0 (Dialog in Chinese) dialect.\u00a0 In fact his dialect is the same as my brother-in-laws.\u00a0 That is the reason I understand him because I hear my brother-in-law and sister talk all of the time.\u00a0 They spoke the same dialect.\u00a0 Our words are a little different.\u00a0 It is just like British and American.\u00a0 It is a different way they say things.<\/p>\n

KIMBERLY LANCASTER:\u00a0 Where did your parents go to school?\u00a0 Did they go in China?<\/p>\n

BOBBY JUE:\u00a0 Well I think my mother only had one year of schooling. I don\u2019t know about my father.\u00a0 I remember him going to school from bits that people have told me that he went to school.\u00a0 He was a good friend with a guy out of Greenville named Sit.\u00a0 His wife was telling me one time, they used to be running around buddies.\u00a0 They got kidnapped while they were in China.\u00a0 They got kidnapped and held for ransom.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know what kind of ransom.\u00a0 They were running around buddies.\u00a0 I have heard this one another.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know John Paul remembers Mary Ann.\u00a0 Do you remember Mary Ann Sit?<\/p>\n

JQ:\u00a0 Yes<\/p>\n

BOBBY JUE:\u00a0 Used to be on Percy St.<\/p>\n

JQ:\u00a0 That is right.<\/p>\n

BOBBY JUE:\u00a0 Just Right, the guy that had Just Right, that was my father\u2019s running around buddy in China.<\/p>\n

LAURA JUE:\u00a0 You mean how the older generation of Chinese how they learn English?<\/p>\n

KIMBERLY LANCASTER:\u00a0 Well I wondered where they went to school?<\/p>\n

JQ:\u00a0 In China?<\/p>\n

LAURA JUE:\u00a0 In China, you know the Chinese a long time ago.\u00a0 His father, they let the boys go to school.\u00a0 Some of the old ways, they don\u2019t let the girls go to school.\u00a0 They want let the girl take that much education as the boy do.\u00a0 So\u00a0 I think Bobby\u2019s father had a good education, but his mother.\u00a0 You know the more you live together.\u00a0 You have time you always tell me the old story.\u00a0 She said her father let her go to school, but her grandfather would let her go to school.\u00a0 So went one year, and then her grandfather was fussing at her father.\u00a0 So that is the reason she didn\u2019t have time to get her education too much.\u00a0 She is a hard working lady.\u00a0 She is a lot of things she just sat and learned.\u00a0 You see.<\/p>\n

BOBBY JUE:\u00a0 She was the oldest too.\u00a0 She had to stay home and do all of the chores.<\/p>\n

KIMBERLY LANCASTER:\u00a0 She was the oldest in her family?<\/p>\n

BOBBY JUE:\u00a0 The oldest in her family.<\/p>\n

KIMBERLY LANCASTER:\u00a0 Did she have a large family?<\/p>\n

BOBBY JUE:\u00a0 I know she had three sisters.\u00a0 I think she had a brother that ran away.\u00a0 They never did know what happened to him.\u00a0 She had another brother still living in China.\u00a0 He still lives in the house that she was born in.\u00a0 He still lives there.\u00a0 When we went back in 1984, we took her back to the house.\u00a0 The way she said, I think she was about eighty years old then.\u00a0 She was pretty close to eighty then.\u00a0 She said that everything still looked about the same.\u00a0 It was never changed.\u00a0 I think the only thing that had changed was it had two light bulbs.\u00a0 It was twenty-five watt bulbs.\u00a0 I remember that myself.\u00a0 They still cooked on the outside.\u00a0 They had a kitchen away from the house.\u00a0 So you could cook.\u00a0 The place was dark. It still had where they had pigpen.\u00a0 They had chickens. You know things like that.<\/p>\n

KIMBERLY LANCASTER:\u00a0 Okay could you tell me about, you spoke about Martin.\u00a0 How many other brothers and sisters did you have?<\/p>\n

BOBBY JUE:\u00a0 I have two older sisters and I have one brother that is Martin.\u00a0 Then there is myself,\u00a0 and I got a younger sister.\u00a0 The oldest is in Texas, Houston, TX.\u00a0 The second oldest is in San Francisco.\u00a0 Then my brother Martin is in Starksville.\u00a0 Then me, and I have my younger sister in Houston.<\/p>\n

KIMBERLY LANCASTER:\u00a0 So Martin was the middle?<\/p>\n

BOBBY JUE:\u00a0 Yeah he was the middle.\u00a0 He was the oldest boy, but in the middle.<\/p>\n

KIMBERLY LANCASTER:\u00a0 The two girls didn\u2019t go to school here?\u00a0 Or were they all ready out of the house?<\/p>\n

BOBBY JUE:\u00a0 Well when my father came over.\u00a0 My mother was here.\u00a0 We were born here.\u00a0 My two oldest sisters were born in China.\u00a0 They are a lot older.\u00a0 They are probably twenty-four years older than I am.\u00a0 They were a lot older than I am.\u00a0 They were the two born in China.\u00a0 We are the three that were born here, which was pretty common then.<\/p>\n

JQ:\u00a0 Probably the two sisters were under the care of the grandmother probably or somebody else.<\/p>\n

BOBBY JUE:\u00a0 Aunt I think, they went from house to house because we went over here. My father and my mother being over here.\u00a0 I think they stayed with my aunt for a while.\u00a0 Then they stayed with my uncle for a while.\u00a0 We called him uncle.\u00a0 What we call uncle, I think it was my grandfather\u2019s brother.<\/p>\n

LAURA JUE:\u00a0 I think it was grandfather.\u00a0 His father\u2019s cousin I think.<\/p>\n

BOBBY JUE:\u00a0 Yeah my grandfather\u2019s cousin.<\/p>\n

LAURA JUE:\u00a0 Well his sister, they were old enough to take care of themselves really.\u00a0 She is.\u00a0 I think his mother\u00a0 left come to the states. I think his sister was maybe.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know how old they were.<\/p>\n

BOBBY JUE:\u00a0 Eighteen or seventeen.<\/p>\n

LAURA JUE:\u00a0 Yeah they were old enough to take care of themselves.\u00a0 They not really have to live off some people.<\/p>\n

BOBBY JUE:\u00a0 I think they went to a boarding school for a while.\u00a0 My father would send money back to them and take care of them every month.\u00a0 So they received help from my father when they were back there until they got married.<\/p>\n

KIMBERLY LANCASTER:\u00a0 So you grew up in Hollandale?<\/p>\n

BOBBY JUE:\u00a0 Yes, I grew up in Hollandale, and I am still here.<\/p>\n

KIMBERLY LANCASTER:\u00a0 Where did you live?\u00a0 What was your home life?<\/p>\n

BOBBY JUE:\u00a0 Well when my father built this store, I believe in 1948 or 1949.\u00a0 That is where we lived.\u00a0 We had a store that was I think a thousand square foot.\u00a0 It might have been eight hundred or thousand square foot.\u00a0 We had a house behind there.\u00a0 He built it connecting.\u00a0 I guess you would call that a house.\u00a0 It had a living room. Two bedrooms, one bathroom, and one kitchen.\u00a0 The whole house was probably about this size here.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t a real big house.\u00a0 I think back then.\u00a0 That was just the thing you did.\u00a0 You lived behind the grocery store.<\/p>\n

LAURA JUE:\u00a0 You still have four bedrooms?<\/p>\n

BOBBY JUE:\u00a0 No that was before.<\/p>\n

LAURA JUE:\u00a0 Oh that was before.<\/p>\n

BOBBY JUE:\u00a0 When my sister came to live with us.\u00a0 We added on two more bedrooms.\u00a0 I think we had a porch too.\u00a0 I started.\u00a0 I remember going to kindergarten here back in 1950.\u00a0 I went to kindergarten for a year or for a few months.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know if it was for a year and started grade school.\u00a0 I used to.\u00a0 My brother was one year older.\u00a0 He started first.\u00a0 He said I used to wait on him to come back to school.\u00a0 I would wait on him to see how he liked school.\u00a0 He was the first one that went.\u00a0 What else did you ask for?<\/p>\n

KIMBERLY LANCASTER:\u00a0 Oh we were talking about living in the store and also can move on to going to school.\u00a0 Did he have any good tips for you on how to survive in school?<\/p>\n

BOBBY JUE:\u00a0 Well I think we just come home everyday.\u00a0 I would look at his books and stuff like that.<\/p>\n

KIMBERLY LANCASTER:\u00a0 You were eager to get there?<\/p>\n

BOBBY JUE:\u00a0 I was eager to get [there].\u00a0 I would keep on asking my mother and father when I was going to be able to school.\u00a0 So when I finally did, I started first grade in 1951.<\/p>\n

KIMBERLY LANCASTER:\u00a0 In 1951, so you and your brother were the first Chinese to go to Hollandale School.\u00a0 Were there any other Chinese families that you went to school with?<\/p>\n

BOBBY JUE:\u00a0 I don\u2019t think so. They never went to the school.\u00a0 We were the first ones.\u00a0 In fact he was the first one, and I was the second one.\u00a0 We weren\u2019t the first one to graduate.\u00a0 Another girl came in, she started at a higher grade.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know what grade she started at.\u00a0 Eighth or ninth or tenth named Evelyn Quon.\u00a0 She was the first one to graduate form Hollandale High.\u00a0 Then Warren Quon, I believe.\u00a0 He was the second one.\u00a0 Then I think it was my brother after that and then me.\u00a0 So he was really number three.\u00a0 I was number four to graduate from Hollandale High.\u00a0 It is a small town school.<\/p>\n

KIMBERLY LANCASTER:\u00a0 Was it generally happy?\u00a0 Do you have good memories?<\/p>\n

BOBBY JUE:\u00a0 Like I say I like to express this,\u00a0 It was time, listen being there.\u00a0 That is the way things were then.\u00a0 I would like to say that before I comment on the other.\u00a0 The experience wasn\u2019t what you would call happy.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t what you would call sad.\u00a0 You just never felt like you belonged.\u00a0 You sort of became uncomfortable because you never fitted in.\u00a0 You always was always singled out because of race.\u00a0 Like I keep saying, I think it was a sign of the time.\u00a0 It was just a time then.\u00a0 It is not as bad now.\u00a0 I think it is still like that, but it is not as bad.\u00a0 You have incidents you remember, like when I was in the second grade you know they give our Valentines and all and everybody was getting a whole lot of them, I got I think I got four, five, or six.\u00a0 Everybody was getting one from each member of the class and I was the only one that didn\u2019t.\u00a0 Stuff like that you remember. You never did have a true relationship with a lot of the kids there.\u00a0 A lot of them, not a lot of them, you know you have name calling because I guess being the first one there, second one really.\u00a0 They call you these names.\u00a0 Like I said it was a sign of the time.\u00a0 Overall, it was a learning experience it.\u00a0 I give you an inside on how to treat people of other races.\u00a0 Like Indians that are coming here now India, Indians are coming in.\u00a0 You can sympathize with them on how some of them have been treated too.<\/p>\n

KIMBERLY LANCASTER:\u00a0 When we spoke on the phone you mentioned that you felt like you could choose bitterness, or make it . . .<\/p>\n

BOBBY JUE:\u00a0 That is right.\u00a0 I am glad you brought that up.\u00a0 Growing up, I guess you would be bitter.\u00a0 As you look over, it\u2019s no use holding bitterness because it is timely.\u00a0 That is the way things were at that time.\u00a0 You look back upon it.\u00a0 You use it as a learning experience on how to deal with people of different cultures.\u00a0 I always tell my kids, I will tell them some stories like that,\u00a0 I will just tell them it was just the time.\u00a0 Now I don\u2019t think it is like that as bad because our kids are mainly real well with them.\u00a0 They get along real well.\u00a0 When I was going to school, I don\u2019t think I had ever been to a white person\u2019s house until I think I was in the Cub Scouts.\u00a0 I went to this Den Mother\u2019s house for meetings.\u00a0 I think it was once a week.\u00a0 That was a first experience.\u00a0 The second experience I had a classmate brought me to his house.\u00a0 I don\u2019t think I went in,\u00a0 I just stayed on the outside looking at the patio.\u00a0 I just imagined that was real nice patio.\u00a0 It had cover and four tiles on it.\u00a0 It was real nice.\u00a0 I had another friend, in fact, he lived next door to this friend, he took me all through his house.\u00a0 I just imagined living in a nice house like this because we lived behind the grocery store.\u00a0 That is the only time I remember ever going to white\u2019s person house.\u00a0 I don\u2019t think I ever went to them even during high school.\u00a0 I never was invited.\u00a0 I don\u2019t think I was ever invited to birthday parties.\u00a0 That was the way time was then.<\/p>\n

KIMBERLY LANCASTER:\u00a0 Laura when did you come to the United States?<\/p>\n

LAURA JUE:\u00a0 In 1968 the year I married.<\/p>\n

KIMBERLY LANCASTER:\u00a0 The year\u00a0 that you married.<\/p>\n

LAURA JUE:\u00a0 Two months after I married.<\/p>\n

KIMBERLY LANCASTER:\u00a0 Two months, how did you meet?<\/p>\n

LAURA JUE:\u00a0 Bobby went back to Hong Kong in 1963 of January?<\/p>\n

BOBBY JUE:\u00a0 1968<\/p>\n

LAURA JUE:\u00a0 1968, excuse me, then somebody introduce you to match you.\u00a0 I think like a Chinese young man.\u00a0 If they don\u2019t match somebody, they lie.\u00a0 The parents always send their children, the son, back to Hong Kong or China to find a girl that they would like to marry.\u00a0 That way, I think the reason they want the grandchildren to learn more, keep more Chinese traditions.\u00a0 That is the reason.<\/p>\n

KIMBERLY LANCASTER:\u00a0 Chinese tradition.<\/p>\n

BOBBY JUE:\u00a0 Tradition<\/p>\n

LAURA JUE:\u00a0 Tradition, yeah, otherwise if they marry a girl from. . .\u00a0 the born in the states they will not know that much like a girl would from Hong Kong and China about the Chinese customs.<\/p>\n

BOBBY JUE: \u00a0Like our kids now, they like to eat dimsum.\u00a0 John Quon knows dimsum, Chinese delicacy.\u00a0 I think otherwise you would never think about eating stuff like that if the parents are both what they call A. B. C.s, American Born Chinese.\u00a0 Our kids like to eat stuff like what they call wonton soup.\u00a0 Stuff they call Jolk.\u00a0 They like to eat all that stuff.<\/p>\n

JQ:\u00a0 That is Chinese pork.<\/p>\n

LAURA JUE:\u00a0 See you can only owe me.\u00a0 I think there is more time to keep a Chinese custom or tradition if their son go back to Hong Kong and marry a Chinese girl.\u00a0 You see.<\/p>\n

KIMBERLY LANCASTER:\u00a0 What was it like coming?\u00a0 What were your impressions of Hollandale when you arrived?<\/p>\n

LAURA JUE:\u00a0 You mean . . .<\/p>\n

KIMBERLY LANCASTER:\u00a0 What did you think of it?\u00a0 How did you feel about it?<\/p>\n

LAURA JUE:\u00a0 I am the oldest one.\u00a0 Let me tell you about it.\u00a0 You know a long time ago the Chinese\u00a0 could have part-time.\u00a0 My father was from China in 1948.\u00a0 He had business in China.<\/p>\n

KIMBERLY LANCASTER:\u00a0 Communist take over?<\/p>\n

LAURA JUE:\u00a0 I get so many brothers and sisters?\u00a0 I am the oldest one of eleven.<\/p>\n

KIMBERLY LANCASTER:\u00a0 Eleven?<\/p>\n

LAURA JUE:\u00a0 Yeah, so my father told me that if you have a chance to go to America.\u00a0 At that time. . .\u00a0 now a lot of things have changed.\u00a0 We had so many kids.\u00a0 The oldest one is always trying to think about how to help my father.\u00a0 So maybe they would have more chance to get education because Father is not able to support that many children to go to school to get high education.<\/p>\n

BOBBY JUE:\u00a0 So, coming over here give her the opportunity?<\/p>\n

LAURA JUE:\u00a0 Also sometimes you met someone you like and then you marry.\u00a0 Not me, not me just for that.<\/p>\n

KIMBERLY LANCASTER:\u00a0 Laura, who of you family members most influenced you?\u00a0 Who taught you the most valuable lessons in life, your mother or father?<\/p>\n

LAURA JUE:\u00a0 My mother because my father had to go off to work all of the time.<\/p>\n

KIMBERLY LANCASTER:\u00a0 When you came to Hollandale were you able to maintain the Chinese traditions in your house?<\/p>\n

LAURA JUE:\u00a0\u00a0 You mean I can keep doing the Chinese, oh yes.\u00a0 We all ready know that.\u00a0 I grew up in McCow.\u00a0 My mother-in-law is always telling me this and that.<\/p>\n

KIMBERLY LANCASTER:\u00a0 Mother-in-law?<\/p>\n

LAURA JUE:\u00a0 Yes<\/p>\n

BOBBY JUE:\u00a0 One of the ways that we have tried to keep the Chinese traditions is Chinese New Year. . . is one of them.<\/p>\n

LAURA JUE:\u00a0\u00a0 Tomorrow is Chinese New Year.<\/p>\n

BOBBY JUE: Yes, tomorrow is Chinese New Year.\u00a0 We cook that traditional Chinese dinner.\u00a0 Then we will go to the cemetery to visit every Easter or whenever we go.\u00a0 Sometimes we don’t make it on Easter.\u00a0\u00a0 We still do that ritual.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know if John Quon has ever done it.\u00a0 We cook Roast Pork.\u00a0 We take these incense.\u00a0 We take little cups and put whiskey in it.<\/p>\n

LAURA JUE:\u00a0 (Dialog in Chinese)<\/p>\n

JQ:\u00a0\u00a0 (Dialog in Chinese)<\/p>\n

LAURA JUE:\u00a0 It is just like a long time ago.\u00a0 It is like the great, great grandparents would do the same thing in China.\u00a0 We still do all of this.<\/p>\n

BOBBY JUE:\u00a0 The kids now just take flowers and that is it.\u00a0 We still do the old traditional way.\u00a0 In fact we got the youngest daughter.\u00a0 Her name is Sylvia.\u00a0 She doesn\u2019t want to go unless we do it that way.\u00a0 She still wants to do the traditional Chinese cemetery ritual.\u00a0 She doesn\u2019t wasn\u2019t to take the flowers and put it on there.\u00a0 In fact, we wouldn\u2019t do it one year because we got busy.\u00a0 She got mad.\u00a0 She said that she would go cook it herself.\u00a0 We did it anyway.\u00a0 So we cooked it anyway. We tried to uphold our end of it.<\/p>\n

KIMBERLY LANCASTER:\u00a0 Are they buried in the Chinese cemetery?<\/p>\n

BOBBY JUE:\u00a0 My mother is.\u00a0 My father, he died.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know, but he is buried in Memphis at Elmwood.\u00a0 It is probably one of the oldest cemetery in Memphis.\u00a0 I think the only reason that they took him there is because his father was buried there.<\/p>\n

LAURA JUE:\u00a0 No, I think his mother told me that they didn\u2019t have a\u00a0 Chinese cemetery over there for just the Chinese.\u00a0 Memphis they have an area just for Chinese.\u00a0 They always like to put everything together.\u00a0 Memphis has a Chinese (Dialog in Chinese)<\/p>\n

BOBBY JUE:\u00a0 Yeah<\/p>\n

JQ:\u00a0 Yeah\u00a0 (Dialog in Chinese)<\/p>\n

LAURA JUE:\u00a0 You and us belong to.<\/p>\n

BOBBY JUE:\u00a0 I think it is still actively.<\/p>\n

JQ:\u00a0 No it is not.\u00a0 It used to be Bant St.\u00a0 You know a very bad neighborhood.<\/p>\n

BOBBY JUE:\u00a0 Very bad.<\/p>\n

LAURA JUE:\u00a0 Well now they have a party they always go to the restaurant.<\/p>\n

JQ:\u00a0 They used to have it upstairs.<\/p>\n

BOBBY JUE:\u00a0 You remember that place?<\/p>\n

JQ:\u00a0 Yeah<\/p>\n

LAURA JUE:\u00a0 People are getting old.\u00a0 They don\u2019t want to cook.\u00a0 They are not able to cook.\u00a0 Then the young generation they don\u2019t know how to cook. That is why they have all the parties at the restaurant.<\/p>\n

JQ:\u00a0 Well you know that is true here too.\u00a0 You know used to everybody would get together and do the cooking.<\/p>\n

LAURA JUE:\u00a0 Oh yeah in Cleveland they have big parties.<\/p>\n

JQ:\u00a0 Now they are all old or passed away.<\/p>\n

BOBBY JUE:\u00a0 What we are talking about now Kimberly is there is a Chinese Association.\u00a0 What purpose of that was when you have new immigrants come in. They would go there, and have a place to stay and probably get a little help too.\u00a0 That’s right of fact John Quon<\/p>\n

JQ:\u00a0 Yeah<\/p>\n

KIMBERLY LANCASTER:\u00a0 This was based in Cleveland?<\/p>\n

BOBBY JUE:\u00a0 No, in Memphis<\/p>\n

JQ:\u00a0 Memphis<\/p>\n

KIMBERLY LANCASTER:\u00a0 In Memphis<\/p>\n

LAURA JUE:\u00a0 We should have found a\u00a0 place that has a Chinese party once a year or two.\u00a0 Let the Chinese people meet each other at least once year.\u00a0 Keep in touch, you know.<\/p>\n

BOBBY JUE:\u00a0 When we were growing up we had the Lucky Eleven dances for Chinese from Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Tennessee.<\/p>\n

JQ:\u00a0 They were Mississippi State students that sponsored that.<\/p>\n

BOBBY JUE:\u00a0 Yeah, Mississippi State had a club called the Lucky Eleven.\u00a0 They were given a party during Christmas.\u00a0 Thanksgiving too, wasn\u2019t it too John Quon?<\/p>\n

JQ:\u00a0 No, Ole Miss did the Thanksgiving.<\/p>\n

BOBBY JUE:\u00a0 Ole Miss gave the Thanksgiving, and Mississippi State gave the Christmas dance.<\/p>\n

LAURA JUE:\u00a0 For Chinese<\/p>\n

BOBBY JUE:\u00a0 It was for Chinese was all over.<\/p>\n

LAURA JUE:\u00a0 For the children, not for the old age.<\/p>\n

JQ:\u00a0 Yeah for the children<\/p>\n

BOBBY JUE:\u00a0 Then we all get together down there. You meet a lot of your friends there.<\/p>\n

LAURA JUE:\u00a0 Sometimes, we know we had one in Greenville.\u00a0 It is easier for the people that are close around here.\u00a0 It is too far over there.<\/p>\n

JQ:\u00a0 They are working on that though.<\/p>\n

BOBBY JUE:\u00a0 I don\u2019t think they have the barn like they used to though.\u00a0 Used to you look forward to that Thanksgiving, that Christmas dance when everybody gets together.<\/p>\n

LAURA JUE:\u00a0 Maybe we could have it in the convention center.\u00a0 First, if you want cook together again you have to have somebody go there and help.\u00a0 Some people prepare and some people cook.\u00a0 Work together and it will always work out.<\/p>\n

KIMBERLY LANCASTER:\u00a0 What was the most important thing you learned at home?<\/p>\n

BOBBY JUE:\u00a0 I think I was taught hard work and achievement.<\/p>\n

KIMBERLY LANCASTER:\u00a0 I had asked what was the most important thing that you had learned at home.\u00a0 You told me about hard work and achievement.<\/p>\n

BOBBY JUE:\u00a0 Hard work and achievement, and teach your kids right from wrong and being honest.\u00a0 My mother always taught me to save my money.\u00a0 So one of these days you won’t have to be depending on anybody.\u00a0 Mostly to just to be really maintain good reputation and have high standards.\u00a0 I think now the Chinese now has achieved quite a bit.\u00a0 Back in those days we had was a grocery store.\u00a0 You didn\u2019t have that many professional people in this area.\u00a0 I don\u2019t really think anywhere really.\u00a0 Main thing was you couldn\u2019t get hired.\u00a0 I think that is one reason the Chinese had to go to the black neighborhoods because they were accepted more there with the blacks.\u00a0 The Chinese didn\u2019t show that much discrimination.\u00a0 They didn\u2019t look down upon the black as much as the Caucasian race did.\u00a0 I think that is why the Chinese folks did well in the black neighborhoods.\u00a0 The black neighborhoods created a lot of affection for the Chinese.\u00a0 Like John and like my brother.\u00a0 He is pretty popular.\u00a0 He is the biggest ham radio manufacturer in the nation now.\u00a0 He has two hundred and fifty associates there working under him.\u00a0 I think he is one of the biggest employers in Oktibbeha County.\u00a0 He has done really well.\u00a0 He was the businessman of the year in Mississippi.\u00a0 Did you know that John Paul?<\/p>\n

JQ:\u00a0 I think it was three years ago.<\/p>\n

BOBBY JUE:\u00a0 Yeah it was several years ago.\u00a0 He started from a humble background.<\/p>\n

KIMBERLY LANCASTER:\u00a0 Do you think the hard work in the grocery store all of that helped?<\/p>\n

BOBBY JUE:\u00a0 I think so.\u00a0 Another thing that helped was being segregated.\u00a0 I think it helped to.\u00a0 He wanted to achieve more and do better.\u00a0 I think we were segregated from both places.\u00a0 The Caucasian race had engage.\u00a0 You really didn\u2019t want to associate with what you call back then color race.\u00a0 So we really kept together to ourselves.\u00a0 We just weren\u2019t accepted.\u00a0 I think that was one of the reason that made you want to do better from segregation.\u00a0 I think it helps us both ways.\u00a0 I think there is a plus.\u00a0 I think that is one of our main things.\u00a0 Just want to be better, because you were looked down upon.\u00a0 You want to rise above.<\/p>\n

KIMBERLY LANCASTER:\u00a0 You talked a little bit about New Years.\u00a0 Could you talk more about the celebrations, weddings, births, and tell us a little bit about your children?<\/p>\n

LAURA JUE:\u00a0 Well the Chinese New Year is a tradition, and we cook a vegetable.\u00a0 We call it (Dialog in Chinese).\u00a0 I will show you how okay.<\/p>\n

KIMBERLY LANCASTER:\u00a0 This is a question for both of you although you didn\u2019t grow up in the Mississippi Delta.\u00a0 What has become of the people that you have known here?\u00a0 Have they chosen to stay in the Delta?\u00a0 Have many of your Chinese friends stayed in the Delta?\u00a0 Or they left?<\/p>\n

BOBBY JUE:\u00a0 Well the people that I have grew up with.\u00a0 I don\u2019t think anybody stayed except for.\u00a0 I think who have stayed here, John Paul and me.\u00a0 Everybody else\u00a0 . . .<\/p>\n

LAURA JUE:\u00a0 Richard Chow<\/p>\n

BOBBY JUE:\u00a0 Richard Chow he didn\u2019t stay.\u00a0 There is another guy Richard Chow.\u00a0 He didn\u2019t stay.\u00a0 He went to California.\u00a0 He just came back from. He was in California for twenty-five or thirty years and then he came back.\u00a0 He didn\u2019t stay.\u00a0 The only one that I remember growing up around here.\u00a0 I had a good friend still a good friend, Wally Pang.\u00a0 He was one that stayed.\u00a0 We got a few in Clarksdale that stayed.\u00a0 Around here and the Greenville area.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know anybody that stayed.\u00a0 There is one guy down there in Butch, Wong.\u00a0 His name was John Wong.\u00a0 He is still here. Everybody else is in Texas, California.\u00a0 People I grew up with and used to run around with in Cleveland they are all gone.\u00a0 A lot of them in Greenville are all gone.\u00a0 Just like in Hollandale a lot of them are gone.\u00a0 There is some friends down in Rolling Fork.\u00a0 They have gone.<\/p>\n

KIMBERLY LANCASTER:\u00a0 You think for mainly economic reasons or tired of discrimination?<\/p>\n

BOBBY JUE:\u00a0 Yeah for economic reasons. I think more for economic reasons.\u00a0 I think the discrimination part came in probably in the fifties.\u00a0 The sixties were getting better.\u00a0 In fact, I think it was getting better when they signed the Civil Rights Law in 1968.\u00a0 Things got better then.\u00a0 I think most of it was that you couldn\u2019t find jobs here.\u00a0 I know it was just that you couldn\u2019t find jobs here.\u00a0 Just like my brother, he started his own company.\u00a0 He had to go to Illinois to find a job.<\/p>\n

KIMBERLY LANCASTER:\u00a0 To get started.<\/p>\n

BOBBY JUE:\u00a0 He graduated from Mississippi State.\u00a0 He majored in engineer.\u00a0 He got his master\u2019s degree at Georgia Tech.\u00a0 Then he came back.\u00a0 He worked on his doctrine at Mississippi State. Before he got his thesis out, he quit.\u00a0 He started his own business. He taught at the same time.\u00a0 He started his own business in an old hotel room.\u00a0 It was him and another guy.\u00a0 He started there and from then on he just grew.\u00a0 He is now around the nation.\u00a0 I think he got through.\u00a0 Haven\u2019t seen him in six months.\u00a0 He is so busy.\u00a0 He call him up.\u00a0 He is always so busy.\u00a0 He bought a company out in California not too long ago.<\/p>\n

KIMBERLY LANCASTER:\u00a0 Could you tell me a little bit how you took over the grocery store business?\u00a0 And Laura you also work there?<\/p>\n

LAURA JUE:\u00a0 Yes<\/p>\n

BOBBY JUE:\u00a0 See my father died when I was six years old. I just got in first grade.\u00a0 I think he died in November.\u00a0 I just got in the first grade.\u00a0 When he died, my mother, older brother, my little sister.\u00a0 She was three.\u00a0 My brother was seven.\u00a0 He was just in second grade.\u00a0 He died.\u00a0 My father died.\u00a0 We had the discussion on how were going to be able support us.\u00a0 Is my mama going to be able to support us?\u00a0 At first they wanted to bring my uncle down from Memphis.\u00a0 My mother didn\u2019t want them to do that.<\/p>\n

LAURA JUE:\u00a0 His great uncle.<\/p>\n

BOBBY JUE:\u00a0 Great uncle, going to let him come down and help us out. \u00a0My mother didn\u2019t want that.\u00a0 So we had an older sister that was living in Vicksburg and her husband\u00a0 my brother-in-law was working for his father but in that business my brother-in-law older brother was working there.\u00a0 So it was two brothers working there.\u00a0 So my brother-in-law\u2019s father suggested that he come down and help my mother out.\u00a0 So he came down in 1951 after my father died.\u00a0 He stayed there for.<\/p>\n

LAURA JUE:\u00a0 Fourteen years<\/p>\n

BOBBY JUE:\u00a0 Thirteen or fourteen years<\/p>\n

LAURA JUE:\u00a0 Fourteen<\/p>\n

BOBBY JUE:\u00a0 Fourteen years, he got us through high school.\u00a0 When I was growing up, my mother used tell me that I was the one that need to help her.\u00a0 She was telling us that we need to help her because we don\u2019t have a father.\u00a0 She emphasized on me that I need to be the one that stays behind and help.\u00a0 So when graduated from high school, I stayed behind and helped her out and\u00a0 I was the one that sent my brother to school and my sister.\u00a0 I just stayed on there in the business.\u00a0 Oh it has been good.\u00a0 Over the years, it is kind a hard to start off it is kind of hard.\u00a0 There were couple of things you didn\u2019t want to do.\u00a0 After a while you just get used to it.\u00a0 You just do what you have to do.\u00a0 Through the years I think God has blessed us.\u00a0 It has never been in vain.\u00a0 I am being proud of seeing your brother and sister to school and four kids.<\/p>\n

KIMBERLY LANCASTER:\u00a0 And seeing them succeed.<\/p>\n

BOBBY JUE:\u00a0 Yeah, we still got two kids still going to college.\u00a0 I hope they succeed.<\/p>\n

LAURA JUE:\u00a0 You see just like his mother, my mother-in-law.\u00a0 She loves her husband.\u00a0 She was from China to English.\u00a0 She was big enough to work in a store by herself.\u00a0 So her father\u2019s big sister and his brother-in-law came and help the mother.\u00a0 The first fourteen years after their father passed.\u00a0 Then my mother-in-law said when his sister\u2019s children was grown they have to go to college.\u00a0 The store is small. Not big enough to support two families.\u00a0 That is why his sister and brother-in-law had to move to Arcola and get another store.\u00a0 So Bobby can finish high school, and\u00a0 he can take over and help his mom.<\/p>\n

KIMBERLY LANCASTER:\u00a0 So they moved to Arcola?<\/p>\n

LAURA JUE:\u00a0 Yeah, you know it is just a family store.\u00a0\u00a0 You know like about a grocery store.\u00a0 It is just a small grocery store.\u00a0 You don\u2019t make enough to support eight children.\u00a0 You see what I mean.\u00a0 That is why they have to find their own place.\u00a0 Bobby can help his mother run the store.<\/p>\n

KIMBERLY LANCASTER:\u00a0 As he grew up?<\/p>\n

LAURA JUE:\u00a0 Yeah<\/p>\n

KIMBERLY LANCASTER:\u00a0 The uncle moved?<\/p>\n

LAURA JUE:\u00a0 No, when Bobby was growing up after he finished high school, he just helped his mother run the store.\u00a0 Before he grew up, his sister and brother helped his mother.<\/p>\n

BOBBY JUE:\u00a0 Sister and brother-in-law, the oldest sister and her husband.<\/p>\n

LAURA JUE:\u00a0 Mr. Tam in Arcola<\/p>\n

KIMBERLY LANCASTER:\u00a0 Mr. Tam, that is my brother-in-law.<\/p>\n

LAURA JUE:\u00a0 (Tape was not able to understand.)<\/p>\n

KIMBERLY LANCASTER:\u00a0 You have four children?<\/p>\n

LAURA JUE:\u00a0 I have four children, yes.<\/p>\n

KIMBERLY LANCASTER:\u00a0 What are their names?<\/p>\n

LAURA JUE:\u00a0 My oldest daughter named Christina Jue.\u00a0 The second son is Patrick Jue.\u00a0 The third one is Timothy Jue, and Sylvia Jue.<\/p>\n

KIMBERLY LANCASTER:\u00a0 And you in college?<\/p>\n

LAURA JUE:\u00a0 The two young ones are still in college.\u00a0 Tim pays a lot.\u00a0 It is high.<\/p>\n

KIMBERLY LANCASTER:\u00a0 Did they also grow up helping in the store?<\/p>\n

LAURA JUE:\u00a0 Oh yeah they all helped.\u00a0 You know we started to teach the children.\u00a0 They learn how to sell the candy and coke when they were six years old or five years old.<\/p>\n

BOBBY JUE:\u00a0 When they were five or six years old they were could make change for ten dollars bills.<\/p>\n

LAURA JUE:\u00a0 They learn day by the day.<\/p>\n

BOBBY JUE:\u00a0 I remember the youngest one matter fact the oldest one, Christina would help. She would sometimes stand on the chair to help.\u00a0 She didn\u2019t mind helping.<\/p>\n

LAURA JUE:\u00a0 I think most Chinese families, if the father and mother were to have a store.\u00a0 They grow\u00a0 up in the store.\u00a0 They children always help.\u00a0 That is why they can count to ten so easy.\u00a0 They learn it everyday.<\/p>\n

BOBBY JUE:\u00a0 They learn to cut bologna.\u00a0 They learn how to chop neck bones with the cleaver.<\/p>\n

LAURA JUE:\u00a0 Pack meat, we have a butcher.\u00a0 When you are busy, and sometimes you get so busy.\u00a0 When people get to stay in.\u00a0 I remember the butcher would always would\u00a0 put one of the boy.\u00a0 He would stand up in a chair.\u00a0 So he could get higher so he can weigh the meat.\u00a0 He could pack the meat for them.\u00a0 They would always helped.<\/p>\n

KIMBERLY LANCASTER:\u00a0 So they can wear many hats.\u00a0 They take\u00a0 on different roles.<\/p>\n

LAURA JUE:\u00a0 Well I think like the Chinese people are like that.\u00a0 If their mom and dad have a grocery store.\u00a0 The children will learn how to selling, pack the grocery.\u00a0 Like some families they have restaurant, then the kid how to learn how to wash dishes, cut up, and pack the food take the order. That the way you raised a family.<\/p>\n

BOBBY JUE:\u00a0 The two oldest ones kind of grew up behind the grocery store.\u00a0 Well the third one did too.<\/p>\n

KIMBERLY LANCASTER:\u00a0 Behind the grocery store?<\/p>\n

LAURA JUE:\u00a0 The third one did not.\u00a0 We still go back to the store during every day.\u00a0 We moved to a house when the third one was.\u00a0 I still remember he lived back there when he was here.<\/p>\n

KIMBERLY LANCASTER:\u00a0 When you moved here?<\/p>\n

LAURA JUE:\u00a0 Yeah, the store only had two bedrooms when they children was growing.\u00a0 You don\u2019t have enough room.\u00a0 That is the reason why we build a house.<\/p>\n

BOBBY JUE:\u00a0 They still have fond memories of living behind the store.<\/p>\n

LAURA JUE:\u00a0 Also you don\u2019t have to be tied twenty-four hours and staying in the same place.\u00a0 We were working there, living there.\u00a0 So every Sunday, I couldn\u2019t cope.\u00a0 We got to get out.\u00a0\u00a0 Get out of the house.<\/p>\n

KIMBERLY LANCASTER:\u00a0 So you work seven days a week?<\/p>\n

LAURA JUE:\u00a0 Seven days, you know like Friday and Saturdays.\u00a0 When I come here, I don\u2019t understand why do people shop so late.\u00a0 Saturday night, one o\u2019clock or two o\u2019clock at night they come in and do their shopping.\u00a0 We don\u2019t get to close until two or two thirty sometimes. After we close the store. Then we have to count all the money.\u00a0 We don\u2019t go to three o\u2019clock. The next morning, seven thirty or eight o\u2019clock you get ready to open.\u00a0 So every Saturday night I never get enough sleep. That is how we work.<\/p>\n

BOBBY JUE:\u00a0 We stay open till three o\u2019clock in the morning on Saturday nights.<\/p>\n

KIMBERLY LANCASTER:\u00a0 You do?<\/p>\n

BOBBY JUE:\u00a0 Yeah, three o\u2019clock in the morning.<\/p>\n

LAURA JUE:\u00a0 Every Saturday night.<\/p>\n

BOBBY JUE:\u00a0 Even when I was growing up.\u00a0 I was doing that since I was in the second or third grade.\u00a0 I would stay up till two or three o\u2019clock in the morning on Saturdays helping out in the grocery store.\u00a0 One fond memory that we had was late at night.\u00a0 This was late on Saturday night. Just before my father died.\u00a0 I remember my brother and I used to stay up on Saturday night after we got through helping out.\u00a0 We would wait for the Hot Tamale man.\u00a0 They used to have hot tamales.\u00a0 They have a\u00a0 little cart.\u00a0 They would push it up and down the streets and sell it to people.\u00a0 My brother and I used to get a quarter a piece.\u00a0 He would buy a dozen hot tamales for a quarter, and I would buy a dozen for a quarter.\u00a0 We would eat that on Saturday\u2019s nights.\u00a0 That was about 1950 I guess.\u00a0 My father was still keep the ones so it must have been about \u201850.\u00a0 I used to be the guy that sold coca colas.\u00a0 It was nickel a bottle for a coke.\u00a0 It was a three-cent deposit.\u00a0 I was the one that sold coca colas.<\/p>\n

LAURA JUE:\u00a0 Nickel bottles cola, and a nickel bag of potato chips.\u00a0 You can buy a lot of stuff for a dollar.<\/p>\n

KIMBERLY LANCASTER:\u00a0 What kind of extra curricular activities when you were growing up?\u00a0 Were you mainly in the store and at school?\u00a0 Were you able to go to church?<\/p>\n

BOBBY JUE:\u00a0 Well we went to church on Sundays.\u00a0 That was one good thing that my brother-in-law did.\u00a0 He made us go to church on Sundays.\u00a0 You could in the store.\u00a0 We lived across the tracks.\u00a0 People made fun of you when you lived across the tracks.\u00a0 You weren’t living close by your friends.\u00a0 We were the only Chinese family over there.\u00a0 The other ones was on the better side of the track.\u00a0 We were on the poor side of the tracks.\u00a0 We didn\u2019t do anything but work in the store.\u00a0 In high school I played at band, Boy Scouts, Cub Scouts.<\/p>\n

KIMBERLY LANCASTER:\u00a0 What instrument did you play?<\/p>\n

BOBBY JUE:\u00a0 Trombone, I was in the Boy Scout.<\/p>\n

KIMBERLY LANCASTER:\u00a0 Does he still play?<\/p>\n

LAURA JUE:\u00a0 I have never heard him play again.<\/p>\n

BOBBY JUE:\u00a0 I used to attend Boy Scout and Cub Scout and church on Sundays.\u00a0 We just never had any friends over because living across the tracks.\u00a0 People would be scared to come over.\u00a0 You know you live on this side of the tracks.\u00a0 We had very few friends that would come over.\u00a0 When they did come over they kind of sneaked over.\u00a0 They would visit for a little while and left.\u00a0 Back in those days nobody came across the tracks.\u00a0 When our kids were growing up, they had friends that wanted to go over to see what it was like.\u00a0 They usually would come over here.\u00a0 We would be at the store.\u00a0 Our kids would come home after school.\u00a0 They would stay at the house until six or seven o\u2019clock. Come back on to the store.<\/p>\n

LAURA JUE:\u00a0 No, not six or seven.\u00a0 They can\u2019t come to the house until we close.<\/p>\n

BOBBY JUE:\u00a0 I mean they came back after school.\u00a0 Then we would take them to the store.\u00a0 Then after we close they would come back till nine or ten o\u2019clock at night.<\/p>\n

LAURA JUE:\u00a0 In the summertime we close at ten o\u2019clock.\u00a0 The children can come home after ten o\u2019clock after we close.\u00a0 In the wintertime we close a little bit earlier.\u00a0 My oldest daughter, when she got her driving license.\u00a0 I let her come home earlier after then.\u00a0 They come home and do their lessons.\u00a0 So me and Bobby would stay at the store.\u00a0 Before she get her licenses.\u00a0 Sometimes I would take the children home earlier because my mother-in-law stayed there.\u00a0 We would have a hard time and long hours for the last thirty years.<\/p>\n

KIMBERLY LANCASTER:\u00a0 I know the store, you still have the store.\u00a0 Do you start any new business?<\/p>\n

BOBBY JUE:\u00a0 We are renovating, where Bill\u2019s Dollar Store is.\u00a0 In fact I worked in a grocery store for thirty-seven years, eighty hours a week.\u00a0 I don\u2019t think I have any weeks that were less than seventy-five.\u00a0 We had the opportunity.\u00a0 Our competition, Sunflower wanted to buy us out.\u00a0 He called me up one day and said that he wanted to ask if we wanted to sell out to him.\u00a0 I said if the price is right we will.\u00a0 So we negotiated around for year or two years.\u00a0 I thought they were just playing around.\u00a0 Finally there was a price was five percent more than we expected to get.\u00a0 Not what we wanted.\u00a0 It is what we expected to get.\u00a0 So we took it.\u00a0 So after thirty-seven years, eighty hours a week.\u00a0 We are retired.\u00a0 I don\u2019t call it retirement.\u00a0 I call it unemployment.<\/p>\n

LAURA JUE:\u00a0 It is not.\u00a0 The reason you are not.\u00a0 You are not really old enough to retire.\u00a0 I think about Bobby and not working since he was eighteen.\u00a0 So he can run a store for thirty-six years.\u00a0 I think it is time for him to have a little fun.\u00a0 You don\u2019t need to spend his whole life in the store.\u00a0 You know, money is not everything.\u00a0 You have to think about your health to.<\/p>\n

KIMBERLY LANCASTER:\u00a0 How long have you been here?<\/p>\n

LAURA JUE:\u00a0 Thirty-one, since \u201968.<\/p>\n

BOBBY JUE:\u00a0 Yeah thirty-one years.<\/p>\n

LAURA JUE:\u00a0 I have been working in the store for thirty years.<\/p>\n

KIMBERLY LANCASTER:\u00a0 Thirty years.<\/p>\n

LAURA JUE:\u00a0 So I tell myself, I have the chance to spend and different kind of life not all my life in a store.\u00a0 You might make a little money, but you don\u2019t get nothing in your life.\u00a0 You don\u2019t have time to.\u00a0 Take the time to eat a dinner.\u00a0 You don\u2019t have the time to pick a time to cook a dinner. You always had to run to front.\u00a0 You know when we lived in the back of the store.\u00a0 Any time you weren\u2019t busy.\u00a0 You know we have the new store.\u00a0 We have ten or twelve employees.\u00a0 At the old store, we do most ourselves.\u00a0 We don\u2019t hire a cashier.\u00a0 You cook a dinner sometimes.\u00a0 You start cooking.\u00a0 You call you every fifteen and twenty minutes. You have to put everything down and come to the front and help sell some grocery.\u00a0 The go back and continue your cooking or continue dinner.\u00a0 I am tired of that.<\/p>\n

KIMBERLY LANCASTER:\u00a0 Waiting on you have to work?<\/p>\n

LAURA JUE:\u00a0 Oh yeah you know what I am doing when I cook a dinner.\u00a0 We don\u2019t ever have a chance to eat together.\u00a0 Either I eat first, or Bobby watch the store.\u00a0 He eat first, and I watch the store.\u00a0 If they are eating, and I have to carry the baby in the front and selling groceries.\u00a0 Or you got the kid and the baby selling groceries.\u00a0 You have to fight for every minute to do something.\u00a0 It is not that easy.\u00a0 I am glad everything is over.\u00a0 No I am not the only one.<\/p>\n

JQ:\u00a0 You can start on the grandchildren.<\/p>\n

LAURA JUE:\u00a0 Huh?<\/p>\n

JQ:\u00a0 Start on the grandchildren.<\/p>\n

LAURA JUE:\u00a0 (Laugh)\u00a0 Well I think it is easy, when I start my grandchildren I don\u2019t have the store.\u00a0 I will be glad to go to them and take care of them.<\/p>\n

BOBBY JUE:\u00a0 The thing about that you won\u2019t be able to show them what growing up in a grocery store is like.\u00a0 That is the bad thing about it.\u00a0 You can\u2019t show your grandkids that.<\/p>\n

LAURA JUE:\u00a0 Well it is good for something, and bad for something.\u00a0 We have the store.\u00a0 So we lived with grandma.\u00a0 The grandma never know me.\u00a0 She don\u2019t have to stay lonely by herself.\u00a0 Just like us.\u00a0 We have four kids.\u00a0 When they grow.\u00a0 They can find a job.\u00a0 I don\u2019t care how many children they have.\u00a0 They can still with me.\u00a0 See what I mean?\u00a0 So it is always something bad and something good.\u00a0 We are lucky to have grandma to take care of the children.\u00a0 In the other way she is lucky to have her grandchildren live with her.\u00a0 Her children are close around.\u00a0 Those are not everybody, but at least her younger son lived with her.\u00a0 Then the oldest daughter lived with her.\u00a0 The last few year before she passed she been really sick.\u00a0 You know. We took turns you know.\u00a0 We take care of her.\u00a0 Then her oldest daughter took take care of her. We don\u2019t have to put grandma in a nursing home.\u00a0 With everybody working, you get a job.\u00a0 You can not just.\u00a0 I am not able to work, because I have to stay home and take care of mother.\u00a0 You get to take care of your children.\u00a0 So some kind of the way it is good for the elders.<\/p>\n

KIMBERLY LANCASTER:\u00a0 Growing up in the store?<\/p>\n

LAURA JUE:\u00a0 Oh yeah, she don\u2019t have to stay.\u00a0 You know like a lot of elder people the children all go to work.\u00a0 They just stay there all by themselves all day long.\u00a0 Maybe if the children not live to far away from her, they will come by and see you once a week.\u00a0 You are lucky all ready.\u00a0 You see?<\/p>\n

KIMBERLY LANCASTER:\u00a0 It sounds like your children learned a lot growing up in the store.<\/p>\n

LAURA JUE:\u00a0 Oh yeah<\/p>\n

KIMBERLY LANCASTER:\u00a0 You were able to watch them.<\/p>\n

LAURA JUE:\u00a0 Yeah you are able to watch them.\u00a0 You always can give them advice if they do something wrong.\u00a0 If the parents are working like in the teaching or working in the hospital, you only see your children when you get off.\u00a0 Do you see what I mean?\u00a0 Sometimes you don\u2019t know what your children are doing.\u00a0 That away when they come home, they have to stay with me.\u00a0 I know what they are doing before they were under eighteen you know.\u00a0 Sure when they go to college, you don\u2019t know what they are doing.\u00a0 You always tell them.\u00a0 I think it is good to keep your children around with you before they finish high school.<\/p>\n

BOBBY JUE:\u00a0 I think that one of the advantages of being in the grocery store.\u00a0 They would have to come back there everyday.\u00a0 You see them.\u00a0 It is not one of these what you call latch key kids.\u00a0 You don\u2019t see them till after you get off work.\u00a0 At the store they would come back after school.\u00a0 We would see them all of the time. That gives you a closeness too.\u00a0 I think that is one of the reason why they Chinese family is so close.\u00a0 It had their advantages of living there.<\/p>\n

LAURA JUE:\u00a0 You loss something.\u00a0 You gain something.\u00a0 We feel sorry about that we never had a weekend with the children.\u00a0 Have fun like taking them to the movie or a picnic. Go here or go there on Saturday.\u00a0 We missed that, but that is okay.\u00a0 At least you can watch them around, and make sure they do everything right.\u00a0 You know they do something. You know how children they are.\u00a0 They maybe do something is fun. Something that is not telling you what they do.\u00a0 So far, I think it is the best parenting stay with your children all of\u00a0 the time.\u00a0 Especially after they get out of school.<\/p>\n

KIMBERLY LANCASTER:\u00a0 Going back to your experience in school here.\u00a0 Did you have any favorite teachers?<\/p>\n

BOBBY JUE:\u00a0 I remember my first grade teacher.\u00a0 She was real nice to me.\u00a0 My second grade teacher was too.\u00a0 You know after grade school.\u00a0 I don\u2019t think I had any favorite teacher after that after the first and second grade.<\/p>\n

KIMBERLY LANCASTER:\u00a0 You mentioned a lot about being on the other side of the tracks.\u00a0 Did you feel pretty isolated?<\/p>\n

BOBBY JUE:\u00a0 I did.\u00a0 I did .\u00a0 I don\u2019t know how my brother and my sister felt.\u00a0 What we would do in the mornings.\u00a0 We would walk to school.\u00a0 The color school was just down the street from where our grocery store was.\u00a0 Maybe it was two or three hundred yards.\u00a0 More or so in the afternoon, we would be walking to school.\u00a0 We would have the color kids come in.\u00a0 They will say something to you.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 In the afternoon it got real bad.\u00a0 When both of us got out at the same time, both schools.\u00a0 So we would be walking home.\u00a0 The colored kids would be walking home.\u00a0 Sometimes they would push you off the sidewalk.\u00a0 My sister got pushed off the sidewalk a lot of times, my younger sister.\u00a0 You had colored kids call you different kinds of names.\u00a0 It was stuff like that.<\/p>\n

KIMBERLY LANCASTER:\u00a0 Did you feel more criticism from the black community, or?<\/p>\n

BOBBY JUE:\u00a0 Well, I know the black community probably had against us is because we made a living off of them.\u00a0 I think they kind of resented that.\u00a0 We did make a living off of them, but we treated them with respect more than if they went to a Caucasian run store.\u00a0 We\u00a0 treat them with respect.\u00a0 We thanked them.\u00a0 We showed them that we appreciated it.\u00a0 We always spoke to them nicely.\u00a0 We never said any bad things to them.\u00a0 You can tell when you walk into a store, how the management will treat you right away.\u00a0 You can sense it.\u00a0 We always treated our customers with respect as a human.\u00a0\u00a0 I think that is the reason why we do so well.\u00a0 I think that is the reason why Chinese in general did well.<\/p>\n

KIMBERLY LANCASTER:\u00a0 Laura you have seen a lot of changes since you come to the United States.\u00a0 What do you envision for the future?<\/p>\n

LAURA JUE:\u00a0 Are you talking about when I just came here?<\/p>\n

BOBBY JUE:\u00a0 No<\/p>\n

KIMBERLY LANCASTER:\u00a0 No what do you see?\u00a0 No I just said that you have seen a lot of changes.\u00a0 You have seen a lot of changes.\u00a0 What do you see for the future?<\/p>\n

LAURA JUE:\u00a0 Well I see it like the older generation.\u00a0 You know.\u00a0 They have a store and small house.\u00a0 They can raise the family.\u00a0 The younger generation, after they finish school, they have to move out.<\/p>\n

KIMBERLY LANCASTER:\u00a0\u00a0 This is tape 2 of 2. Kimberly Lancaster is speaking with Laura and Bobby Jue.\u00a0 Dr. Quon is facilitating.\u00a0 It is February 4, 2000.\u00a0 Laura you were talking.\u00a0\u00a0 We are interviewing Bobby and Laura Jue for the Mississippi Delta Chinese Oral History Project.\u00a0 Laura could you tell us what you see for the future Chinese in the delta.<\/p>\n

LAURA JUE:\u00a0 I think the younger generation is going to go off because they have to go to the big cities to find a job.\u00a0 My generation, they have lot more people stay in Delta\u00a0 because they have there own store.\u00a0 They have their own business.\u00a0 They can raise the family.\u00a0 Our children when they finish school, they will move somewhere else.\u00a0 I don\u2019t think they will come back here to raise their family.\u00a0 I think there will be less and less Chinese.\u00a0 We are retired right now.\u00a0 We might spend the rest of our life here, or we might move somewhere else.\u00a0 I am not sure yet.\u00a0 I have got to wait until the children see where they can move.\u00a0 We never know until that many year later.\u00a0 I have been living in Mississippi.\u00a0 I am glad we sold the store.\u00a0 We closed the store.\u00a0 I thought I would move off somewhere else, but after a few months of thinking about it.\u00a0 I have been living here for thirty years.\u00a0 I have friends here.\u00a0 I have got used to the country life.\u00a0 When I drive, we don\u2019t have a that stretch.\u00a0 It is not that many cars.\u00a0 The traffic is not that heavy.\u00a0 So we make a trip to Chicago, and Houston.\u00a0 We saw so many cars and trucks.\u00a0 We get nervous.\u00a0 I think it is like just some places you get used to, and you know it so well.\u00a0 You feel safer.\u00a0 Our age and maybe later, we might spend the rest of our life in the Delta.\u00a0 I don\u2019t think the children, or the younger generation will.\u00a0 They can\u2019t find jobs here.\u00a0 There are not too many.<\/p>\n

KIMBERLY LANCASTER:\u00a0 You agree?<\/p>\n

BOBBY JUE:\u00a0 Yeah I agree.\u00a0 I don\u2019t think there is any future for the kids being educated here unless you can find a job around here.\u00a0 I don\u2019t think there is that much opportunity here.\u00a0 When we came, I think we were one of the first Chinese families here.\u00a0 There were fifty Chinese here then and seven grocery stores.\u00a0 Now there is only one grocery store.\u00a0 There is only six Chinese.\u00a0 Everybody else is moving to Texas, California.\u00a0 We have a kid in Illinois. We have one in Texas.\u00a0 Then we have a boy that is supposed to graduate this year.\u00a0 Then our daughter that is in L. S. U.\u00a0 They way they talk.\u00a0 In fact before we closed the store, we asked our youngest boy.\u00a0 Well we ask them all, the youngest boy especially, because he was the play boy in the family.\u00a0 He went to Mississippi State first year.\u00a0 He got a $4000 dollar scholarship from Mississippi State.\u00a0 He played around.\u00a0 He had a .5 average.\u00a0 So we\u00a0 pulled him out, and we sent him to Delta State.\u00a0 His grade improved.\u00a0 It was .6 averages.\u00a0 So we pulled him out of there.\u00a0 He got mad.\u00a0 He went to work.\u00a0 So he went to work for about six months before he went back to school.\u00a0 We told him that he needed to go back to school.\u00a0 So that put him about a year and half almost two years behind.\u00a0 He went back to school.\u00a0 Now he is kind of matured.\u00a0 We offered him the store first.\u00a0 The oldest one, and they said he didn\u2019t want it.\u00a0 We ask him if he wanted to run the store.\u00a0 He said if he ran the store in two years he would be out of business.\u00a0 So we decided to sell it.\u00a0 If he didn\u2019t want to run it, and we had the opportunity.\u00a0 So we sold it.\u00a0 He said that he didn\u2019t want to come back to Hollandale.\u00a0 Nobody wants to come back to Hollandale or to Mississippi because they say nothing is here.\u00a0 He is going to school at Southern Mississippi.\u00a0 Priscilla is still kind of a small town.\u00a0 It is not what you would call a big town.\u00a0 He said coming to Hollandale, it is just like it is dead.\u00a0 Our younger daughter is even worse.\u00a0 She goes to school at L. S. U. at Baton Rouge.\u00a0 She said there is so much to do there.\u00a0 She said after two days of coming home.\u00a0 She is ready to go back to school.\u00a0 I don\u2019t see them coming back to the Mississippi Delta.\u00a0 I think the original Chinese of the Mississippi Delta.\u00a0 They are almost extinct.\u00a0 It is not going to be no more. After our generation leaves, I think it is history.\u00a0 I think we need to preserve history now.\u00a0 It is so many things that have changed since the fifties and sixties.\u00a0 Our kids have become Americanized, and they are blended in with society.\u00a0 It is just don\u2019t want the life that we led.\u00a0 In which you can not blame them, you know eighty hours a week you don\u2019t get any enjoyment.\u00a0 You can\u2019t do anything.\u00a0 You see the future for the younger kids.\u00a0 Them come back in the Delta or Mississippi itself, the only place I see them going is probably Jackson.\u00a0 They might go to the Gulf Coast, I don\u2019t see that much on the Gulf Coast.\u00a0 If they come back, they probably would go to Jackson where the factories are and the jobs are.\u00a0 If you are a engineer with M. C. I. World, some company like that they might come back.\u00a0 I don\u2019t see them coming back to the Delta.<\/p>\n

KIMBERLY LANCASTER:\u00a0 This is changing the subject.\u00a0 What do you remember about your grandparents?<\/p>\n

BOBBY JUE:\u00a0 I didn\u2019t know my grandparents.<\/p>\n

KIMBERLY LANCASTER:\u00a0 You never knew them.\u00a0 Do you remember any stories about them?<\/p>\n

BOBBY JUE:\u00a0 Well I remember my father\u2019s father what they told me about him was he had a store in Mayersville.\u00a0 Then he sold that store.\u00a0 He (Tape was not able to understand.)\u00a0 As he was crossing the street, he got killed.\u00a0 I remember my mother was telling about her parents.\u00a0 They were farmers in a village.\u00a0 I don\u2019t think they were poor.\u00a0 They were fairly well off.\u00a0 I think most most of ours were.\u00a0 She didn\u2019t find her sister a life there.\u00a0 She didn\u2019t like how her mother-in-law treated her more like a servant because then you would have to do everything your mother-in-law tell you to do.\u00a0 I remember she didn\u2019t tell me too much about her father, except her father wanted her to go to school.\u00a0 Her grandfather didn\u2019t want her to go.\u00a0 So she didn\u2019t get to go but one year.\u00a0 She would go see friends that went to school.\u00a0 They would teach her.\u00a0 They would stay over night.\u00a0 She was taught that way when she came over here.\u00a0 She got us to teach her the ABC\u2019s and things like that.\u00a0 When she would write her name, she would write it like a first grader.\u00a0 You know real slowly.\u00a0 She would print it out.\u00a0 It looks like first grade work too.\u00a0 She learned that.\u00a0 Mostly what you hear about them like when she came over.\u00a0 She came through Seattle, Washington.\u00a0 Before she could come and meet my father.\u00a0 She was retained in Seattle, Washington for one year.\u00a0 I think for screening.\u00a0 She stayed there for one year.\u00a0 She didn\u2019t speak English or anything.\u00a0 Then she came and met my father here in Mississippi after one year there.\u00a0 I think that was routine then.\u00a0 It is something like close to New York.\u00a0 What is that place?<\/p>\n

JQ:\u00a0 Ellis Island<\/p>\n

BOBBY JUE:\u00a0 Ellis Island, I think the Chinese came through Seattle, Washington.\u00a0 She was the type that you just did what your husband tell you to do.\u00a0 That is the type of lady she was.\u00a0 Back in those days, I don\u2019t think they had their own mind.\u00a0 You just had to follow the man of the house.<\/p>\n

LAURA JUE:\u00a0 Yeah that was a long time ago.\u00a0 Chinese woman, after they are born they said when you are young.\u00a0 You can obey your father.\u00a0 After you are married, you can obey your husband.\u00a0 When you get old, you have to listen to your son.\u00a0 That is the way.\u00a0 It is not fair to the lady\u00a0 It is not any more now.\u00a0 I only obey and listen if you are right.\u00a0 If you are wrong, I don\u2019t care how old you are. Right you got to fight for yourself.\u00a0 You have to protect yourself.\u00a0 Why do you let people treat you wrong?\u00a0 I don\u2019t treat people wrong, but I don\u2019t let people treat me wrong.\u00a0 It is just like our Chinese in the our county. Usually we are poor, and we don\u2019t have any weapon.\u00a0 You get to let the other country attack you.\u00a0 They take your place.\u00a0 Just like McCow, the place I grown.\u00a0 They govern by Portuguese for four hundred years.\u00a0 They just took that place.\u00a0 See, our country is not strong.\u00a0 You know people are not going to treat you right.<\/p>\n

KIMBERLY LANCASTER:\u00a0 You mentioned earlier before we started the interview that you do read the Chinese news?<\/p>\n

LAURA JUE:\u00a0 Well I grown from Macau because they are took over by the Portuguese.\u00a0 I have to same feeling like Bobby.\u00a0 Like he said, some place they don\u2019t accept you.\u00a0 You go to some restaurant.\u00a0 They want even don\u2019t serve you the food.\u00a0 In McCow they took over by the\u00a0 Portuguese, but Macau is supposed to belong to our China.\u00a0 You see this is your house.\u00a0 The other people come in move into your house.\u00a0 They take over your place.\u00a0 I will tell you, I remember you know.\u00a0 You go to the Post office and buy a stamp.\u00a0 Everybody have to line up.\u00a0 The Chinese people, everybody have to line up.\u00a0 They have three or four people selling stamps.\u00a0 At the Portuguese walk in, they walk in front of you.\u00a0 They go straight to the front place.\u00a0 They buy a stamp.\u00a0 The Chinese people are scared to say something.\u00a0 They let them go in front of them because the country is weak.\u00a0 I am glad you know we are not like that anymore.\u00a0 People give you more respect.\u00a0 You don\u2019t want to treat people wrong.\u00a0 You don\u2019t like people to treat you wrong, either.\u00a0 You have to fight for your own freedom.\u00a0 I have the same feeling like he did.\u00a0 That is why you know.\u00a0 My mother-in-law she doesn\u2019t have time to take a lot of education.\u00a0 At least she know she lived to be humble.\u00a0 I don\u2019t care how much education you have.\u00a0 How much money you own, you know that stuff don\u2019t mean nothing.\u00a0 She know don\u2019t have a lot.\u00a0 She don\u2019t have a chance to go to school.\u00a0 The way she teach her kids.\u00a0 She is really smart to me it is like that.\u00a0 I think she teach her children right.\u00a0 You know a long time ago, the Chinese mother-in-law and daughter-in-law they lived in the same house.\u00a0 They are going to have problems.\u00a0 You know you might have two people in the way.\u00a0 I know in other ways, she is a mother.\u00a0 She take care of her children nice.\u00a0 She knew what to do.\u00a0 She knew what to teach her children how to lead them to everything right.\u00a0 That is what really helped the children how to be polite, respect the elders.\u00a0 Our children, I always tell them, when you go visit your friends, you go in their house.\u00a0 You got to speak to the parents.\u00a0 Make sure you call them Mr. and Mrs. Grubbs. The same thing when my children bring their friends to my house, they don\u2019t speak to me.\u00a0 I don\u2019t want to speak to them either.\u00a0 Sometimes you speak to them, they even don\u2019t want to answer you.\u00a0 My feelings are hurt you know. \u00a0So if you want you people to look right, you got to start it when your children is little when they are young that a way they can come out better.\u00a0 That is all I know.<\/p>\n

BOBBY JUE:\u00a0 There were four things that my mother always taught me.\u00a0 I teach my kids that.\u00a0 She always told me these are four things to always say thank you.\u00a0 She said to be as humble as you can.\u00a0 Always address people by their name, Mr. or Ms., Aunt or Uncle.\u00a0 (Tape was not able to understand.)\u00a0 She said to never look down on people.\u00a0 That is four things she always taught me.\u00a0 It has always kept it in my mind.\u00a0 I try to teach my kids the same way.\u00a0 I hope they teach their kids the same way.<\/p>\n

LAURA JUE:\u00a0 See our country is always, we learned from them.\u00a0 You will always return to people\u2019s favor.\u00a0 That is the way our father and mother raised us.\u00a0 When we grow, we always thought about.\u00a0 How we would return the favor back to our parents.\u00a0 So when they get old and sick, we have to take care of them.\u00a0 It will always come back.\u00a0 I remember one time when my mother-in-law had.\u00a0 She had a stroke in her brain.\u00a0 She lost all her memory.\u00a0 She don\u2019t even recognize her own kids sometimes.\u00a0 We still bring her back to the store.\u00a0 One of the pharmacy, Mr. Grubbs a long time ago he owned the pharmacy in Hollandale.\u00a0 He would come and ask me.\u00a0 Laura I see you young folks treat the mother.\u00a0 The parents, you know you send them to the nursing home.\u00a0 I told them this is the way we learned.\u00a0 We are young.\u00a0 We always heard from the kin folks or uncle or aunt or mother or grandmother talk about.\u00a0 When you grow, when your mother or father get old\u00a0 when you grow you got to come back and take care of them.\u00a0 This is your future.\u00a0 This is the way we are.\u00a0 That kind of way to the family.<\/p>\n

BOBBY JUE:\u00a0 I think it was easier for us to do it because we had a grocery store to bring them back to the grocery store.\u00a0 Now the kids have jobs, it is going to be kind of hard to do that.<\/p>\n

LAURA JUE:\u00a0 Oh yeah, we don\u2019t expect our children to do that to\u00a0 me.\u00a0 We understand that they can not put that job down and come home stay with me.<\/p>\n

BOBBY JUE: Because they have to make a living too.<\/p>\n

LAURA JUE: Sometimes you have to see the situation through.\u00a0 It don\u2019t mean they can\u2019t do it.\u00a0 They are just not able to.<\/p>\n

KIMBERLY LANCASTER:\u00a0 I will ask you the same question.\u00a0 Do you remember your grandparents?<\/p>\n

LAURA JUE:\u00a0 I remember my grandfather on my father\u2019s side.\u00a0 My father\u2019s father, my grandfather\u00a0 was passed away when my father was three years old.\u00a0 I don\u2019t remember nothing.\u00a0 Then my father had two older brother.\u00a0 My grandma had three sons.\u00a0 Then when my grandfather passed, my grandmother had a hard time to raise three kids. She don\u2019t have a store.\u00a0 She had to go to market. She had to sell.\u00a0 She had to do something for the other people to make money to raise three kids.\u00a0 My father had a hard time too.\u00a0 My mother came from a better family.\u00a0 My grandfather, my mother\u2019s father, he finished college in a village.\u00a0 He was the one to build the school.\u00a0 He had high education.\u00a0 He was the only son in the family.\u00a0 Also he was my grandfather\u2019s father came to the states.\u00a0 He had more money in his family.\u00a0 He left the country when he was thirty something years old and went to Hong Kong.\u00a0 He had his own business.\u00a0 When he was about forty something years, my grandfather get ready to retire.\u00a0 He put all his money in one bank.\u00a0 Way back at that time, the government doesn\u2019t have nothing to spend to protect the people.\u00a0 He deposited of all the money in one bank, the bank went bankrupt.\u00a0 It closed.\u00a0 He would lose everything.\u00a0 He don\u2019t have nothing.\u00a0 He got nothing you know to pay you back nothing.\u00a0 That a way my grandfather was upset for that.\u00a0 He died in when he was forty something.\u00a0 My mother, I don\u2019t know my mother was.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know my mother was sixteen or seventeen.\u00a0 She had to go find a job.\u00a0 So I think both families, my mother and father\u2019s side both had a hard time.\u00a0 This way you will always listen to your mother and what they say or your father on what they say.\u00a0 How hard it was where they come from in the family.\u00a0 This is a need.\u00a0 I learned it.\u00a0\u00a0 People\u2019s life is like that.\u00a0 As much hard time you can take.\u00a0 You will be more strong and tough.\u00a0 So I don\u2019t feel sorry for myself.\u00a0 I have to work that many hours after I married.\u00a0 I just look back at my grandmother.\u00a0 I am luckier than her.\u00a0 It is the same thing that I tell my children, you see. I say I will tell you everything comes so easier.\u00a0 They can buy anything. After they finish school, your life is long.\u00a0 You know step by step.\u00a0 When you see something was on the way.\u00a0 You got to think about how to move here.\u00a0 So you keep going.\u00a0 They say you go in a row if you see a big rock in there.\u00a0 I can\u2019t go over the row.\u00a0 If you see a big tree over there.\u00a0 Stop you weight, I can go around there.\u00a0 Then you will come home. \u00a0You don\u2019t have no future.\u00a0 I will tell them if you see something in front of you.\u00a0 You got to think about how to move you log?\u00a0 How to cut the tree?\u00a0 So you can keep going to find a future.\u00a0 The much you can take, the better future you have.\u00a0 You see you let them a lot of money, and make them easier.\u00a0 I don\u2019t have a lot of money to let them.\u00a0 I think the best you can teach your children is too tell them how to face the\u00a0 problem.\u00a0 You have to let it go early.<\/p>\n

BOBBY JUE:\u00a0 (Tape was not able to understand.)<\/p>\n

LAURA JUE:\u00a0 Just like my son the first year he got the job, he said you don\u2019t make too much.\u00a0 Well yeah, but he has a master degree.\u00a0 I will tell him I don\u2019t care what degree you have. If you know you don\u2019t have any experience, you can look for the first money to go.\u00a0 You start working.\u00a0 Don\u2019t think you have to look at what degree.\u00a0 I have this degree, you know.\u00a0 That means people will pay you because you don\u2019t work yet.\u00a0 You don\u2019t have any experience.\u00a0 I told him always tell him take step by step.\u00a0 Everything is step by step.\u00a0 We have a small store.\u00a0 When I met Bobby, we had a family type store. Everything was old style.\u00a0 We have an old style pharmacy.\u00a0 People order it. We have a old box.\u00a0 If you want an pot of hot chocolate.\u00a0 One year, I married him.\u00a0 You think about.\u00a0 You want to do better, you got to keep going.\u00a0 You have to improve everything.\u00a0 We put in open boxes.\u00a0 You wrap them in there.\u00a0 What we are going to do.\u00a0 We used to be scared.\u00a0 If you cut the meat, you have to put so much meat to fill the box up.\u00a0 You are not selling for two or three days, you got to throw everything away.\u00a0 The mean would have turned dark and old.\u00a0 That time we told him, we are young.\u00a0 If we fell, we can stand up again.\u00a0 Do you see what I\u00a0 mean?\u00a0 Don\u2019t worry about the mistake.\u00a0 That is the only way you can encourage yourself and make you do better.\u00a0 If you are scared to try you will never succeed.\u00a0 This is my way.\u00a0 The same thing I tell my children the same.\u00a0 Nothing is impossible for you to just keep learning.\u00a0 At least you have to try.<\/p>\n

KIMBERLY LANCASTER:\u00a0 Would you say learning is the most important?<\/p>\n

LAURA JUE:\u00a0 Oh yeah, nobody can teach you everything.\u00a0 You have to learn from other people.\u00a0 You have to\u00a0 pay attention when they are talking.\u00a0 You know I don\u2019t understand they say.\u00a0 At least if I learned it, I listen what they say.\u00a0 I pick up a few things.\u00a0 Also encourage your childrens to read books.\u00a0 That is the best way to lift them up ten thousand dollars.\u00a0 They spend it all.\u00a0 They don\u2019t have nothing.\u00a0 The knowledge is helpful forever.<\/p>\n

BOBBY JUE:\u00a0 I think that is the reason why Chinese always stress education.\u00a0 To go as high as you can.<\/p>\n

KIMBERLY LANCASTER:\u00a0 You enabled your siblings too.<\/p>\n

BOBBY JUE:\u00a0 Just getting them to do.\u00a0 They are so Americanized now.\u00a0 They just want to get that degree and forget about everything.\u00a0 Like my oldest daughter she didn\u2019t want to go get a higher degree.\u00a0 She just got.\u00a0 The oldest boy did.\u00a0 The youngest boy, he is at Southern.\u00a0 It is like State\u2019s electric engineer program.\u00a0 I thing Southern calls it electronic engineering.\u00a0 He said after that he is ready to get out.\u00a0 He doesn\u2019t want to go any further.\u00a0 We always stress education.\u00a0 I think it is better being in a profession or making good money than trying to.\u00a0 Well it is good to be an entrepreneur too.\u00a0 Entrenpeur are the people that take all the chances.\u00a0 It can either make you are break you.\u00a0 If he get a degree a professional degree, it is in the mind.\u00a0 You can walk with that.\u00a0 Then entrepreneur you got have so much competition, like your place burned down well you lose everything.\u00a0 Well you have insurance.\u00a0 You are still out of a year or two of business.\u00a0 If you get a good education, you can walk with that.\u00a0\u00a0 Like us, we you have to put the hours in.\u00a0 I am sure you have to do it to be a professional too.\u00a0 At least you got the market and in your brains.<\/p>\n

LAURA JUE:\u00a0 I think why the Chinese children why they.\u00a0 The Chinese people why they want their children to have more education and a high education.\u00a0 I remember I have brother in Natchez they have a restaurant. One time I go there.\u00a0 Then doctor come in, and he sit down.\u00a0 He ask to talk to me.\u00a0 He ask me, \u201cWhy do some Chinese children you know they are doing real good, and they are getting the higher points?\u201d\u00a0 and all of that stuff.\u00a0 He said, do you think the Chinese children are smarter than the other kids.\u00a0 I told him I don\u2019t think that a way.\u00a0 The reason because why the Chinese children who works so hard.\u00a0 They see their parents work so hard.\u00a0 Like if they have a restaurant, they raised up in a restaurant.\u00a0 They open seven days, twelve hours.\u00a0 Like we had a grocery store.\u00a0 We open up seven days and twelve hours.\u00a0 We have all ready taught the children.\u00a0 You if you don\u2019t want to work the long hours.\u00a0 You don\u2019t want to work seven days a week.\u00a0 You want to have the weekends off.\u00a0 You have fun with your children.\u00a0 You definitely have to have a good education.\u00a0 You got to get a good job.\u00a0 So you can take care of your children.\u00a0 Other wise, you have to do things like we do.\u00a0 We get up work twelve hours.\u00a0 We are open at eight o\u2019clock.\u00a0 We close at ten o\u2019clock.\u00a0 That is fourteen hours a day everyday.\u00a0 What can you do with your kids.\u00a0 They are look for half day off on Sunday after we closed.\u00a0 We take them to go out to maybe a movie.\u00a0 Or we maybe just have dinner.\u00a0 That is the only way they had fun.\u00a0 It is not like the other parents.\u00a0 They have good education. There are out working.\u00a0 So Saturday and Sunday they don\u2019t have to work.\u00a0 Then they have two weeks off vacation.\u00a0 They can take their children and have fun.\u00a0 We have all ready talk to them.\u00a0 We explained to the children, you got to push yourself harder.\u00a0 You got to finish school and go to college.\u00a0 A better education is the only time you can get a better job.<\/p>\n

BOBBY JUE:\u00a0 I don\u2019t think we ever had a weekend off.\u00a0 We closed a week and went on vacation.\u00a0 That was a good thing.\u00a0 We closed Christmas day till New Years day.\u00a0 We always took the kids on vacation.\u00a0 Oh like Disney World, we took them to Mexico or L. A., Hollywood.\u00a0 You know stuff like that.\u00a0 That is one thing that they can\u2019t take away the memories.\u00a0 When we got to this store, both of us couldn\u2019t take off.\u00a0 So one of us went on vacation, while the other stayed.\u00a0 Then they went on vacation.\u00a0 So we kind of missed the family outing then.\u00a0 They still remember the vacations we took when they were young.\u00a0 Especially the younger daughter.\u00a0 She\u00a0 brings it up all of the time.\u00a0 Like the time we went to Disneyland or Mexico or something like that.\u00a0 It was only one week out of the year.<\/p>\n

LAURA JUE:\u00a0 At least you had one week a year.\u00a0 Do you know why we do that?\u00a0 I think about.\u00a0 We can\u2019t make it without the money.\u00a0 Money is not everything.\u00a0 If you work all year round, and never take a day off with your kids.\u00a0 You close one week.\u00a0 You maybe make less two thousand a week.\u00a0 You come maybe less two or three thousand a week.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t hurt you.\u00a0 You still make enough to pay your bills, right.\u00a0 Your children have something even once a year.\u00a0 So we to push ourselves to work hard, do better, and climb up higher.\u00a0 Always look up.\u00a0 Don\u2019t let the money drive you crazy.\u00a0 That is what I think about.\u00a0 If you don\u2019t close that one week, your children will never have nothing.\u00a0 You close one week, you just make less.\u00a0 You children can have one week.\u00a0 At least they are happy.<\/p>\n

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