Kam Wah Chung Revisted

During our camping trip in June, we stayed in Dayville, Oregon for a few nights which gave me time to go to the Kam Wah Chung Heritage Center again. It was my fourth visit. You can read my post from 2024 to learn more about the history of Kam Wah Chung - it really is a time capsule and worth learning about.

Some might say that revisiting places (or rereading books or rewatching TV shows) is a waste of time when there are to many places in the world to visit. I believe I can learn something new with each visit for two primary reasons - new information may have come to light and I know more than I did the last time (hopefully I continue to learn and grow). I have published two books since my last visit and have had more conversations with people about the early history of the Chinese in Oregon. I am not a different person, but I do have a bit more perspective.

I used to tell researchers that history changes every day, which could get under the skin of some historians. We never know what new information might be found or recovered, an old letter that provides a completely opposite point of view, a photo that was scanned and then put online and finally identified, or a map that shows a different boundary. What we know is not set in stone, which can be very upsetting for people. I find it both empowering and sometimes daunting. It means we can always learn something and that change is constant. Knowing that history changes every day encourages me to be flexible and open to what the world presents to me instead of staying rigid in my beliefs. My rigidity doesn’t make the change go away, it just makes it harder to deal with.

So what was new during this visit, eleven years later than my first visit - the admission that sometimes historians get it wrong. The initial Oregon Public Broadcasting episode was created in 2010 (where I first learned about Kam Wah Chung) and new information about John Day, Oregon’s Chinese history has come to light since then. And that is how it should be. As we dig deeper and bring in perspectives of a wide variety of people, what we know will change. Thank goodness for that.

I am grateful when we as people admit when we got something wrong. It makes for a more inclusive and frankly more interesting world.

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