Editor’s Note: This story was first published in
2018.
On a warm September night, a gunman walked into a
West Side restaurant, greeted the manager, and shot him three times. Hours after the
murder, Chicago cops were still trying to figure out if the shooting was
gang-related, the
Chicago Tribune reported.
This may sound a lot like Chicago
in 2018. But the murder actually happened in 1936. The alleged gangs were Chinese
— and the killer was after my
That’s one of the reasons I
recently took on a Curious City question about the history of Chicago’s Chinese
gangs — also called tongs. The questioner didn’t leave
their name, but they wanted to know how these powerful gangs got started, what they
did, and what happened to them.
I wanted to know the answers to these questions to help me
finally understand why my family members were targeted for murder back in 1936. But
as I dug into the history of Chicago’s Chinese gangs, I realized that my family’s
story offers insight into the social structure and unwritten rules that defined
Chicago’s Chinese-American community during much of the 20th
How did these Chinese gangs get started in
Chicago?
It turns out that the tongs my family got caught up with in Chicago
actually originated as secret societies in China. They were divided into two main
factions: the On Leong and the Hip Sing. These rival gangs first arrived in the U.S.
in the 1860s with Chinese railroad workers. They operated in cities from San
Francisco to Chicago to New York, and in just about any town with a large Chinese
Part of their role was to provide protection for members within
Chinese immigrant communities. This protection was essential when low-wage Chinese
workers came under attack for bringing down railway worker pay, says
Gangland
Chicago author Richard
“As a means of self-protection, the Chinese community organized
extensions of the tongs of Imperial China here,” he says. “And then they divided
along traditional tong lines of the Hip Sing and the On Leong, which were the
principal rivals of 17th-century China.”
In his book, Lindberg writes extensively about the operations
of Italian and Irish gangs, but says he found much less open information on Chinese
“Asian crime in Chicago is not well-documented simply because
it was conducted under the veil of secrecy for most of its history,” Lindberg
Historian Huping Ling offers one of the few detailed accounts
of Chicago tongs in her book, Chinese Chicago:
Race, Transnational Migration, and Community Since
1870. She describes On Leong as a “self
reliant, quasi-legal and social organization of Chinese immigrants.” Ling says
Chinese immigrants relied on organizations like On Leong and Hip Sing because they
“received little protection from the homeland government or the host country
The On Leong Merchants Association Building on Wentworth Avenue in Chicago’s
Chinatown was once the organization’s headquarters. (Today, the building is a
community center.) On Leong was one of two rival Chinese gangs that first arrived in
the U.S. in the late 1800s.
Courtesy of Chicago Daily News negatives
collection and Chicago History Museum
Not just crime, but also social services
While these gangs were most closely associated with crime, Ling
points out they also operated as social service agencies in the Chinese community.
Among other things, they helped with translation, education, burials, business
licenses, and immigrant resettlement. They also served as de-facto courts, resolving
a wide range of community and family disputes.
While I’m not sure if my family ever relied on the
tongs for these services, Chicago arts advocate Nancy Tom says hers did. In the
1950s she married into the prominent Tom family, who served as business and civic
leaders in Chinatown and beyond. At that time, she says, the On Leong was
a central force their community.
“If anyone got into trouble or anything, they would go
to the On Leong and they would protect them, but all of it was for a fee,” Tom, 82,
recalled. “[If], say, an uncle was stealing from another uncle, they would settle
all of that. So they were useful for everything.”
Tom says her own mother-in-law turned to the On Leong
when there was an inheritance dispute after the death of the patriarch in their
family. She says the community simply had more faith in these institutions than the
“They didn’t trust the outside,” Tom says. “They didn’t trust
because they didn’t understand what was going on. So [they thought] it would be
better to fight with your own, within your own community. They felt more
The dark side: rules and violence
As I learned all of these things about Chicago’s tongs and their
roles in keeping order and peace, I had a hard time reconciling that image with the
brutal gangs allegedly involved in gambling, drugs, and the murder of my family
members — specifically my great-great uncle John and grandpa Harry Eng in
But then I learned about something called the tong’s
“one-mile rule.” It prohibited restaurants and laundries from opening too close to
each other, and, in my family’s case, it explained a lot about how keeping order and
committing murder could go hand-in-hand.
Newspaper accounts of the 1936 murder say that my
great-great uncle John and my grandpa Harry opened a restaurant called the Paradise
Inn in West Garfield Park, right around the corner from an existing Chinese
restaurant called — get this
— The New Paradise restaurant.
Courtesy of Chicago Tribune, 26 Sep 1936,
Sat, Page 3
When I asked my 90-year-old Uncle George about the
case a few years ago, before he passed away, he said that our restaurant was in
flagrant violation of the one-mile rule. And when something like this happened, he
said, the wronged party could go to their tong boss and complain.
“They’d say, ‘Hey boss, look at that. I was making
money and the other guy just came in and chopped it up. Go and kill him.’ Then a guy
would go in, get an order of chop suey, and bang — it happened so often,” said Uncle
George, who married my father’s sister and was an elder in the Hip Sing
But he also noted that tongs often gave violators
warnings to close their business before they escalated matters. But Uncle George
said my grandfather and his Uncle John ignored the warnings.
“So they just got somebody to go and kill someone,” he
alleged. “At that time the target was [grandpa] Harry Eng, but then somebody inside
the store stayed there — John Eng
— and they killed him
So what stopped the gang from continuing to hunt down
my grandpa Harry after that September night in 1936? Uncle George said that shortly
after the murder, my grandpa was visited by On Leong representatives who wanted to
have a “friendly discussion.”
“They said, ‘Hey Harry, you better join my tong and we
can protect you.’ And Harry accepted the suggestion,” he
So in 1936, my grandfather joined the On Leong, the
gang that allegedly authorized a hit on him and his uncle. It may seem like a weird
move, but it allowed him to live another 30 years, create a successful restaurant
group, and a have a family with six kids, including my dad.
And, as a bonus, that meant I got to be born.
According to Monica Eng’s uncle George (top left), her grandfather Harry Eng (seated
second row, left) joined On Leong after his uncle John Eng was murdered. Harry Eng’s
association with the tong allowed him to stay alive, bring relatives over from
China, and raise his growing family.
Courtesy of Monica Eng
So what happened to the tongs?
Uncle George said the U.S. tong wars
— fueled by gambling issues,
territory disputes, and revenge —
continued off and on for a few more decades. But in the
mid-’60s, leaders decided to hold a national peace summit in Washington, D.C. It
brought together tong leaders from across the U.S., including from
“We said to each other, ‘You’re On Leong big shots and
I am a Hip Sing big shot, so we should talk and not kill each other anymore,’” Uncle
George remembered. “So in 1960-something, we get to Washington, D.C. to have a
meeting. We talked about why we had to kill each other, and that we are coming to
America to make some money and a living, and so we should settle down without all
After the peace summit, he said, the tongs also
decided to stop protecting members who violated the truce. “We decided that we would
let the American government take care of them and let the guy go to
This summit ushered in an era of relative peace, with
some notable exceptions. But generally the On Leong kept to its territory in the
South Side Chinatown, and the Hip Sing operated out of its base in the North Side
Chinatown at Argyle and Broadway.
This would all change in 1988, when, with an
informants help, the
FBI raided both tongs and shut down their gambling
operations. The raids led to convictions
of Chinese tong leaders and investigations of
Chicago cops, an alderman, and a judge who abetted their activities.
Uncle George said the raids and closure of their
private casinos took a toll on membership.
“To be honest, those organizations depended a lot on
gambling to make money,” he said. “People liked to join to enjoy that kind of life.
But now the government said you cannot have the Chinese gambling shops. So it got
pretty hard to get people in the On Leong and Hip Sing because there was no more
In the intervening years, other institutions in
Chicago have taken on some of the tongs’ traditional roles. Organizations like the
Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association, the Chinese American Service League,
Chinatown Chamber of Commerce, and Chinese Mutual Aid Association have filled in
many of the business and social service needs.
Municipal courts and police now play a bigger role in
the lives of Chinese-Americans, community members say. And on the gambling side,
mainstream casinos have targeted Chinese consumers with Asian entertainment and
food, as well as convenient
buses from Chinatown to their poker tables and
slot machines in Indiana.
But that’s not to say the On Leong and Hip Sing tongs
have completely disappeared.
“They didn’t really go away, they’re both still here,”
Ling says. “They’ve just become one of the many community organizations in the
Indeed, both still occupy buildings in their
respective Chinatowns. Hip Sing offices sit next to the Argyle El stop, and the On
Leong occupies a small building around the corner from its once grand headquarters
on Wentworth Avenue — now a community building called the Pui Tak
The Hip Sing Association currently has its headquarters in Chicago’s Uptown
neighborhood. Monica Eng’s uncle George, who was a Hip Sing elder, attended meetings
at this location next to the Argyle El stop.
(Bashirah Mack/WBEZ)
But are they still involved in the same
Chicago Police Department spokesman Anthony Guglielmi
says his department doesn’t publicly comment on any of its ongoing gang
investigations — Asian or otherwise. And when I called and stopped by the two
organizations, they didn’t answer the phone or respond to my
As for my own family, as far as I know, our connection
to the tongs ended with my Uncle George. I don’t even have any family elders left to
ask. The last of that generation passed away in the last decade. And their kids, who
are senior citizens themselves, don’t know much about these admittedly secret
After a recent lunch with my cousin Winston (Uncle
George’s son) in Uptown, I asked if he’d walk over to the Hip Sing Association
building with me. We rang all the buzzers, but no one answered the doors. Winston
said he used to drive his dad, who was well into his 80s, to the building regularly
“But did you ever go up and see what was going on?” I
“Not really, I usually waited downstairs,” he said. “And when I
went up, it was mostly just a lot of older Chinese guys smoking cigarettes and
More about our reporter
Monica Eng at the grave of her grandfather Harry Eng and grandmother Nora Sit Eng in
the Chinese section of Mount Auburn Memorial Park in suburban Stickney, Illinois.
(Katherine Nagasawa/WBEZ)
Chicago journalist and WBEZ reporter whose great-grandfather Joe Eng came to Chicago
around 1920. Within a few years, he opened restaurants in West Garfield Park,
including The Chicken Shop and a “dine and dance” ballroom called the
Golden
After losing all the businesses after the stock market
crash, Joe launched new restaurants in the early ’30s with his relatives, his
daughters, and son Harry Eng. These included the Paradise Inn on the West Side, the
ornate Hoe Sai Gai on Randolph Street, and House of Eng on Walton Street.
Monica has never formally worked in restaurants, but
has written about hundreds in her years as a food journalist at the
Chicago Tribune
and Chicago
Sun-Times. She continues to explore food, health,
and history on her Chewing
Monica Eng is a WBEZ reporter. Follow her at @monicaeng or write to her
at [email protected].
