Suey Sing Society

The Suey Sing Society is a historic Tong (a sort of Chinese gang) that is preserved in altered form to this day. W. T. Ellis, Jr., for whom Ellis Lake was named, wrote in his autobiography Memories: My Seventy-Two Years in the Romantic County of Yuba, California that in the 19th century in Marysville:

Tong wars were more or less frequent and the various tongs took part in these rivalries between the rival Tongs. Some Chinese did not belong to any of these Tongs but I believe that the greater number of them did. By being a member of a Tong, a Chinaman felt assured of protection against any impositions by members of other Tongs and if a member of a Tong should for some reason get in straitened circumstances, his Tong would take care of him until "he got on his feet again." To that extent they were charitable organizations but they had an invariable rule, that if some member of a certain Tong got into an altercation with a member of some other Tong and unfortunately got killed, then it was a case of "a life for a life"; either the Tong to which the murdered man belonged had to pay a substantial sum as "blood money" or else, some member of that Tong must be killed by some member of the "injured" Tong and some member of that Tong was delegated to "do the job." It didn't make any difference as to who was killed, just so long as some member of that Tong was killed so as to "even up matters and square the account."

There were two very strong Tongs in Marysville, the Hop Sings and the Suey Sings, both had quite elaborate headquarters. On one occasion, as I remember it, a prominent member of the Suey Sings had been killed by some unknown but presumed member of the Hop Sings. The Suey Sings it was reported, had made an immediate demand for some $5,000.00 "blood money" from the Hop Sings and after negotiations the demand had been refused, which meant that it was then necessary for some member of the Hop Sings to pay with his life as a forfeit. It was pretty generally known about town that trouble was likely to occur but the white population really did not take much interest in these difficulties and the Chinese generally settled their quarrels among themselves, always being careful to see that no person of another race got injured in any way.

Our office was at the corner of D and First Streets and through the large plate glass windows we had a good view of the next three blocks on First Street which was the main center of Chinatown. We were "keeping an eye open" for developments and one day noticed that there were exceedingly few Chinese to be seen on the sidewalks and concluded that something was about to "pop." We were not mistaken; as if by pre-arranged agreement, suddenly large numbers of Chinese emerged from the stores and many others on the roofs of the buildings on opposite sides of the street and commenced a fusillade of shooting with pistols; it kept up for about ten minutes and sounded like a Chinese New Year's day, when many long strings of firecrackers were burned, making a terrific din. With all that mass shooting, there was only one Chinaman killed, as I remember it, the reason being that the Chinamen were always poor marksmen, almost invariably taking no aim, but just "banged away," with their pistols probably aimed in the air or at the ground and "letting fly," usually with their eyes closed and just taking a chance that some one of the other Tong would get hit. It later developed the people up town thought it was just another Chinese celebration with a lot of firecrackers being burned; we had been enjoying the fun from our office window and did not think of sending word to the police department until it was all over. Very soon afterwards, all the police accompanied by the sheriff and his deputies appeared on the scene, all "armed to the teeth"; they marched down Chinatown, where every Chinaman had disappeared; they went into stores to obtain information and the only answers they obtained from the Chinese was "no sabbee." The police and the sheriff and his deputies marched back uptown again in disgust and the affair became just another "closed incident."