WINNEMUCCA - This photo is one of a series in the Humboldt Museum photo archive. The false front on the left is Quong On Lung. This picture was taken just before China Town's demolition in 1952. By this time it had been abandoned. Families had moved to larger cities, mostly in California, with greater concentrations of ethnic Chinese people. The older people had died leaving several blocks of decaying buildings in a growing small town, Winnemucca.
A couple of decades earlier, In the thirties, Quong on Lung was still a going business. People who were children at the time, including my mother, remembered going there with their parents to purchase firecrackers for Fourth of July celebrations. Quong On Lung had the best selection in town. Appropriate, since the Chinese had invented them!
Wide eyed children stared at the Chinese, (All gentlemen) who were sitting at several tables playing a game with symbols on tiles. (I suspect Ma Jong.) They were drinking tea out of glasses not cups. Though it may have been something stronger, parents told their children it was tea. The firecracker purchase made, the children left Quong On Lung and went back to their homes. A world away, though only a few blocks lay between their homes and chinatown.
-Compiled by Barbara Powell
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