{"id":100635,"date":"2026-01-14T23:27:16","date_gmt":"2026-01-14T23:27:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/100635\/"},"modified":"2026-01-14T23:27:16","modified_gmt":"2026-01-14T23:27:16","slug":"chinese-immigrants-remembered-by-new-york-city-priest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/100635\/","title":{"rendered":"Chinese Immigrants Remembered by New York City Priest"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\"\"\u201cThis is the first year that we did it together,\u201d said Father Andrew Tsui, who brought a group of Chinese Catholics to Cypress Hills Cemetery on All Souls Day to pray for the deceased. He usually goes to the cemetery by himself. (Photo: Courtesy of Father Andrew Tsui)<\/p>\n

CYPRESS HILLS \u2014 They faced discrimination in life\u00a0that followed them in death.\u00a0<\/p>\n

They\u00a0were\u00a0Chinese immigrants who came to the U.S. in hopes of building a better life\u00a0and\u00a0worked hard at low-wage jobs in restaurants and factories.\u00a0However,\u00a0when they died, many cemeteries\u00a0either\u00a0refused to bury them or\u00a0buried them\u00a0in\u00a0out-of-the-way\u00a0spots away from the main section of the cemetery.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Father Andrew Tsui\u00a0calls them the \u201cForgotten\u00a0Souls,\u201d and he\u00a0said he\u00a0is determined to remember them\u00a0and to\u00a0ensure\u00a0others\u00a0do, too.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Father Tsui\u00a0is the\u00a0parochial\u00a0vicar\u00a0for\u00a0St. Bartholomew Church in\u00a0Elmhurst\u00a0and the first American-born Chinese priest in the\u00a0Diocese of Brooklyn.\u00a0He\u00a0led a group of\u00a0Chinese-American\u00a0Catholics to Cypress Hills Cemetery\u00a0on\u00a0the\u00a0Brooklyn-Queens border\u00a0on All Souls\u00a0Day on Nov. 2 to pray over the gravesites of immigrants who died\u00a0in the\u00a0late 19th\u00a0Century\u00a0and early\u00a0to mid-20th\u00a0Century.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to\u00a0attempt\u00a0to remember the long-forgotten\u00a0souls that\u00a0were\u00a0early Chinese immigrants,\u201d Father Tsui told The Tablet.\u00a0\u201cThose\u00a0who had means\u00a0were\u00a0buried\u00a0here\u00a0temporarily,\u00a0and\u00a0their families\u00a0took their\u00a0bones\u00a0back to China. But those\u00a0who are poor were left\u00a0here.\u00a0Some of the graves\u00a0had sunk\u00a0into the\u00a0ground,\u00a0and\u00a0they were\u00a0hard to find, but\u00a0we\u00a0found them.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

RELATED: More Bilingual Skills Needed for Clergy to Serve Chinese Immigrants<\/a><\/p>\n

As he led the group in prayer\u00a0at the cemetery that day, Father Tsui said he thought of all the Chinese immigrants\u00a0\u2014 laborers,\u00a0mostly \u2014\u00a0who faced\u00a0discrimination in housing and employment\u00a0in their newly adopted country.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Chinese\u00a0immigrants\u00a0have been settling in New York since the early 19th Century, according to Queens College, which traced the migration back to sailors who came to Manhattan in the 1830s. Over the\u00a0next 50 or so years, the Chinese population in New York and California\u00a0steadily grew\u00a0as immigrants\u00a0arrived\u00a0by ship.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But\u00a0with the passage of the\u00a0Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882,\u00a0which\u00a0Congress enacted\u00a0out of fear that Chinese laborers were taking jobs from\u00a0Americans,\u00a0immigration nearly\u00a0came\u00a0to a halt.\u00a0It\u00a0was one of the first\u00a0federal laws to use race as a basis for\u00a0immigration\u00a0policy.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd\u00a0many of the\u00a0Chinese workers who were already here were here alone,\u201d Father Tsui explained. \u201cThey had hoped to bring their family members\u00a0over,\u00a0but the Chinese Exclusion Act prevented them from doing so.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

As a result, when\u00a0they died, they died alone.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Many cemeteries refused to\u00a0permit\u00a0Chinese people to be buried in their properties.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Cypress Hills Cemetery, a non-sectarian cemetery\u00a0established\u00a0in 1848,\u00a0was\u00a0not one of these cemeteries, according to the New York Cemetery Project.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

RELATED: Chinese Faith Community Clears Trash, Shares the Gospel<\/a><\/p>\n

Cypress Hills\u00a0was\u00a0nicknamed\u00a0\u201cthe people\u2019s graveyard\u201d\u00a0because of its\u00a0policy of welcoming all to\u00a0be buried\u00a0within\u00a0its gates.\u00a0Still, many\u00a0of the gravestones of Chinese immigrants\u00a0there\u00a0fell into disrepair over the years, Father Tsui said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIn Chinese culture, we respect the dead,\u201d he explained. \u201cIt\u2019s\u00a0so sad that\u00a0when you\u00a0go to the cemetery, you see the gravestones barely\u00a0visible\u00a0in the ground\u00a0because\u00a0they sunk.\u00a0And secondly,\u00a0it\u2019s\u00a0sad\u00a0that a lot of these people\u00a0are lost\u00a0in history.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

For Father Tsui, the visit to Cypress Hills Cemetery was also personal.\u00a0<\/p>\n

His paternal great-grandfather, Edward Toy Hem, who died in 1936, is buried there. Father Tsui had been searching for the gravestone for years and eventually came across it in 2021. \u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a great relief to\u00a0me and my family,\u201d\u00a0he\u00a0said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It\u2019s\u00a0important to remember\u00a0his great-grandfather and other immigrants,\u00a0Father Tsui said, using the metaphor of a tree to make\u00a0his point.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cA tree has roots. And we\u00a0can\u2019t\u00a0forget that we,\u00a0as\u00a0a Chinese community,\u00a0have deep roots\u00a0as\u00a0well,\u201d\u00a0he\u00a0explained. \u201cOur\u00a0communities\u00a0were built\u00a0by men\u00a0and women,\u00a0our\u00a0forebears, who sacrificed\u00a0their\u00a0lives\u00a0and their\u00a0energy\u00a0for\u00a0a better\u00a0future.\u00a0We\u00a0are\u00a0part\u00a0of that better\u00a0future.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cThis is the first year that we did it together,\u201d said Father Andrew Tsui, who brought a group…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":100636,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[75,84,83,9,24,63],"class_list":["post-100635","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-manhattan","tag-manhattan","tag-manhattan-headlines","tag-manhattan-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100635","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100635"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100635\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/100636"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100635"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100635"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100635"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}