History & Legacy

UC Berkeley's C. V. Starr East Asian Library dates the establishment of Chee Kung Tong, also called the Hongmen Society, to 1848, and its registration in San Francisco to 1879. These dates provide the basis for this account. The library's overview is a historical summary; it is not itself an original 1848 founding document. [1]

Research by the Chinese in Northwest America Research Committee distinguishes the older Hongmen movement from the later use of the name Chee Kung Tong. Its researchers identify reports of a Hung Society in San Francisco by 1854 and a San Francisco directory reference to Chee Kung Tong compiled in 1880. These references help explain why accounts can give different dates for the movement, an organization, and its name. [2]

The Hongmen tradition provided a language of fraternity and mutual obligation. In San Francisco, that tradition became part of an immigrant community building institutions far from home. The surviving historical record does not supply a verified founding day or a complete annual record beginning in 1848. The website's count of years of heritage for any given year is therefore a calendar-year measure of historical continuity, not an exact anniversary or a claim about uninterrupted operations. [1][7]

Origins, formal registration, and the adoption of a name can fall in different years. This account identifies what each date represents instead of presenting a single anniversary as the whole story.

Chinese immigrants confronted laws that restricted entry, movement, and access to citizenship. The Chinese Exclusion Act of May 6, 1882 barred immigration by Chinese laborers for ten years and prohibited the naturalization of Chinese immigrants. Subsequent legislation extended the restrictions. Repeal in 1943 did not immediately create equal immigration access: a very small annual quota remained. These are the wider conditions in which Chinatown's associations operated. [3]

UC Berkeley's 2017–18 Library Annual Report describes the San Francisco Chee Kung Tong as a benevolent society that provided immigrants with housing and protection during the exclusion era. Mutual aid was therefore a practical response to insecurity as well as an expression of belonging. [4]

The lodge's address at 36 Spofford Street belongs to a wider history of connections between San Francisco and political change in China. San Francisco Planning's Chinese American Historic Context Statement identifies the building as a place where Chee Kung Tong supported and housed Sun Yat-sen and as a center of revolutionary activity. It also associates the lodge's Chinese Free Press with the circulation of his ideas. [5]

The Chinese in Northwest America Research Committee dates Sun's formal joining of a Hawaiian branch to 1904 and identifies San Francisco leader Wong Sam Duck, also known as Huang Sande (黃三德), in a photograph with Sun and supporters in Chicago that year. This places the San Francisco lodge within a network that extended beyond a single neighborhood. [2]

Berkeley's own account describes the organization's contribution to the movement that helped bring down China's last imperial dynasty. The lodge belonged to a wider overseas support network: the revolutionary history of the period involved many communities and organizations. [4]

The 1906 earthquake and fire devastated Chinatown. Chinese Hospital's Institutional Master Plan describes efforts to move Chinese residents to Bayview and Hunters Point, and the community's rebuilding in the existing neighborhood. This wider struggle to remain in Chinatown forms the setting for the lodge's surviving early twentieth-century records. [10]

An especially useful primary-source reference is Berkeley's catalog entry for a California certification of filing of articles of incorporation dated November 23, 1906. The catalog names the California Chinese Free Mason Society/Chee Kung Tong Society and assigns the item the identifier A1-1-1. A document issued in 1906 is evidence for that record; it should not be mistaken for proof that the organization first began in 1906. [6]

The archive continues beyond the revolutionary years. In a presentation about processing the collection, Berkeley librarians Jianye He and Fumei Chen Lin identify an October 29, 1914 meeting record discussing a proposed remittance to Sun Yat-sen, and a 1923 document concerning revised organizational rules with an inserted resolution about forming a political party. These examples show continuing fundraising and institutional debate. A discussion recorded in minutes is not, by itself, proof that a proposed payment was completed. [7]

The revolutionary period is visible in photographs as well as written accounts. Berkeley's catalog dates a Hongmen fundraising bureau photograph to approximately July 1911 and identifies Sun Yat-sen and Wong Sam Duck among those pictured. [16] A separate 1911 photograph records bureau staff with three Tongmenghui members. [17] These are distinct images of organizing networks; they should not be treated as interchangeable portraits of a single meeting.

The archive also preserves a street procession involving Chee Kung Tong, the Tongmenghui, and the Jinlan Lodge. Its catalog gives 1911 without a month. [18] The image offers a view of public collective activity, while the uncertain dating should stay visible. Photographs can establish that a group or scene was recorded; financial totals and individual responsibilities require additional documents.

History survives in ledgers as well as commemorations. Berkeley catalogs a Supreme Lodge income-and-expenditure volume covering September 1923 to September 1925. Its index records many associated organizations, including branches in Canada, Mexico, the United States, and farther afield. The catalog offers a starting point for studying relationships across borders; it is not a current directory of active lodges. [8]

Archaeological research published by the University of Arizona Press also describes a document recovered from the Tucson lodge that referred to the Supreme Lodge at 36 Spofford Alley in San Francisco. This is material evidence of San Francisco's place in a wider organizational network. [9]

The archive's surviving photographs make the lodge's connections tangible across more than a decade. A fall 1913 studio group portrays the San Francisco Chinese Republic General Association. [19] Delegate photographs dated April 7, 1918 and June 1, 1921 record Hongmen gatherings associated with the Americas headquarters. [20][21] Berkeley describes the 1921 image as a photographic reproduction, an important distinction when considering the surviving object.

Two different 1923 images tell complementary stories: the February 20 gathering at Hang Far Low in San Francisco and the October 10 portrait of worldwide Hongmen gathering delegates. [22][23] Together they show how banquets and formal group photography served as ways of recording collective identity. They do not, by themselves, establish the full membership or agenda of those gatherings.

October 10, 1925 is represented by both a commemorative group of four men and a larger headquarters staff photograph associated with the historical Zhi Gong Party. [24][25] These should be read alongside the existing sourced discussion of 1925, without implying a present-day political affiliation for the San Francisco lodge.

The history also has a political branch. China's State Council Information Office, describing the China Zhi Gong Party's institutional history, dates its founding by an overseas Hung Society Zhi Gong Hall to October 1925 in San Francisco. That account is attributed here as the government's description of the party's origins. Historical connections should not be read as proof of the present San Francisco lodge's governance, membership, or political affiliation. [14]

Chee Kung Tong's local story includes Chinese Hospital. The hospital's Institutional Master Plan lists Chee Kung Tong among its founding community organizations. This places the lodge alongside other associations in an enduring effort to support health care in Chinatown. [10]

The hospital's own history dates the formation of the Chinese Hospital Association to 1923 and the opening of its facility at 835 Jackson Street to 1925. Its predecessor, the Tung Wah Dispensary, had served the community from 1899. These milestones belong to the hospital and its coalition of supporters, rather than to Chee Kung Tong alone. [11]

The connection remains visible in contemporary institutional records. Chinese Hospital's 2024 and 2025 Annual Reports both list Clifton Leung with the affiliation Chee Kung Tong on the Board of Trustees. These dated institutional records provide a recent point of connection between the lodge and a Chinatown health-care institution whose founding coalition included Chee Kung Tong. They document those reporting years; they should not be used to infer the starting date of his service or the lodge's complete recent activity calendar. [12][26]

Chee Kung Tong's documentary history extends well beyond the early twentieth-century photographs. Berkeley catalogs a ledger, 民國三十四年進支數總部, covering 1945–1950, with the identifier A5-5-10 and San Francisco provenance. Its index includes people, associations, businesses, and newspapers. The volume is evidence of surviving organizational recordkeeping; the catalog alone does not establish what each listed relationship involved. [27]

A second source is held in a different Berkeley repository. The Ethnic Studies Library's finding aid for the Kem K. Lee Photographs and Other Materials lists a folder concerning Chinese Freemasons, Bing Kung Tong, and Chee Kung Tong for 1946–1967: Box 24, folder 40. This is a research lead into the postwar decades, not a claim that every photograph in that folder depicts this lodge or has already been examined for this website. [28]

The Chee Kung Tong Archive also contains an account volume cataloged for 1964–1971, A5-2-14, associated with the Gone Goo Duk Hon publication. Its index connects the headquarters with a broad range of organizations and publications. These records offer a foundation for studying later community and publishing networks without inventing a year-by-year institutional narrative. [29]

The collection reaches into the later twentieth century. Berkeley catalogs a Supreme Lodge income-and-expenditure volume for 1990–2001, under 五洲洪門致公總堂進支部. Such records matter because organizational history includes administration and everyday stewardship as well as public celebrations. The date range describes that volume; its individual entries require study before more detailed historical conclusions can be drawn. [13]

In May 2018, Chee Kung Tong donated historical records and photographs to UC Berkeley's C. V. Starr East Asian Library. [1] The librarians' 2020 presentation describes the practical work behind making the collection useful: sorting materials, developing a classification system, identifying people and places, checking dates, and planning conservation and digitization. Their preliminary inventory counted 5,169 items, including 258 photographs. These are the processing team's figures at that stage, not a claim about the present number of online records. [7]

Preservation made a new kind of access possible. Correspondence, accounts, organizational papers, and photographs can be studied together rather than leaving the public story dependent on a few famous names. The original documents and their descriptions remain essential guides for future additions to this history.

Preserving this documentary record is itself part of the lodge's legacy. Future additions can draw on family photographs, oral histories, meeting records, and correspondence, provided each item is identified, dated where possible, and used with appropriate permission.

The chapter's current executive roster, supplied for this website, identifies Clifton Leung as President, Ping Chiu as Vice President, Olivia Lam as Treasurer, and Alan Chiu as Principal Historian. Their names and roles are presented on the Executive Members page.

Today, this website brings the chapter's leadership information together with a sourced historical account and a gallery of fourteen archival photographs. Its purpose is to make the lodge's documented past easier to explore and to keep that history connected to the present community. The gallery identifies dates, photographers where known, collection credits, and original archive records.

The next chapter of this history can be built from dated chapter records, identified family photographs, and recorded recollections. Recent events should be added with their dates and supporting details, so that future readers can distinguish documented history from memory and interpretation.

The Hongmen tradition, a particular lodge, a later political organization, and a present-day institution should not be treated as interchangeable. Similarly, "Chinese Freemasons" is a historical name, not evidence of a charter from a Western Masonic grand lodge. Masons of California explicitly distinguishes Chee Kung Tong from its own fraternal order. [15]

Older newspapers and accounts of Chinatown must be read critically. San Francisco Planning discusses both violence involving some tongs and the sensational treatment of "tong wars" in the press. Broad labels should not substitute for evidence about a specific organization, person, event, or period. [5]

This is a sourced overview, not a claim to have examined every item in the archive. Institutional summaries, primary documents, catalog descriptions, and later historical interpretations are identified for what they are. Exact membership totals, detailed building-construction dates, and claims of continuous operations should be added only when their supporting records are available.