Carolyn Wing Greenlee

As a Third Generation Chinese American, I felt a responsibility to collect the stories of my clan because there were not many books from the inside of a Chinese immigrant family. The first book was Inside the Oy Quong Laundry, my mother’s memoir. My mother was reluctant to tell more than the stories I had [...]

Every year I get 2 birthdays and 3 new years. I have January 1, my birthday, and Chinese New Year, which varies according to the lunar calendar. I like having three chances to make a good start on my new year’s resolutions. Most of the time Chinese New Year falls in February or even in [...]

Since it’s still Chinese New Year week, I wanted to share a story from my mother’s point-of-view as princess of the parade. This is from the book I wrote with her about her life Inside the Oy Quong Laundry. This is what she said: Once in awhile when it got too bad in Merced, my [...]

Some people have asked me what the red word to the left of my name means. It’s my dad’s chosen last name. In Cantonese it’s pronounced “wing,” but it means “eternity.” He chose it when he left his family (a story too long to tell in this post. If you want to know the details, [...]

Happy Chinese New Year of the Rabbit. Say, “Gung hay fat choy!” It means “May you have good fortune” unless you pronounce it wrong, in which case you will be making a comment about their grandfather’s vegetables. Born towards the end of January, a third-generation Chinese American, I always feel I have three chances to [...]