YUEN-CHWAN SHEU
February 10, 1929 - April 17, 2009
Different Universe
Rizhao city is located on the coast of Shan-
dong province near Qingdao, home of the fa-
mous brewery. Shandong has produced many
famous figures, some mythical like Wu Song
who reportedly killed a tiger with a single
blow, others more real though still larger
than life like Zhuge Liang, Liu Bei’s chancel-
lor during the fall of the Han dynasty, Confu-
cius who’s synonymous with Chinese culture
and also his prized pupil Mencius.
When Yuen-chwan Sheu was born in Rizhao,
the count of souls tallied no where near its
current 2.8 million inhabitants. Yuen-chwan
was born the day after the Lunar New Year
celebrating the year of the snake on February
9, 1929. At the time Rizhao was organized as a
county. He was born into a different universe.
His was a universe where his parents fully
expected a restoration of the emperor. The
new Republican government appeared to
be just another anomaly among many in the
thousands of years of dynastic rule. Luxury
transportation in Rizhao in 1929 was a horse
drawn carriage.
From this beginning in this coastal rural
county Yuen-chwan Sheu’s life would span
two continents, three countries and four lan-
guages. Though he never mastered English,
Yuen-chwan did master Mandarin, Korean,
Japanese and a smattering of Russian. He
would outlive the usefulness of a horse, learn
to drive a car, come to love to watch John
Wayne western movies on television, and
contribute to an American life.
By 1940, it must have seemed as if the world
was coming to an end in Rizhao. Eighteen
years and still no restoration of the emperor
in sight, and Japanese invaded China.
 uen-chwan’s father died from heartbreak,
Y
betrayed by a kinsman over an investment
in the newly developing German influenced
city of Qingdao. A few weeks thereafter,
Yuen-chwan’s mother devotedly followed her
husband, also dying from heartbreak while
embracing her eleven year old son on her
matrimonial bed.
One fateful day that Yuen Chwan missed
school, Japanese bombers demolished his
school. His paternal aunt who had taken
charge of his care decided to send him to the
relative safety of Korea. The Korean penin-
sula was solidly under the administration
of Japanese as an imperial colony. He was
to join his former warlord uncle, a younger
brother of his father. His uncle had fled China
many years prior to escape Chiang Kai-shek’s
troops during that general’s Northern Expedi-
tion. Yuen-chwan’s uncle expected a battle,
but that battle never materialized as Chiang
Kai-shek’s march into the northern prov-
inces of China proved to be more show than
substance, and the generalissimo instead
brokered deals with local warlords along his
pathway to Manchuria.
Yuen Chwan accustomed to spoiling as the
only son of a prominent landowner did not
last long in his authoritarian uncle’s military
household. In his teenage years he set-off on
his own.
Moment of Destiny
During the late 1940s, Yuen Chwan settled
into a job at a prestigious Chinese restaurant
at Seoul. Still a teenager, he was afforded
greater responsibility beyond what was nor-
mal for his young years. Two things elected
him for special treatment, his previous educa-
tion (though he attended only the equivalent
years of the 7th grade) prepared him better
than his many Chinese compatriots in Korea,
and his comparatively tall height of 5’11”
made him seem more authoritative than his
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years would suggest.
Leading up to the Korean War, Yuen-chwan
in his role as a manager and maitre d’ of the
restaurant would broker meetings between
the political and military elite of Korea. His
position in the restaurant afforded him a
birds eye view of developing history. Once
war broke, he took to the road again. During
the initial invasion Yuen-chwan made a moral
decision that defined the rest of his life and
how he would be regarded by anybody he
came into contact with.
A number of Chinese refugees bribed South
Korean soldiers to transport them in a mili-
tary truck. As the makeshift caravan made it
through the countryside, the soldiers be-
came impatient with the slow time they were
making burdened by their human cargo. The
young soldiers stopped the transport in the
middle of the countryside and ordered the
Chinese cargo to unload.
Everybody complied except for Yuen-chwan.
This young man just barely twenty-one years
old stopped with one foot in the truck and
one foot out, straddling a border between
death and survival. He refused to move.
There were others among the Chinese refu-
gees who could speak Korean, but all were
silent except for Yuen-chwan.
He admonished the soldiers saying that they
had a moral obligation to escort the people to
safety in some town or city. He declared that
to leave them in the countryside with North
Korean soldiers in pursuit was to condemn
every man, woman and child to death. After a
tense standoff, this unarmed man convinced
the soldiers to reload the refugees. He won
out by a force of moral conviction. This con-
viction would serve him in life and make it
easy for him to make friends later in life. That
Yuen-chwan did not share a language with a
stranger never stopped him from making a
new friend.
America
Yuen-chwan survived the Korean War, and
restarted an almost Quixotic journey across
Korea. Before leaving Korea, he had lived in
every region except for Gangwon-do.
In 1959, he met and fell in love with So Yuk-
lan. A bride normally out of the reach of a
Chinese resident of Korea. She was born of a
distinguished lineage affiliated with the Park
clan tracking back to Hyeokgeose of Shilla.
During the tumult of the Korean War, she was
dislocated and never recovered the comfort
of pre-war days. An aunt plotted to marry her
off to an old man as a way to jettison a mouth
from her dinner table. Yuen-chwan rescued
her from this perilous fate and the two mar-
ried without any of the bride’s family in at-
tendance because the groom was Chinese.
In 1960, Kennedy’s ascendance to the presi-
dency of the US inspired Yuen-chwan and
he believed with Park Chung-hee’s parallel
ascendancy to power in South Korea and
the birth of his first child a daughter named
Ying-li that all things were possible. When
during the Park regime his economic and
political situation became harder, Yuen-
chwan prepared his family for an epic adven-
ture to immigrate to the US sponsored by his
kinsman Chuan-hsiu Sheu in Rochester, NY.
Yuen-chwan moved his family from Gyeong-
sang-do in the southeast of South Korea to
Youngdeung-pu in Seoul and settle in with
old time friends the Lius to await the issue
of visas from the US Embassy. While in Seoul
awaiting immigration to the US, a son Jia-hao
was born.
Visas finally arrived after several years of
waiting. In the spring of 1973, the Sheu fam-
ily embarked on a plane flight destination
Seattle, the family’s first port of entry in the
US before continuing on to the final destina-
tion of Rochester, NY.
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Seattle
After only a year in Rochester, Yuen-chwan
felt restless. The fewest days of sunlight of
any US city of the lower 48 probably did not
help. Yuen Chwan accepted the invitation of
his kinsman Ching-fang Hsu and relocated
his family to Seattle. Chuan-hsiu anxious
to keep his relative in Rochester sent Yuen
Chwan without his family on a plane to Se-
attle, hoping that the remainder of the family
remaining in Rochester would entice Yuen
Chwan to return to New York. However after
a few months, the rest of the family under-
took the trip in Greyhound buses across the
width of America in a week-long journey
before reuniting in Seattle.
The family moved to East Fir Street, in the
HUD housing projects of Yesler Terrace. Later
in the 1980s this would become the epicenter
of the crack epidemic in Seattle. Early years
in the projects weren’t unhappy, during their
residence here Ying-li, now proudly bearing
the English name of Eunice (provided her by
Ching-fang’s son Ronald) finished Franklin
High School four years after the famous jazz
musician Kenny G. Jia-hao now Donald, also
named by Ronald, attended Bailey Gatzert
Elementary and later was bused to Seward
Elementary as part of the Magnet program.
Many of the early years saw Yuen Chwan trav-
eling to work in San Francisco and Tacoma,
remitting money back to his family. One of
his earliest jobs was at Greek diner on Pill
Hill as a dishwasher, where he’d return just
a few blocks down the street to pass away at
Harborview Hospital so many years later on
April 17, 2009.
Years of saving and scrimping led to the pur-
chase of a restaurant property in West Seattle.
But the vagaries of contract law he didn’t
understand led to a non-sequitur when he
was unable to open the restaurant because all
of the money he turned over to a restaurant
equipment supplier only provided him in re-
turn for the hard-saved pennies unusable and
unmarketable equipment.
After one non-start, Yuen Chwan did not
give-up and he purchased the Teapot Cafe on
Capitol Hill on East John Street, across from
Group Health. There he renamed the restau-
rant Tai Yuen, meaning heavenly garden. He
personally painted the walls stained with
thirty years of grime, and laid new carpet.
Before the inauguration of the restaurant, a
surprise arrived in 1977, Ying-mei, the third
child was born to Yuen-chwan and Yuk-lan
when the couple were aged 48 and 42 respec-
tively. Later Ying-mei would take the initia-
tive and rename herself Ammie.
Three years of success including many favor-
able reviews in local press allowed the family
to move from the HUD projects to Seattle’s
northend where Yuen-chwan purchased a
home for $71,000 on 179th Street. Donald
and Ammie enrolled in well regarded Shore-
line schools and the family continued to
prosper until Yuen-chwan was interrupted
with early heart trouble.
Legacy
With Yuen-chwan’s heart trouble came a de-
cline in the family’s financial fortune, but his
fine work as a father saw both Donald and
Ammie finish college despite the family’s di-
minished prospects. Donald graduated from
Columbia University with a BA in history
and Ammie graduated from the University of
Washington with a BA in sociology.
This past Friday, April 17, 2009, Yuen Chwan
passed away in the presence of his daugh-
ter Ammie and his son Donald, on Donald’s
birthday.
Remembrances may be forwarded to Keiro or
Kin-on, both in Seattle.