Compiled and written by David R. Schleper, 2023

Susan Xian Jeung was born around 1957 in Canton, Shunde, Guangdong, China. Her parents were Wiley Xian and Bao Xian. Her brother, Vincent, was also born there.

Guangzhou, formerly Romanized as Canton or Kwangtung, is the capital and largest city of Guangdong province in southern China, according to Wikipedia. Located on the Pearl River about 75 miles north-northwest of Hong Kong and ninety miles north of Macau, Guangzhou has a history of over 2,200 years and was a major terminus of the maritime Silk Road. It continues to serve as a major port and transportation hub as well as being one of China’s three largest cities. For a long time, the only Chinese port accessible to most foreign traders, Guangzhou was captured by the British during the First Opium War. No longer enjoying a monopoly after the war, it lost trade to other ports such as Hong Kong and Shanghai but continued to serve as a major transshipment port.

Most of Guangzhou’s population is Han Chinese. Almost all Cantonese people speak Cantonese as their first language.

China’s Laogai prison system was created soon after Mao Zedong and the Chinese Communist Party came to power in 1949 and it still exists today in its essential form.

In concept, it is rooted in communist revolutionary ideology blended with traditional Chinese views on punishment, namely that anti-social behavior (whether criminal or political in nature) can be “reformed” and eliminated through forced labor and re-education.

Originally patterned after the Soviet Gulag, and put it place with Soviet assistance, the Laogai prison system has fostered similar inhumane treatment and been used as a vital tool in suppressing dissent and maintaining Communist Party Power, according to LaogaiResearch.org.

The system was introduced by the ruling Communist Party in China in the 1950s and is used to lock up petty criminals. But it is also a convenient way to get rid of people considered to be troublemakers, such as dissidents, according to BBC. The system gives the police immense power. Many argue they use this in an arbitrary manner.

Research reported that Chinese have 350 camps and about 150,000 prisoners.

When Susan was two years old, the Chinese government sentenced her mother, Bao Xian, a banker, to a labor camp. According to the article “Force relocation a quandary for family” in the March 13, 1997 Shakopee Valley News, when Susan was 12, her mother was imprisoned a second time, and this time Susan’s father, Wiley Xian, a civil engineer, and her grandfather, a doctor, had also been interred in labor camps. They were intellectuals, and “the Chinese government is very afraid of intellectuals. The government wants to reform intellectuals because they think the intellectuals want democracy,” said Susan.

Susan and her family did want democracy, and they fled Communist China, settling first in Hong Kong, and then moving to the United States in the early 1980s. Eventually, they ended up in Minnesota. Susan and her family were new to the language and culture here, but they decided that opening a Chinese restaurant was a good fit for survival. Susan, her husband, Warren, her brother, Vincent and his wife, Bi Xian, and her parents began looking for a place to open a restaurant, according to the Shakopee Valley News. They wanted a place for sanctuary, a place they owned, without the possibility of increase rent prices or problems with landlords.

“We realized Shakopee was a growing city and we were excited to share in that growth,” said Susan.

They opened the Imperial Wok Restaurantin downtown Shakopee.

By 1978, the streets in downtown Shakopee were a mess. The city of Shakopee decided to tear down the north side of First Avenue. It was part of a plan that also included a highway 169 bypass south of the city. Judy Case noted, “This venture to renovate downtown must be done carefully and correctly.”

The redevelopment meant that buildings on Blocks 3 and 4 would be torn down, and a joint county-city housing and retail complex would be built.

For Susan Xian Jeung and her family, it meant the Imperial Wok Restaurant would be torn down. And so, the restaurant closed on March 4, 1997. Susan and her family learned firsthand about eminent domain – the right of a government entity to take private property for public use, with compensation to the owner.

Former Shakopee City Administrator Mark McNeill noted that, “Whenever a city or government acquires a property, we must be able to show a public purpose for that.” And so, the Imperial Wok Restaurant location was on a redevelopment, and the downtown development is a benefit to the entire community.

The three families of the Jeungs and Xians were the last of the owners to vacate the non-empty building, which was soon torn down. “We try to make a living, but now, what’s the road for us? It’s very sad and painful. I can’t sleep. I have nightmare after nightmare, tear after tear,” said Susan in the Shakopee Valley News article.

As Susan noted, “Our family wants to work to support our children, get them through college so that they get out of this kind of work, which is 14 hours a day with no holidays, no vacations. Now, we have no options. We’ve basically been thrown out on the streets.”

And while the city has been very nice, Susan and her family would have to move to a new place, probably not in Shakopee. “We don’t know when and where we’re going to be able to open a new restaurant, but we will open one, that’s for sure.”

Bibliography

Brands, Sandra. “Force relocation a quandary for family.” Shakopee Valley News, 13 March 1997.

“China’s Guangzhou to empty labour camps ‘by year end’.” BBC, 9 Sept. 2013. www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-24019666.

“Guangzhou.” Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guangzhou.

LaogaiResearch.org. laogairesearch.org/laogai-system/.