Kam Wah Chung, loosely translated means Golden Flower of Prosperity. This is the Kam Wah Chung & Co building which was once a general store, an apothecary, an herbalist's office, a place of worship, and a center of Chinese social life.

Today, it is a Oregon heritage site and a National Historical Landmark that commemorates an important era in Oregon history and a memorial to two Chinese American men, Ing Hay and Lung On.

The building is a small two story structure, the ground floor built of large stone blocks with steel plates over the first floor doors and window.

The upper floor is wood framed with a stairs in front leading to the upper floor entrance with a deck which serves as cover for the ground floor entrance.

As the tour begins, I mentally take note of the many things the tour guide is telling the small group on the tour.

Once the guide opens the front door, we go inside and begin to view something right out of the early part of last century. I have my camera set to museum because flash photos are not allowed inside the building.

However, what makes this place so remarkable is that when Ing Hay was moved in 1948 from Kam Wah Chung to a nursing home in Portland, he had the building sealed up because he believed he was coming back.

That was seventy years ago when the steel doors and windows were sealed shut and at the time, the store was packed with wooden boxes of foodstuffs, tobacco, medicinal products, at least five hundred herbs, many of the items still wrapped in the shipping package just as it had been received from China. A short time later, Ing Hay died in that nursing home never having the opportunity to return to Kam Wah Chung.

In 1955, three year after his death, Bob Wah, Ing Hay′s nephew and inheritor or the business deeded the Kam Wah Chung and Company building and its contents to the City of John Day to be used as a cultural museum. The building was still locked and closed up with most of the contents intact.

And, Kam Wah Chung remained sealed until volunteers reopened the building years later. What they found was amazing: there was still food in the kitchen, medicinal herbs and Doc Hay′s tools on the apothecary table, and a stock of dry goods in the main room.

In 1973, The Kam Wah Chung Company building was added to the National Register of Historic Places. Then, in 1975, the store opened as a museum. In 2005, The Kam Wah Chung Company site was named a National Historic Landmark.

This is a must see treasure of culture, community, herbal healing, and even a respite for the Chinese people who were severely discriminated against back then.

Except for very few intrusions, Kam Wah Chung remained sealed until the state gained possession of the property and later open it for public tours.

If you have not seen this National Historical Site, you need to make your way to 125 NW Canton Street, John Day, Oregon and sign up for a tour at the Interpretive Center. Museum tours are guided daily from 01 May through 31 October, 9 a.m. - Noon and 1 p.m. - 5 p.m.

After boiling water for a cup of hot, I sip on it while I work on my computer. At noon, I pack out and head west, first to John Day, Oregon and stop at Kam Wah Chung state heritage site. The ranger at Clyde Holiday tells me that I should not miss this free tour.

I drive there, check in at the interpretation center and sign up for the guided tour. We all arrive at the building which looks unpretentious, almost utilitarian.

The general store proprietor, Lung On, called Leon by the town folk, stocked the store with both Chinese as well as American goods as you can see from the photos below.

This small building became home to two Chinese immigrants, Ing Hay and Lung On. Both became locally famous, Lung On as a general store proprietor and businessman, and Doc Hay as a practitioner of herbal medicine. For 50-some years, the building was a social, medical and religious center for the Oregon’s Chinese community.

. Ing Hay′s medical skills, pulse diagnosis, the use of traditional Chinese herbal remedies, acupuncture, and moxibustion, all made him vital to the health of the local, regional, and even national clientele he served. Ing Hay′s Chinese and non-Chinese patients hailed from places throughout Oregon and from states as distant as Alaska and Oklahoma.

The Kam Wah Chung, with its Chinese artifacts and more than five hundred varieties of intact Chinese medicinal herbs, demonstrates the function and integration of Chinese medicine and medicinal practice in both the Chinese and non-Chinese communities in eastern Oregon