Not long ago, the African American Resource Center in San Diego, California, USA, received a donation of up to $5 million to invest in the education of the black community and fund black college students.
The donors are the Tung family, a Chinese family from Coronado.
(Donations from the two descendants of the Dong family)
The reason why the Dong family donated such a large sum of money stemmed from a favor 85 years ago:
When the previous generation of the Dong family had no fixed residence, they received the help of local blacks in Coronado, and their family was able to live and work in peace and contentment in the local area, and they have multiplied to this day.
Now the Dong family has decided that it is time to repay the benefactor group...
Everything starts from the 30s of the last century.
At that time, the "Chinese Exclusion Act" had been strictly enforced in the United States for more than 70 years, and the law prohibited Chinese from entering the country, prohibiting naturalization, and in some places even imposed strict restrictions on Chinese renting and buying houses.
In this context, even if the ancestors of the Dong family came to California as early as the 19th century to make a living, their descendants have been ostracized everywhere.
(Coronado in the 30s)
到了1939年,老董(Lloyd Dong Sr.)来到科罗纳多当园丁。
Because of a variety of legal restrictions for people of color, Mr. Dong and his wife could not rent a house in Coronado, so they had to go to a dilapidated house in a remote area of color to make do, which was very inconvenient for work.
Lao Dong has to walk a long way to work six days a week, and on Sundays he has to work extra jobs for his children to go to school, and life is quite difficult.
(Mrs. Thompson)
It's not a way to stay up like this, until one day, Lao Dong saw the second-floor cottage of a farmer's stable, so he timidly inquired if he could rent it.
The landlord then appeared, a black couple named Thompson, who had worked hard for many years and had become well-known local entrepreneurs.
Mrs. Thompson told Lao Dong that the second-floor cottage was a worker's dormitory and was not suitable for Lao Dong's family, but she also had a house to store sundries, which could be packed up and rented to Lao Dong.
(Mr. and Mrs. Thompson)
Lao Dong was overjoyed, and asked several times, "Really?"
Mrs. Thompson assured that it was absolutely true, and that with the prestige of the couple in the town, no one would come to trouble.
Since then, the old Dong family has finally lived in a decent house.
Not only that, the Thompsons also promised Lao Dong and his wife that if they had the opportunity in the future, they would be willing to sell their house to the couple at a low price, so that they could have a fixed place to live from now on.
In this way, in the era when the Chinese were targeted, Lao Dong and his wife became the only local Chinese who could rent a house in the urban area.
For more than ten years, Mr. and Mrs. Dong and Mr. and Mrs. Thompson became friends, and the two families had close contacts.
(Dong Family)
Later, the cycle of birth, old age, sickness and death inevitably came, and Mr. and Mrs. Thompson died one after another, and before dying, Mrs. Thompson fulfilled her promise and sold her big house to Mr. and Mrs. Dong at a low price.
At that time, the Dong family had been renting from Thompson's house for 17 years, and the old Dong couple gave birth to four children in the house rented to them by the Thompsons, which took root in the local area and multiplied to this day.
The house that the Thompsons sold to the Dong family at the beginning has now become part of the Dong family's ancestral property.
(Where the Dong family once rented)
Combined with the property that the Dong family later purchased, the Dong family's assets now reach $8 million.
Today, two of the children of the old Dong couple are still alive, and the two elderly people are grateful for the help of the Thompsons, and decided to donate more than half of their property, a total of 5 million US dollars, to give back to the black community, just to repay the Thompsons for their kindness back then.
(Two brothers of the Dong family)
Not long ago, Coronado's African-American Resource Center received a $5 million donation from the Dong family, two of whom are retired professors who have always believed that investing in education is the key to making a difference in a community.
Not only that, but because of the Dong family's donation, the "African American Resource Center" was renamed the "Gus and Emma African American Resource Center". And Gus and Emma are the names of the Thompsons who helped the Dong family back then.
Speaking of this donation, the two descendants of the Dong family just said calmly:
"It's time for us to repay the favor. ”
The grace of a drop of water is reciprocated by a spring.
The Dong brothers used practical actions to interpret a period of repaying kindness that spanned a century...