Gwing Der

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Gwing DER (aka DER Nea Vick & Nelson DER)

1926 from Kaiping, China

Gwing Der was eighteen years old when he arrived on Angel Island with his younger brother. He said it “wasn’t that bad….We just weren’t permitted outside. If you wanted to come to America, you had to comply with the laws. That was the way it was….white people didn’t like us Chinese – colored people.” Gwing settled in San Francisco.

(Portrait by Tiffany Duong, SFSU 2016)