A Rare Lady Served Suey, County Well

This is from a 1989 profile of a great Seattle lady, written by Frank Chin:

"Chances are, Mar Seung Gum was born slipping into the hands of a Chinese midwife on the San Juan Fish Company dock in Seattle . . . Her father, Jim Sing Mar, an immigrant from the Kwangtung village of Hoi Yuen, ran the San Juan Fishing and Canning dock. . . .

"Ruby Chow is Mar Seung Gum."

"Hello, Ruby," I said, when we met again after maybe 20 years. We sat at her dining room table in her Seward Park home, a not especially lavish home but economic eons removed from a fish dock. Ruby is 74 now.

Beautiful hair, as always, goes skyward. As Chin recorded it, Ruby's hair is "the well-gardened and cultivated creation of hair that rises in the shape of a huge popover over her head, the largest French roll ever to survive winds and snow, rain and the rest of the weather in Seattle."

She pointed to five large notebooks on her table.

"I am putting all this together, things my husband and I accumulated for more than 40 years."

Ruby's husband, Ping Chow, is an ebullient, friendly man, a genuine star, to this day, of Chinese opera. Two large, beautiful pictures of Ping, in colorful opera costume, hang on a wall.

Ping can do a complete back flip anytime he feels like it. He is 78.

Such a lady, Ruby Chow. Such a force in Seattle's history.

There is probably not a suey shop in America which doesn't know about Ruby Chow. There probably is not a tong in America, or Taiwan, or Southeast Asia, even China itself, which does not know about Ruby Chow.

Another listing from Frank Chin:

"The old stranded generation of the last Wah Kiew `overseas Chinese' has never recovered from the shock of Ruby Chow, who, through her Chinese Community Service Organization, brought American-born, English speaking, non-Cantonese, northern Chinese, outsiders, and WOMEN onto the Chong Wah board.

"To this day, the only Chong Wah in the world where women sit down with the men to make decisions about the Chinese community is in Seattle."

Ruby herself was the first Asian-American woman to chair a legislative body. She served three terms, 12 years, on the King County Council. Her only daughter, Cheryl, is a Seattle City Council member; one of her four sons, Mark, is a Seattle District Court judge.

She has not retired, not by a long shot. The president of the Republic of China in Taiwan recently appointed her to the Overseas Chinese Affairs Commission. She has some 48 such honors on her resume, which also notes that two King County parks have been named for her.

I started to say, "I go to the International District quite often, and . . . "

"Chinatown!" she corrected. "Always Chinatown."

From 1948 to 1979 she and Ping (who cooked) ran Ruby Chow's Restaurant, the first such eatery outside Chinatown. It became a mecca for top politicians, bureaucrats, cops and newsies.

The late martial arts icon, Bruce Lee, lived and worked there for nearly four years.

Governors, from Al Rosellini to John Spellman, sought her advice. The late Dorothy Bullitt, queen bee of the Seattle establishment, was her good friend.

Growing up off the San Juan dock, she moved with what Chin calls "eye-popping, blunt-edged ease" through all kinds of social situations. She was a success because "Ruby Chow's made it on guts, not manners or looks, bribery or blackmail. She was always the first."