Hong Wo was a Chinese merchant in Marysville in the 19th century. His store, Hong Wo & Co., was the largest of several in Marysville's Chinatown. He sold a wide variety of Chinese goods, and also supplied the Chinese laborers who performed most of the work of constructing the Marysville Levees. According to W. T. Ellis, Jr., for whom Ellis Lake was named, Hong Wo also consulted regularly in Marysville with Sun_Yat-sen. Ellis wrote in his autobiography Memories: My Seventy-Two Years in the Romantic County of Yuba, California:
| It is not generally known, but many of the plans for the Chinese Republic were "hatched" here in Marysville. Sun Yat Sin, who later on became the first President of the Chinese Republic, frequently came to Marysville to confer with local leading Chinese, their meetings being held at No. 306 First Street, where was located for many years the well known store of Hong Wo & Co. |
| After several visits of Sun Yat Sin whom I had the pleasure of meeting on the occasion of one of his visits, the proposed Chinese Republic Flag used to wave from several flag poles in Chinatown. Later on, the Republic became a fact, mainly through the efforts of Sun Yat Sin, who unfortunately died just about that time from cancer; his remains are now in a magnificent mausoleum in China, which is looked upon as a shrine by the Chinese. |
