At 21 she dared to come to America in the midst of hatred for the Chinese. The Exclusion Act, excluded all Chinese into America fewer than 1,000 Chinese women entered the U.S. yet she made sure she was one of them.
Born Ming Q. Wong 1916 in Jiangmen, a Guangdong province in southern China.
She married Wae Yin Tom, who was thirty years her senior she was to became wife #2. By the time, she was 18 she had my mother, Hong. Wae Yin was in America making plans to bring Hong to America.
Moy fought back and threatened to take their daughter and leave him if Wae Yin did not bring her to America too. She prevailed and came to America at the age of 21, however, she had to leave her baby with her husband’s first wife.
In order for her to come to America, Moy had to take the paper name of Ngun Moy Hum. She arrived in America with $8.00 in her possession. She arrived Sept 15, 1937 and was detained at the facility in Seattle, and was not released until October 25, 1937 forty days later.
Moy made her way to New York City to join Wae Yin where they reside in the laundry. There she gives birth to a son, Yow Choy in 1939, a daughters Elsie in 1942, Barbara in 1943, and lastly, Ella May in 1947.
In 1952, Moy took her girls and left her abusive husband leaving their only son Yow Choy with his father (she was not allowed to take the boy). Moy survived by driving a taxi to and from the Brooklyn Navy yard, while living in an abandoned building in Brooklyn. Moy finally divorced Wae Yin in 1953.
Moy met Winston Lee in 1953. They married and moved to Kings Highway in Brooklyn and opened a restaurant, “Sunrise.” Moy worked as the hostess and Winston as the cook.
This turned out to be a very successful partnership, they built an extremely lucrative business together. Moy assimilated into a predominantly Italian and Jewish neighborhood, speaking better English than some Americans. She also took to America’s more “colorful” words, and they became her repertoire rarely did she spoke without them!
The restaurant’s success enabled Moy to eventually moved to Miami Beach, Florida in 1962 where she opened a restaurant called the House of Moy Lee. This became a hopping place with the likes of Liberace, Dustin Hoffman, Johnny Mathis, Jackie Gleason, Milton Berle, Jackie Mason, and many more. Moy Lee’s outgoing personality landed her a guest appearance on The Merv Griffin Show.
Moy eventually sold her Miami Beach restaurant and moved to Fort Lauderdale. There she opened the Moy Lee Chinese Restaurant with the capacity to seat 330 people. She collaborated with ten businessmen, but vowed she would never be indebted to these men, so within a year she bought them all out and became the sole owner.
Moy died a multimillionaire at the age of 96. She was an entrepreneur, a liberated woman, before it was fashionable. Moy did what men did, she took no nonsense from anyone, she dared to come to America when there was such hatred for the Chinese. Yet, she was afraid of no man. She roared wherever she went, she was heard whether you wanted to hear or not. You knew her point of view whether it was solicited or not, whether you agreed or not. There will never be another Chinese woman like her ever again! And I am proud to be her granddaughter~~ Suzanne C. Eng