Qualla: The Village That Vanished

The Village That Vanished: Introduction

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In 1952, workers from the Tung Sen Benevolent Association arrived at a cemetery in Rockville, California, to dig up the dead. They exhumed the remains of the Wong family and reburied them at a Chinese cemetery near Colma, south of San Francisco. The original graves had been there for twenty-four years, since the summer of 1928, when a single morning of violence killed eleven people and set in motion the disappearance of an entire community. Within six months of the murders, Rockville's Chinatown was deserted. The people who had farmed the Suisun Valley for decades simply left, and the village that had sustained them vanished from both the landscape and the historical record. It took more than fifty years for anyone to publicly call for a memorial.

The Village That Vanished: The Bryan Ranch

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Wong Gee was the foreman of the Bryan ranch near Fairfield, in Solano County. His family was part of Rockville's Chinatown, a small community of Chinese immigrants, most of whom had come from Dachong in Guangdong province. They farmed the Suisun Valley, growing fruit and raising ...

The Village That Vanished: Twenty Minutes

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In the early morning of August 22, 1928, Leung Ying returned to the Bryan ranch. He was under the influence of narcotics, armed with a rifle and a hatchet. What followed took less than twenty minutes. He moved from building to building across the ranch, killing workers and member...

The Village That Vanished: Manhunt and a One-Day Trial

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Leung fled in Wong Gee's sedan, heading north. Newspapers scrambled to cover the story but could not agree on his name -- Leung Ying appeared in print as Leung Wing, Leung Ling, Ming Ying, and Loy Yeung. Nevada County Sheriff George Carter and Deputy Arthur Hellings spotted him t...

The Village That Vanished: Death Row's First Suicide

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Leung Ying never reached the gallows. His execution was scheduled for November 9, 1928, when he was to be hanged at San Quentin alongside three bank robbers -- which would have been the first time four executions were held on the same day at the prison. On October 22, after six w...

The Village That Vanished: The Village Disappears

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The killings were front-page news for about a week. Then the coverage stopped. The massacre had happened within the Chinese community, and in 1928, the Chinese community in rural California faced considerable ostracization. The broader society moved on. Two days after the murders...