The surprise of this article is that there was a Chinese woman named Daisy Joe. Well, that's what is most surprising to me.
Honestly, reading this article makes me feel like an American would be hard put trying not to have Chinese ancestry. Not that I am suggesting they should make the attempt.
My grandmother told me that some female in our family (whose bloodline affected mine) went to Chicago, got on a bus and met a Chinese man. She said she married him. I asked "And are we blood-related?" and she barked, "Why do you think I'm telling you this?"
She said more or less the same thing about another female, but she went elsewhere and met a Jew, instead. Grandma drew the line at explaining our French connection, but she made it clear there is one.
She also, of course, mentioned Irish people and Native Americans, though I assure you she blamed the latter all on Dad's family.
We had several long discussions about family heritage, at different points. Most of the discussion was about how much of it was hidden and why and how it wouldn't be wise to be digging it up. And, how I better not go to Chinese Grove, Texas while she is still alive.
Which was after I had started singing that song and gave her quite a start, one day while we were cleaning. She asked me how I knew that information. I told her its a song on the radio and sang it to her (let's call it singing, thank you kindly). Quite a while later, it came on the radio and I rushed into the room and played it at her and several of her friends. They were all astounded.
Every single person in the room - that was not me - knew about the information in the song, agreed that it was quite accurate and said some version of how surprised they were that anyone outside of Texas knew when "they" workedso hard to not have it talked about. There was no specification of who "they" were.
But, that day I sang the song to Grandma we had the discussion wherein she told me about the meeting on the bus and tried to impress upon me the importance of not telling people of our ancestry. To which I replied, "It's not like they will ever believe me, anyhow."
I don't remember at which point she told me that we had relatives - Chinese relatives -in China Grove, Texas. She told me that she would not tell me their names or addresses or anything about them and made me promise that as long as she was alive I would not go there and look for them.
Well, I have not. I mean, if I happened to run into a Chinese person and we happened to learn we were related, that's one thing. But, I am not in a desperate quandry over my roots or anything. It's just interesting to know a bit about one's family history. So, I am more concerned with who the woman was that met the man on the bus, why she was in Chicago and what made them interested in each other. That sort of thing.
I hope whatever happened it would make for a great love story.
Anyway, yeah ... The Chinese are related to a good whack of white and black people, probably hispanics and Native Americans, too. So, it's very likely that you are part Chinese and therefore related to everyone else in the country. Especially if you know you are Irish at all.
I hope you will read and enjoy the information on the site I am sharing. I certainly have, though I am not done. One of the things I enjoyed was finding out that it was not that unusual for a woman of Irish descent to meet a Chinese man on a bus in Chicago and for them to wind up married.
https://www.cinarc.org/Intermarriage.html
