Fourth Grade
Worksheets
Lee Chew - Chinese-American
Lee Chew was born in a village in Canton, China. It was a rather large village. There were over 5,000 men in the village over eighteen years of age. No one knew how many women and children were in the village because it was tradition that women and children weren't worthy of counting. All of the families in the village were related. They all belonged to the Lee tribe.
In those days, babies were kept at home with their mothers. When Lee Chew was seven, he was moved from his parents' home and placed in another building with thirty other boys of the village. Girls were also removed from their parents' homes at the same age. The children went to the homes of their mothers and fathers for meals, but they all slept in the large buildings.
Farmers of Lee Chew's village didn't live on their farms. They all had homes in the village and went out to the farmland to do the work each day. Lee Chew's father grew sweet potatoes, rice, beans, peas, yams, sugar cane, pineapples, and bananas on his ten acre farm. He harvested palm leaves from the trees on his farm and sold them. The lower part of each leaf was used to make fans. The part of the leaf that was left was used to make waterproofing for coats and hats and awnings for boats.
