Wing Quai Tang

Wing Quai Tang (1894–1974) was the founder and owner of the Asiatic Garden restaurant in Ithaca. Born in a small village in Southern China, Wing first came to the U.S. in 1914, recruited to work as a chef in the U.S. Navy Yard in Marysville, WA. After serving through World War I, Wing and several other Chinese men were offered visas to stay in the US and moved to Syracuse, NY. Education and language barriers, as well as anti-Chinese discrimination, limited the group to restaurant work, but Wing and his colleagues eventually earned enough to establish Little China—the first Chinese restaurant in Syracuse—in the late 1920s. In 1931, Wing opened his own restaurant, Asiatic Garden, in Auburn, NY, before moving it that same year to Ithaca. His wife, Susie Tang, joined him in 1939 and ran the restaurant with him for several decades until they handed the business over to their son, King Tang, and his wife, Jean Tang.