Tom Ma
Tom Te-wu Ma
Age 80
Te-wu Ma was born on a farm in the northern part of Jiangsu Province of China in 1932. His father was a military officer and landlord of the farm, which was worked by tenant farmers. His mother was a traditional Chinese housewife: she had been raised with her feet bound and received no formal schooling. Te-wu has one sister, 10 years younger.
In 1945, when the Communists took over the region where they were living, the family had to leave the farm and moved to the southern part of the province, which was still under Nationalist control. Te-wu started junior high school there. When the Communists took over all of the mainland in 1949, the family moved to Taiwan. Te-wu's father went into business and worked for a textile company until he retired in the mid-1970s. Te-wu went to the National Taiwan University, studied Chinese literature and graduated in 1956. He wanted to continue his studies in the U.S. so he prepared by studying English in a private school. He met his wife in Taiwan after she finished Junior College. They married in December 1959 and over 500 guests attended their wedding.
Te-wu went without his wife to Michigan in 1960 to study library science and enrolled at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo. When he arrived, his host insisted that he adopt a western name. Te-wu immediately decided to choose Tom because he had read "Tom Sawyer". Henceforth, his name became Tom Te-wu Ma. Tom didn't finish his study program because he was hired by a baseball manufacturing company to help run a new baseball factory in Jamaica. Tom was initially assistant manager, then manager of 300 employees. After a short time, he was then hired by a Chinese businessman to run a Chinese jewelry shop in Miami. At that point Tom arranged for his wife to come and join him. Soon after that, a Chinese ex-military man hired him to be general manager and president of a chain of 7 or 8 Chinese restaurants around the U.S. called "Blue Hawaii". The head office was in Virginia.
In Virginia, Tom met a Chinese cook and decided to help him establish a restaurant. In 1975 they became 50-50 partners and Tom picked a location where they would have no competition: Riverton, Wyoming in the middle of the state. It was the only Chinese restaurant in town and was very successful. In fact the Ma family and the cook's family were the only Asians in the town. Tom brought his parents from Taiwan to Riverton. Tom and his wife had 3 children there: 2 sons and a daughter. The children were brought up in an American lifestyle, although Tom and his wife maintained many of their traditional Chinese customs. The children attended college and now two of them are married, living in Seattle, while the third is single and lives in Katy, near Houston. All three are successful and there are 3 grandchildren. Tom's mother died in Riverton in 1992.
Tom tells this story: "My father and mother didn't speak English. So when my mother passed away, I was going to bury her in Riverton, WY. My father said, 'No, you can't do that. There are no Chinese ghosts underground. How do you want your mother to deal with the American ghosts if she doesn't speak English? Ship the coffin to Los Angeles. There are thousands of Chinese people living there. There must be thousands of Chinese ghosts under the ground there.'" Tom found a Chinese cemetery in Los Angeles and bought 4 plots there: for his mother, father, wife and himself.
Tom had spare time while managing the restaurant and started writing a column for the local daily newspaper in Riverton. There was a lot of interest in his Chinese wisdom, so his column continued to appear every week for 14 years. After a while Tom wanted to publish a book of his columns and began looking for a publisher. He had a difficult time but finally got a positive response from one of the 100 publishers he had contacted. The first publisher went bankrupt, but got Tom linked up with another publisher in New York. Tom got 10% royalties. He then translated the book to Chinese, purchased the translation rights, and found a publisher in Shanghai for both Chinese and English versions.
They stayed in Riverton 21 years, until Tom was 65. Then he sold the restaurant and moved his wife and father to Houston in 1996 to be near his son. His father died about 4 years later. Tom purchased a house and still lives there with his wife. In Houston, Tom has continued to write and now has 15 books published, counting both English and Chinese versions. He even has one book published in Poland in both Polish and Chinese. His writings are primarily romantic stories. He is a member of Romance Writers of America.
Tom and his wife remain very active. They both drive. She loves singing and belongs to several Chinese singing groups. He loves to read, write stories and play table tennis 6 days a week at the Chinese Cultural Center, where he has many friends. They continue many of their Chinese traditions and eat Chinese food almost exclusively.
