Collector/curator's description reads: “1928, Vancouver. Family of CPR worker Cheng Ging Butt. Back row, L to R: William, Harry, Edward, Henry. Front row: L to R: imothy, Maurice, wife Lena Jang holding Cecil, Cheng Ging Butt holding Beatrice, Ellen and Bevan (Clarence). Cheng Ging Butt literally tried his hand at building the railway, but when he lost a finger under the weight of a steel rail, he gave it up for less dangerous work. ‘Conditions were really primitive, it was really cold, it was not safe and Grandpa decided that he was not going to do this anymore,’ said his grandson, Kevin Jangze. ‘He ended up with a grocery store, a temple, a cherry orchard, a still to make ‘beverages,' and some houses of gaming. And so Grandfather, being quite the entrepreneur, built up this little empire.’ Cheng Ging Butt, proprietor of Cheng Foo's in Yale, B.C., last stop on the steamship run, before the Cariboo, was a Chinese Canadian pioneer. His store provisioned the Chinese railway workers, who had to pay their own way while working for the Canadian Pacific Railway. Cheng landed in New Westminster, B.C., around 1871, at age 22, from Sun Hui village, early enough to avoid the head tax, but not the discrimination. He raised a family with Lena Jang, the wife he bought from the Leong family, who gave him eight boys and two girls. Cheng died in 1929, the year the Great Depression took away everything he'd earned.”