Kim Wing and Yoke Ping Chin Commemorative Scholarship Fund

This scholarship honors the memory of Kim Wing Chin (1903-2002) and Yoke Ping (Leo) Chin (1911 -1999), a husband and wife who immigrated to the United States from rural China in 1922 and 1931, respectively. They started a family of six children while living in the back of a hand laundry business in the Bronx, NY and eventually settled into a house near the corner of Broadway and 238th Street, also in the Bronx. All six children attended public K-12 schools and graduated from college. The same is true of 14 grandchildren currently established on both coasts and in the midwest who now work professionally in the fields of art, education, finance, information technology, medicine & health, and management. Three of these grandchildren are graduates of Madison East High School. 

Education was particularly important to Yoke Ping, who had few opportunities for schooling in her youth for both economic and cultural reasons. She took English literacy classes in the evenings at DeWitt Clinton High School for several years, beginning in her 50’s, and used rare moments of free time to practice penmanship and grammar in both Chinese and English throughout her life. In addition to running the business and forming ties of friendship with neighbors and customers, over the years Kim Wing actively sponsored the immigration of many extended family members to the United States, with the final group of relatives from the region of his home village arriving in the 1990s. All of the sponsored relatives were able to become financially independent via education and diligent effort.

This scholarship was established in the summer of 2022 to mark the joint centenaries of Madison East High School and Kim Wing Chin’s arrival in the United States at the age of 18. The initial endowment was funded by monies from the estate of Kim Wing and Yoke Ping’s second daughter, Mary (Chin) Chan and her husband Ging Chan, transmitted through heirs.