Milwaukie Museum<\/a> website. And when a giant new crossbred cherry was deemed a success on Lewelling\u2019s farm, he reportedly named it for Bing, who oversaw the orchard rows where it was grown. The new cherry was bred from the now-heirloom Black Republican and Napoleon varieties.<\/p>\nAfter Bing traveled to China for a visit, according to the Milwaukie Museum, \u201che was never able to return to Oregon.\u201d The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which restricted Chinese laborers immigrating to the U.S., apparently prevented his return.<\/p>\n
Blackburne and Kuo, both Taiwanese Americans, used that foundation of facts to create a dreamy original fable about a present-day girl who daringly eats cherries on a rooftop, as a young Blackburne once did. She recounts what her father has told her of the fruit\u2019s background.<\/p>\n
In this telling, Bing was so tall he created waves while wading on the San Francisco shore. Trees grew taller just so they could listen to his \u201crich and deep\u201d voice. A single hair from his long traditional queue could build \u201ca comfy home for an entire family of blue jays.\u201d And he protects his workers from what adult readers may understand were anti-Chinese riots of the era targeting immigrant workers.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe did want to include some of the uglier parts of history, because, you know, that was part of the reality that Bing was living in,\u201d Blackburne says. The folk tale format let them reference that difficult history in a more abstract or symbolic way \u2014 \u201cthe loneliness, the feeling of not belonging.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the book, a tear falls from Bing\u2019s eye \u2014 delicate and detailed as a Faberge egg, in Kuo\u2019s illustrations \u2014 watering a tree that bears fruit \u201ca red as deep as Bing\u2019s love for his family and friends,\u201d as sweet as his gentle lullabies. Seth Lewelling, as the creators picture the conversation, says \u201cWe should call them Bing cherries. Because they\u2019re remarkable, just like you.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kuo, who has visited the Milwaukie Museum, says that the more she uncovers about Seth Lewelling the more she sees he was \u201ca very radical\u201d man.<\/p>\n
She appreciates that Blackburne communicated his support for immigrant workers who were too often mistreated, \u201cand that this Bing cherry, the staple of the Pacific Northwest, represents someone with ideals that we can appreciate today,\u201d Kuo says. \u201cAt one of my book visits, a kid said that Seth was his hero.\u201d<\/p>\n
Blackburne, whose family came to the U.S. in the late 20th century, tends to think of Chinese influence on America in recent terms, she writes in the book\u2019s afterward. \u201cBing\u2019s story reminded me that Chinese Americans have been leaving their mark on this country for far longer.\u201d<\/p>\n
And Kuo recalls that growing up, she\u2019d hear stories of Paul Bunyan and Johnny Appleseed at school, then go home to hear tales from ancient Chinese mythology. There was never a place where both existed.<\/p>\n
She would have loved to hear Ah Bing\u2019s story in those days. Weaving him into that tapestry seemed one of the best things they could do as picture book authors, an American tall tale with more than a kernel of truth.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Candied Cherries<\/h2>\n
It\u2019s hard to beat a chilled bowl of fresh Bing cherries, but the season is brief, and fresh cherries don\u2019t keep well. Lengthen their lifespan by turning them into a sweet topping for ice cream sundaes, with this recipe (very lightly adjusted) from dessert king David Lebovitz\u2019s ice cream book, \u201cThe Perfect Scoop.\u201d Lebovitz says the candied cherries will keep in the refrigerator for up to 2 weeks.<\/em><\/p>\nIf you just want the cherries without the syrup (to, for instance, chop and mix into your homemade ice cream when it comes out of the machine), Lebovitz says to drain them in a strainer first for at least an hour.<\/em><\/p>\n1 pound fresh sweet cherries, stemmed and pitted<\/p>\n
1\u00bd cups water<\/p>\n
1 cup sugar<\/p>\n
1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice<\/p>\n
1 drop almond extract<\/p>\n
Heat pitted cherries, water, sugar and lemon in a large, nonreactive saucepan until the liquid starts to boil. Reduce heat to a low boil and cook for 25 minutes, stirring frequently during the last 10 minutes to make sure the cherries are cooking evenly and not sticking. Once the syrup is reduced to the consistency of maple syrup, remove pan from heat, add almond extract, and let cherries cool in their syrup.<\/p>\n
(Recipe from David Lebovitz, \u201cThe Perfect Scoop\u201d<\/em>)<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yakimaherald.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"AS A KID EATING BIG, SWEET BING CHERRIES, it occurred to Livia Blackburne that their name sounded Chinese. The fleeting thought was correct, she learned decades later, when her friend and colleague Julia Kuo came across that detail in a history book. The book, \u201cThe Making of Asian America\u201d by Erika Lee, credited a Chinese […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2472744,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[21741],"class_list":["post-2472743","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/How-popular-Bing-cherries-got-their-name-in-19th-century-Oregon.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2472743","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2472743"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2472743\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2472745,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2472743\/revisions\/2472745"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2472744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2472743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2472743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2472743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}