Sad News - Ming Hsieh - Yi Shen Market

[Anselmo Villanueva]

Dear Friends --

This is very sad news.  Ming and Fung Hsieh have been really supportive of local events that we all sponsor and have put on for years.  Many of us frequent their market and eat at their restaurant which is located inside of the store.  Their daughter Rachel was a classmate of our son Martin.

Most likely, there will be an obituary in the Register Guard in the next few days.  Watch for it as it may list a memorial service or how to donate in Ming Hsieh's.  If you hear something, please let us all know.

Please share this with others who know the family.

Anselmo
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Eugene businessman dies after log rolls over him in Florence

The Register-Guard    April 22, 2014




Ming Hsieh. (Thomas Boyd/The Register-Guard, 2005)

http://www.registerguard.com/rg/news/local/31470164-75/hsieh-police-family-log-restaurant.html.csp


FLORENCE — A 58-year-old Eugene businessman died Sunday night after a 40-foot log rolled over him on the North Jetty beach in Florence, state police said today.

Ming Hsieh, co-owner of the Yi Shen grocery and restaurant in west Eugene, was leaning against the log on the beach just before 6 p.m. Sunday when a wave suddenly crashed near him and other family members, police said.

The wave knocked down an older family member, and as Hsieh was trying to help her up, the receding water pushed the log over him, police said. Hsieh’s daughter, who also was present, was struck by the wave, which moved her away from the log, police said.

Police said the log was estimated as 25 inches in diameter. The family could not run away from the wave because it was moving too fast, police said.

An off-duty firefighter pulled Hsieh to a safe area and performed CPR, police said. The firefighter told police that Hsieh began breathing again before emergency responders arrived.

Hsieh (pronounced “say”) was transported by Western Lane Ambulance to PeaceHealth Peace Harbor Medical Center in Florence, where he died shortly upon arrival, police said.

Members of Hsieh’s family could not be reached for comment today. Yi Shen’s automated message machine said the restaurant was closed due to a family emergency.

Hsieh and his wife, Phung Hsieh, were profiled in The Register-Guard in 2003, seven years after opening Yi Shen. They were again profiled in 2005 for a story about the 30-year anniversary of the fall of Saigon in Vietnam.

The couple have worked in Chinese and Vietnamese restaurants in Eugene for decades. Hsieh, who grew up speaking Mandarin, worked with his wife at a Chinese restaurant at 29th Avenue and Willamette Street for 7 1/2 years.

He said in an interview that he landed in the restaurant business because it was the only work he could find in Eugene without having to speak English.

The two were among the 500,000 Vietnamese who fled across the South China Sea when Communists took over Saigon in the 1970s. They spent 14 months in a refugee camp, living on little but rice before a Lowell resident agreed to sponsor a family.

The couple took a break from the restaurant business for several months in the 1990s, but Hsieh convinced his wife to join him for yet another business endeavor. Together, they opened the Asian grocery known as Yi Shen on West 11th Avenue and Chambers Street in 1996. The store later became both a grocery store and restaurant and has been operating since.

In Mandarin Chinese, Yi Shen means “success.”

The couple has two daughters, one of whom is listed as a chemistry major at the University of Oregon.