Gordon Tom has big plans for Bok Kai Temple

Artifacts packed and stored for decades in the bowels of Marysville's historic Bok Kai Temple will get properly displayed, if all goes according to plan.

So says Gordon Tom, new president of the Sahm Fow Chinese Community Inc., formerly the Marysville Chinese Community Inc.

Tom said he looks forward to converting a Chinese council chambers in the temple building into a permanent space where century-old Chinese dolls, opium pipes, Chinese opera costumes, and other items found during recent renovations can be shown to the public in style.

"We want it to be kind of like a museum," he said. "Right now, we have no place to put those things. It's all in boxes."

Tom grew up just a block east of the temple, in a family house at the center of what had been a lively Chinatown.

His cousin created the Chinese American History Museum of Northern California, a few buildings down from their former residence.

The museum is open for tours on special occasions and by special request. The Bok Kai festival next weekend will be one such occasion. The temple also will be open to the public during that weekend.

Tom was elected by the 70-member Sahm Fow and took over as its president in January. Janice Soohoo Nall, also a one-time resident of the city's Chinatown area, previously held the post.

During Nall's tenure, the temple underwent critical portions of a six-year series of improvements, including restoration of several works of art that now grace the temple's interior and a mural on the structure's facade.

Funding sources have included San Francisco's Six Co., Proposition 40 bond funds, Friends of the Marysville Bok Kai Temple Inc. and the McBean Family Trust.

Sutter Buttes Garden Club members also created a Chinese Garden in front of the temple's entrance.

Nall, said Tom, was instrumental in getting much of that work under way.

"We couldn't have gotten a lot of those things done if not for her," he said.

Tom said he also is hoping to raise funds to build a climate-controlled storage facility for the temple's archives and for display items to be stored while waiting to be rotated through the museum room.

"We have more artifacts than we have room for," said Nall. The Bok Kai also has kept documentation for Chinese community council meetings dating back more than 100 years, she said.

In addition to work on the Bok Kai Temple site, Tom said he plans to begin raising funds to restore the old Chinese School on First Street, which he, cousin Brian Tom and hundreds of other Chinatown residents attended as children.

Contact Appeal-Democrat reporter Nancy Pasternack at 749-4712 or at npasternack@appealdemocrat.com.