She’s not yet in high school, but Caroline Tso already is being heralded as an accomplished historical researcher.
Tso, who will enter Carter G. Woodson High School as a ninth-grader in August, created the exhibition “The Family Tea House: Where Culture and Cuisine Met in Arlington” as part of a project for Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month.
Now on display at the Arlington Historical Museum, the exhibition uncovered previously unknown facts about a restaurant that, most likely, was the first in the surrounding area run by Asian immigrants with food that, albeit Americanized, represented their home culture.
The exhibition is “an homage to all the rich Asian history here in Northern Virginia,” Tso said in a presentation at the museum on Sunday (July 27). The facility, operated by the Arlington Historical Society since the 1960s, is located in a 19th-century schoolhouse on Arlington Ridge Road.
Working largely from newspaper archives, Tso was able to unearth information about the restaurant and its owner, Jim Wing.
The restaurant was located in the 4000 block of Lee Hwy (since renamed Langston Blvd), where Rosewood Imports later stood. Wing also operated a nearby gift shop.
The historic record about the restaurant continues to have some gaps. It opened in the late 1940s or early 1950s, but its closing date is unknown. Wing appears to previously have operated a restaurant called Fong Yuen, but where it was located and whether it had a direct connection to the Family Tea House is unknown.
Such is the life of a researcher, Tso said.
“You have these missing pieces, and it’s up to you to find out what’s there,” she said.
Even less is known about Wing, who didn’t attract the same level of attention as his restaurant.
Efforts to contact his descendants proved unsuccessful. “It was kind of a dead end,” Tso said.
There were other restaurants offering Americanized Chinese fare across Northern Virginia at the time, but mostly, they had just a few dishes as a marketing strategy.
The Family Tea House served both American and Chinese dishes. The menu in 1955 included a special of wonton soup, an egg roll, chicken chow mein, fried rice and tea for $1.50.
The all-in-one meal deal appears to have been an effort to introduce local residents to a cuisine generally unfamiliar to them.
“It’s definitely a steal,” Tso said of the price. “It was their house special.”
In the 1950s-1960s, the restaurant had a Chinese chef for Asian-inspired fare, a Black chef for American food and white waitresses (as a help-wanted ad for new staff in the exhibition makes clear). The clientele included families, fraternal groups and students from Washington-Lee High School, since renamed Washington-Liberty.
The restaurant was “just the place to stop for a pick-me-up lunch,” a period copy of the W-L yearbook noted.
One photo in the exhibition shows high school students Tom Sullivan, Chuck Crowell, Gretchen Greene and Alice Peck enjoying a meal there in the early 1960s. The dual menu was a selling point to them: two of the students opted for what they described as exotic Chinese cuisine, while the other two stuck with more typical American fare.
The restaurant also played a supporting role in a key local civil rights victory. In June 1960, sit-ins began in restaurants across Arlington to protest Virginia’s segregation practices. The targeted restaurants let Black customers purchase food, but refused them use of lunch counters and other facilities.
On June 23, nearly two dozen restaurants opted to integrate their seating facilities, rather than adhere to Jim Crow-era restrictions. The Family Tea House was among them.
The restaurant owners “treated all as family,” Tso said.
Tso, whose lineage is from Taiwan, attended Canterbury Woods Elementary and Frost Middle schools. She began serving once a month as a docent with her father at the Arlington Historical Museum to develop her interest in history.
She hopes to do further research projects, Tso told FFXnow.
In 2024, Tso won first place in her age category in a Virginia History Day district competition with a historical paper titled “The Father of American Agriculture: How the Langstroth Hive Turned Agriculture and Honeybees.”
Historical research is just one of her interests; during the 2024-2025 school year, Tso received a national Scholastic Art Award gold medal in the drawing/illustration category.
While the Family Tea House exhibition is temporary, portions will be incorporated into the “Commerce & Industry” section of the recently renovated Arlington Historical Museum.
David Pearson, a past president of the historical society, said the museum aims to expand on work like Tso’s to give the public more insight into the experience of 20th-century immigrants in the local area.
“We’re still very light” on that, Pearson acknowledged.
Tso’s presentation was among the first in a new series of informal, 30-minute talks offered on select Sundays at the museum. They are held in a second-floor community room that, before the renovation, had been used for storage.
The next presentation, set for Aug. 10 at 2 p.m., will look at the 60th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act and its impact on Northern Virginia.
“If you have ideas for [future] topics or want to present, let us know,” Pearson told attendees.
