The Augusta Chronicle in 1905 proudly announced the impending arrival in Augusta of two "celestials," the popular term for describing Chinese a century ago, who were coming all the way from New York to open a "genuine" Chinese restaurant.  It isn't known whether this one,  to be on the 800 block of some unmentioned street, was to be the first, or the first genuine, Chinese restaurant in this southern city.  Augusta had perhaps the largest Chinese population in the Deep South at the turn of the twentieth century that started with the recruitment of Chinese labor to work on the construction of the vital Augusta canal that enabled it to build its own textile mills instead of sending cotton to New England textile mills.
   Again, in the journalistic style of the time, the article goes on to gently poke fun at the Chinese who will open a "sho nuff" Chinese restaurant, one that will serve chop suey!



      It was not the last Chinese restaurant in Augusta, as several others would open within a few years. Augusta was well ahead of much larger Atlanta in attracting Chinese restaurateurs.