How a failed journey to California aboard a Chinese junk boat led to a lifelong friendship Sitting in Eddie Fong’s living room in Palo Alto is a 55-year-old model of a traditional Chinese junk boat. Its presence symbolizes a series of unlikely events that brought Fong, now 81, away from his birthplace Hong Kong to the United States in the 1960s, thanks to a chance encounter with a retired Oakland detective that developed into an ambitious plan to sail across the Pacific Ocean to California on a life-sized junk boat. Before speaking to CNN Travel, Fong texted us a spoiler alert: “I need to tell you ahead of the time. We didn’t make the entire trip to California.”