My Personal Oral History Interview With The Chinese Historical Society of Southern California

To me it didn't seem that long ago when I did an oral history of my Grandfather Wong who came to the United States some 110 years ago.  But in fact that was probably sometime in the 1970s, so I shouldn't have been surprised when the Chinese Historical Society of Southern California came along to do an oral history interview with me.  

This interview is a slight departure from the other postings on this blog since it does not directly have anything to do with Chinese food in America.  But those of you familiar with my work know that to me, Chinese American history is inexplicably tied into Chinese food in America, and in fact you will probably will remember many of the episodes recounted here from being mentioned in my past food articles.

David R. Chan Interview

Chinese Historical Society of Southern California

 

Interviewer: William Gow, Ph.D.

Narrator: David R. Chan

Location: Zoom Interview

Interview 1 of 1

Transcription:

 

W GOW 00:08	All right. I think we should be recording now. Let me just ask you officially, David, do I have your permission to record this interview?
D CHAN 00:15	Yes. Since I'm a lawyer, that means I understand what you said.
W GOW 00:20	Okay, okay. So today I am interviewing David Chan. It is March 25, 2022.
D CHAN 00:30	David R. Chan, because there's--
W GOW 00:31	David R. Chan. Thank you, yes. Okay.
D CHAN 00:32	Because there's millions of us.
W GOW 00:34	Okay. I'm interviewing David R. Chan.
D CHAN 00:37	Well, I mean, a very brief digression, but you know my family's background a little bit with the city produce market. And during-- I guess I was in college, I'd help out with my dad - he was an accountant and one of the owners of the businesses - during the summertime. And when I was there, there were six people named David Chan working in the City Market.
W GOW 01:03	So is that when you started going by David R. Chan?
D CHAN 01:07	No, actually, I did that-- no, I was using that even in college. I remember because people would be calling me David R. I'm not sure why I put in the-- I guess maybe even back then, even though there weren't a lot of Chinese, there were probably enough David Chans, I decided to distinguish myself.
W GOW 01:28	Well, the R definitely sounds kind of-- it sounds distinguished in some ways, right? You do that middle initial, it makes you sound--
D CHAN 01:34	No, but I mean, if you ever go on Facebook and there's hundreds, even thousands of David Chans--
W GOW 01:41	Okay, yeah. So let's chat really briefly. I want to start off with a little bit about your-- and you started talking just kind of about that. But your family background. Where did you grow up? Tell me a little bit about what your upbringing and your youth were like.
D CHAN 01:55	Okay, so I was born in LA in 1948. At that time, there were 5,000 Chinese in LA out of a population of 2 million. So basically a couple of things. Number one, I may have had one Chinese friend. None at school, because we're such a small portion of the population. Anything, we were kind of like oddities. I grew up in the Crenshaw area, now known more frequently as West Adams, and that is one of the areas-- okay, so just a little background. Most of LA housing came up between 1910 and probably 1940 or so, because LA was a boom city. It had a population of 100,000 in 1900, and by 1930, it was 1.3 million. So basically, at that point in time, the entire housing stock was built within a fairly recent period, which coincided with the creation of what they call the racial restrictive covenant, which limited occupancy of housing to Caucasians, okay?
D CHAN 03:16	So you had a situation where, if you were Chinese or some other minority in LA during the period from 1915 until 1948, when the US Supreme Court invalidated the covenants, you could only live in a house that was built prior to 1915 that did not have such a restrictive covenant. 1948 Supreme Court struck down these covenants, so you had Chinese and other minorities breaking out into other neighborhoods, but not breaking out very far, because you still had racial discrimination. And neighbors would band together and say, "Hey, there's nothing legally that would force us to sell to nonwhites. So we don't." So one of the breakout areas for Asians back then was the Crenshaw area. So starting in probably around 1950, you had a lot of primarily Japanese Americans, also some Chinese Americans moving into that area.
D CHAN 04:22	So I went to a school called Virginia Road Elementary School, which is basically halfway between Crenshaw and La Brea, Adams, and Jefferson. So there were a lot of Asians back then we were known as Orientals, but most of the Orientals or Asians were Japanese. So I had no Chinese friends. The other thing is, because of the Exclusion Act and the population of Chinese in the United States diminished as the old timers died off and some of the old timers went back to China-- so you actually had a Chinese American society back 60 years ago or 70 years ago that was probably slight majority American-born, okay? So we were all Americanized. We did not speak Chinese at home. We did not celebrate Chinese New Year. So for the newer generation of Chinese Americans, it's kind of hard for them to visualize that type of background to have. So all my relatives, even my aunts and uncles and my parents, all American born, all Americanized, all English speaking.
W GOW 05:40	So your parents were US born. Was it your grandparents who immigrated or your great grandparents?
D CHAN 05:45	My grandfather's immigrated on my dad's side. He came in 1880, pre-exclusion. Went back and forth, I guess, between US and China, had a family in China. Then in 1900, he brought over his concubine and he started a second American born family. Now, he was old. He was born before 1860, okay? So when my dad was born in 1924, he was 67 years old.
W GOW 06:19	And where was your dad born?
D CHAN 06:21	He was born in Los Angeles. My maternal grandfather, he was also born in Toisan, came to the US in 1915 as a teenager. So he lived most of his life in the United States. And my mom was born in Los Angeles in 1922.
W GOW 06:39	So was your family, your parents-- were they living in Chinatown before they moved out to Crenshaw? And if so, what brought them to the Crenshaw area?
D CHAN 06:46	Okay, so no. My parents actually grew up around 22nd Street and Central Avenue, which I guess could be viewed as an extension of either the City Market or West Adams area, because I found out that was sort of a Chinese neighborhood of its own. It had a Chinese school. And I found out, okay, both my parents lived within a block of each other back in the 1930s. And then I found out from another friend that her mom and my mom used to walk to school together. I think they lived on maybe 23rd and Central, which is interesting, because that's the part of Central Avenue that's associated with the jazz era.
W GOW 07:34	Sure. So that was kind of a multi-ethnic area, then, certainly.
D CHAN 07:39	Yeah. So anyway, at some point, probably-- my mom has one surviving brother, so I kind of asked him about it. But he was born in 1930, so he was just a kid. But he didn't even remember where they moved, but they did move to 40th and Main Street somewhere late '30s, early '40s. My dad's family left LA during the Depression, because his oldest American born brother worked as a translator for the court system. And back then there was a demand for Cantonese, or maybe even Toisanese-speaking translators because of all the Immigration Act violation, the deportation cases. So anyway, there was one case where the guy who was arrested got deported, and his friends and relatives blamed my uncle for doing a bad translation, so they put a bounty on his head.
D CHAN 08:48	So he went as far away as he could. So he moved to New York, and he got a job with a Chinese consulate in New York. And then shortly thereafter, the Chinese government decided to open a consular branch in Houston. So he moved to Houston with the counsel, who was in New York. And you can imagine Houston in the 1930s, there were probably very few Chinese or other Asians, but he got himself settled there. So in I think 1935, he called for the rest of the family. So the whole rest of the family moved from LA to Houston in 1935. My dad came back in 1942 because his dad, who by that time was in his 80s, I think he had emphysema or something like that. So he had to come back to a dry climate. So that's how my dad came back to LA.
W GOW 09:48	What were your parents doing when you were growing up in the '40s and '50s?
D CHAN 09:51	Okay, so my dad started off in the City Market, started off as a truck driver, and he learned bookkeeping also. So he was a combination bookkeeper/truck driver. Now, actually, when I said that my parents grew up in the same block in Central Avenue-- and then my dad left town, so they had no contact. But then he came back during-- I think it was during World War II he came back. And he was 4-F, because he had a broken ankle that never healed, so he couldn't walk normally, okay? So he got a job at Terminal Island, the Cal Ship Naval Shipyard, and my mom was working in the office there. So they reconnected there. I thought it was an interesting coincidence, yeah.
W GOW 10:49	So you're growing up in the Crenshaw area. Your dad is working in City Market. Talk to me a little bit about-- and you just explained to me that you were one of the few Chinese American kids at Virginia Road Elementary School. How did you understand your own ethnic identity in this period in the '40s and '50s, when you look back and you think about that?
D CHAN 11:09	Well, on the one hand, culturally, I think was completely Americanized, but on the other hand, I mean, I did stand out. I mean, other kids didn't treat me like-- and this is both Black and white-- Virginia Road was integrated back then, because not all the whites had left the neighborhood, but the Blacks had moved in. But yeah, I was treated differently by both Blacks and whites because I was neither one of them.
W GOW 11:33	Yeah. So would you say that you had a strong sense of yourself as being a Chinese American? Did you identify more as a--
D CHAN 11:40	No. Well, I knew I was an oddity, but otherwise culturally, I mean, there was really not anything to distinguish me. So it's kind of in between, I guess. Like I said, based on our numbers, Chinese Americans back then were oddities. It's just, besides being Americanized, with just being different from other people. And there's this one episode where I took my first job in 1970 and was working at a CPA firm, and was there a few weeks, and was talking to this Black guy who-- accountant there, and I mentioned my Chinese background. And he says, "Chinese? I thought you were Mexican." And I said, "Why did you think I was a Mexican?" He says, "Because I've never met a Chinese person in my life." So that tells me something. An African American adult in 1970 in Los Angeles who had never met a Chinese person. And my wife said the same thing, other people who had mistaken her for being Mexican in the past.
W GOW 12:57	So you grew up and you went to LA Unified Schools. I assumed your whole--
D CHAN 13:01	Yeah, Dorsey High School.
W GOW 13:03	Yeah. Where did you go to college?
D CHAN 13:06	Went to college at UCLA because my dad went to UCLA. And he's an interesting story, because he graduated from high school, I guess, right in 1941, I think. So right before World War II started, he moved to LA to take my grandfather back home. So he worked in the defense industry until the end of the war, and then he got the job in the City Market. He's actually a very brilliant person, but he really did not have the opportunity to go to college. And then he started to go back. So he graduated in-- let's see. So 1946, he decided to enroll at UCLA. So this is five years after his high school class had graduated. And he studied there for two years, but then I was born, so he had to basically work full time at that point. And in 1955, at the age of 31, he decided to finish his college education at UCLA. So we went to UCLA School of Business Administration, was the number one accounting student at UCLA at the time.
W GOW 14:30	In his 30s.
D CHAN 14:31	Yeah, in his 30s. Made Phi Beta Kappa, which is-- well, I mean, you know academics-- Phi Beta Kappa is for a Liberal Arts diversity background. He was in the School of Business Administration. And I guess the way it works is that every year one person from the School of Business Administration made Phi Beta Kappa, and it was him, okay? So a very bright person, but 1957-- not that he would have entertained any offers, because he was kind of established in the produce business. But nobody talked to him about getting a job. He said they had-- there was an accounting society banquet for the top accounting students. And so he was sponsored by big CPA firm partners. So they took them to the banquet, but they didn't say, "Hey, if you want a job, talk to us." Nothing like that, because back then, they weren't hiring Asians. Some of the firms weren't hiring Jewish accountants. I've heard that even at one point in time they weren't hiring Italian accounts. So yeah, so that just kind of gives you a feel for the discriminatory attitudes back then.
W GOW 15:56	So what was it like when you got the UCLA? First of all, what years were you at UCLA?
D CHAN 16:00	Okay, so '65 to '69 for undergrad. Went to a one-year business school, got a master's there, three years of law school. So I stayed eight years continuously.
W GOW 16:13	You were at UCLA at a very exciting time. Talk to me a little bit about what that was like.
D CHAN 16:18	Are you talking basketball?
W GOW 16:19	Oh, no, I'm not. I was thinking more like social unrest.
D CHAN 16:25	Yeah. I'm not sure if it was any different than any other campus, but yeah, it was a time of change. Like I said, my dad was an accountant, so I studied to be an accountant. And so the mindset of accounting students, I think, was probably a little bit different from the psychology and sociology majors. But yeah, there were campus unrest. And the big thing for me, however, was ethnic awareness. In 1969, UCLA offered the first Asian American studies course, which was called Orientals in America. It was so new it was not in any department. There was a special department. It was called CSES. I don't even know what those letters stood for, but it was just for a variety of new age college courses that do not fall within the ambit of any particular department. So anyway, I was graduating, finishing up in 1969, and I actually had enrolled in the Principles of Real Estate class. It was just to finish out my business studies. And there's this ad in the Daily Bruin touting this new course, Orientals in America. I've always been strange. In elementary school and even junior high school, I was what you would probably call these days a American history and geography geek. And when the census came out, I'd type up lists of most populous cities in each state. I mean, really far out stuff.
D CHAN 18:18	So the combination of American history and Chinese America was just fascinating. So I think, "Okay, I'll sit and audit this class." I sat in on the first class, I dropped my real estate class, and I enrolled in this Orientals in America class. And back then, like I said, there was no Asian American studies department. There was really no body of Asian American academic work. It was just scattered all over the place. So it was a matter of-- we each wrote a term paper on a topic of our choice, and I chose history of Chinese in Los Angeles. And basically, at that point in time, there were scraps of information. I mean, there were some articles about the 1871 massacre. There was a curator with the LA County Museum of Natural History. You may have heard of him, William Mason. So he did write one kind of summary article about the history of Chinese in Los Angeles, but that's was about the only thing. So I just kind of sat in the library and got scraps of information about the history of LA, history of California, and things like that. So I wrote my term paper. And then back then there was an overlap between the people who ran that course and-- I'm not sure what they were called, but they put out the magazine called Gidra.
W GOW 19:55	Yes. I know Gidra.
D CHAN 19:56	Yeah. And so my paper was chosen as one to be published in Gidra. I think that must have been in the fall of 1969, I think.
W GOW 20:09	I'm going to look it up. I'm going to find that original paper of yours. Gidra's online now, so.
D CHAN 20:14	Yeah, I know. I was stunned to find that. It's funny, because my nephew's niece is at UCLA, and then she was Asian American Studies minor, and I was talking to her. I don't see her very often because it's fairly distant relation. And she mentioned that her term paper assignment was to go to an old article in Gidra and follow up on it. So when I mentioned to her that I had written something in Gidra 50 years ago, she got all excited.
W GOW 20:58	No, I use GIdra in my classes too. It's a great piece [crosstalk].
D CHAN 21:01	Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's kind of when I first got attuned to kind of the Renaissance of the history of Asian American Studies, because to me, I mean, I lived through it. So it's not history, right?
W GOW 21:20	Right, exactly. It's just your memories, right?
D CHAN 21:22	Yeah. So anyway, so after I wrote that one paper, I found the subject extremely interesting. And then I ended up in law school, and I continued just to research independently on various Chinese American topics, one of which, since I was in law school, was the Chinese Exclusion Act. So what I did, while other law students were preparing for the next day's class or getting real interested in moot court or things like that, I decided to dig through as many Chinese Exclusion Act violation cases as I could, okay? So that became my second area of historic interest, and that led to my 1975 presentation at the-- it was a bicentennial event. The Chinese Historical Society of America sponsored “The Life, Role and Influence of Chinese in Chinese America, 1776 to 1976”. So I wrote about the Chinese Exclusion law.
W GOW 22:24	So talk to me a little bit. So you took Orientals in America, this first Asian American Studies course at UCLA. You wrote this paper on Chinese Americans in Los Angeles. It gets published in Gidra. What leads you from that moment to joining-- I mean, I can see you've got an interest, but how do you find out about the Chinese Historical Society of Southern California and what leads you to them?
D CHAN 22:47	Yeah, I don't know. I don't know whether I saw-- okay, so just backing up. Highly Americanized, never had much to do with LA Chinatown, because from its inception until the change of the immigration laws, it was basically just another tourist attraction. Not a lot to attract a lot of Chinese Americans, especially when you had the City Market area, which had restaurants and stores and stuff like that. So yeah, we'd go to Chinatown maybe twice a year. Maybe somebody got married, somebody had a birthday banquet, maybe we had a relative come in from out of town. But my experience with LA Chinatown was very remote in those years. But somewhere along the line I saw a notice - I would say around 1973, I'm guessing - saying that there's this group of people who were interested in promoting or learning about the history of the Chinese in the United States, and that they were planning a history seminar at the Department of Water and Power. I guess the person behind it was Stan Lau, who was a engineer at DWP.
W GOW 24:16	Yeah, I interviewed Stan Lau before he passed.
D CHAN 24:19	Okay. And then Paul de Falla, who wrote Lantern in the Western Sky. I think that was an account of the massacre. And Bill Mason. I think those are the only three people I remember. I may have saved that flyer, but I can't find it. I don't have [crosstalk]--
W GOW 24:40	If you did find it, I'd love to see it.
D CHAN 24:42	Okay, so you haven't seen it, because--
W GOW 24:43	No. It's on the CHSSC archive for sure.
D CHAN 24:45	Okay. And so I attended a meeting. The presentation was really interesting. And from that they started talking about actually forming a society, okay? Which actually came to pass. Now, the interesting thing about that is-- okay, so you think, okay, this was early '70s, which followed the interest in Chinese American pride and history and things like that on the campuses. So you'd kind of think that this would be something sparked by the young people. But that wasn't the case, because almost everybody associated with the founding of the Chinese Historical Society of Southern California were my parents' generation.
W GOW 25:40	So that's one of the things I'm really interested in.
D CHAN 25:43	Yeah. And you can count the young people there, I don't know, probably on one hand, because there was me, there's Eugene Moy, there was Munson Kwok, Suellen Cheng, a friend of mine, Gordon Chow. He and I still keep in contact. Basically that was it.
W GOW 26:02	Yeah. I've spoken with Gene and Munson as well.
D CHAN 26:04	With George and John, the Lee brothers, and-- who was the others? Tyrus Wong. And it was the older folks.
W GOW 26:19	So what is it that-- can you tell me a little bit-- I mean, you're a little bit of an outlier in that you're younger, but what is it that causes this group of people to want to come together at this moment in time in the '70s to study Chinese American history?
D CHAN 26:32	Well, I can only guess that there was the start of the beginning of interest in the subject. And I think you had people who were well established, who basically lived the history, seeing that this is something that's starting to become of interest to people. And from them, I think it was an interest in learning, because you kind of want-- one of the questions you asked is how has the Historical Society changed from then to now. The major difference, back then it was a club formed by people who knew nothing about Chinese American history, who wanted to learn about it. Now it's a true historical society, academic pursuits, projects, stuff like that. So it's just like night and day. And the only good thing about that, as I could say, is that being there at the beginning enabled me, somebody without any academic background in the area, to start writing stuff and giving speeches.
D CHAN 27:45	Because for a period-- let's see. I would say from-- we started in '75, so late '70s to the early '80s when I dropped out, I wrote a few articles both for the Gum Saan Journal and also for this Chinese Historical Society of America Journal. And I wrote the history of the Chinese in the US for the - what year was it? - 1975 LA Chinatown Chinese New Year Program. I was able to write stuff here and there. I gave talks to a bunch of groups. I gave a talk at the first Asian Pacific Heritage Week - not month, week - gathering held in Los Angeles. I think it was 1979 I was keynote speaker for that. So it gave me an opportunity to speak widely to and be on behalf of the community, not having that much in the way of a background.
W GOW 28:56	So I mean, does this-- I'm curious. You mentioned earlier on, we were talking about your kind of own ethnic identity, and you talked about you were the only Chinese kid, or one of the few Asian American kids at your elementary school. You had a sense of yourself as an outlier. How does your sense of self, perhaps your relationship to either Chinese American or Asian American identity, change as you begin this work with the society? You're doing this research, you're publishing, you're talking. Talk me through how that's changing your own sense of yourself and your relationship to your identity.
D CHAN 29:27	So, okay. So I started it out, like I said, just because it was another phase of American history, which was my main interest at the time. I think what happened, as soon as I saw how Chinese Americans were treated in the history of the United States, which is something-- you don't learn that in schools, especially back then. Even now I think it's kind of spotty. And I think when I saw that, then I think that really started to coalesce my thinking about identity and stuff like that. And my interest is multifaceted because there's the food part about it. When I started traveling, I decided I wanted to eat Chinese food when I traveled to see Chinese American communities and stuff like that, so.
W GOW 30:26	This kind of led to all that, your kind of-- you would say that this-- is it correct to say that this moment in your life, from let's say '69, when you take Orientals in America, to your kind of entry into the Society, kind of puts you on this path towards this passion for Chinese American studies, if you want to call that? Or Chinese American topics--
D CHAN 30:43	Yeah. I think, yeah. And then if I think about back about it-- so let's see, when did I get to law school? I was in law school by 1971. I was in law school, I got my master's. I think it was 1970. Okay. So as soon as I got into the history and saw what happened, and then I remember-- and plus my dad's experience of being so smart and having no opportunity, that I think that's the point when I realized I'm Chinese American. I really wanted to accomplish something, because now that the opportunity was opening up where there wasn't the opportunity in the past.
W GOW 31:35	I'm curious, when did you write this? You came up with this idea of the five Chinatowns, which we're working on another project with [crosstalk]. When did you come up with this idea? Or how did you identify that this is five Chinatowns?
D CHAN 31:47	I think that was-- that article, was that published in '73? I'm not sure. '72 or '73, I forget which year. And there was a Gidra article, and then there was the Chinatown program. Let's see, let me think about that. No, that was afterwards. Okay. So it was just a Gidra article, but I just kind of continued to update it. And because of my familiarity with the City Market, I realized that the City Market was in a way more of a Chinatown than anything else that was in LA Chinatown, but nobody ever heard it. And so it was really my desire to try to publicize it. And back then, there's really no way to publicize that, like you can go on the internet and write something and have it go viral. Yeah, I think it was-- "Hey, there's this separate Chinese community." And I said, "It's just--" To quote myself from the Bridge article, "With no curio shops or camera-toting tourists." Which was probably-- well, I won't say it's unique, because you have all your historic Chinatowns in almost every city in California way back when. But as far as urban Chinatowns, that may have been unique.
W GOW 33:22	So why did you publish-- I mean, last question on this, because I want to talk more about the Society, but how did you get it published in Bridge Magazine? Because you're on the West Coast. What was the connection there between--
D CHAN 33:32	I don't know. I never heard of them, so they must have contacted me.
W GOW 33:37	Yeah, okay. Just curious. Okay, so back to the Society. You're at the Chinese Historical Society from '75 to early '80s. Were you involved at all in the Southern California Chinese American Oral History Project, or do you remember it?
D CHAN 33:50	Not at all. I don't even know if it existed. All I did is I was on board of directors and I did legal work.
W GOW 33:58	Okay. Did you do legal work for the Society?
D CHAN 34:01	Yeah. Got them incorporated, got the 501(c)(3) exemption. Stuff like that.
W GOW 34:10	Are you the person who wrote the bylaws? I've always been curious who wrote the bylaws. Were you the--
D CHAN 34:14	I don't think so, but lawyers boilerplate and stuff like that, even back then.
W GOW 34:20	Right. You had to look it over to make the legalese correct, right?
D CHAN 34:25	Yeah.
W GOW 34:27	What projects do you remember taking part in, besides being a lawyer and besides writing these articles? Do you remember any other projects that you took part in at the CHSSC?
D CHAN 34:36	No. I think back then it was primarily-- let's see. Well, okay. Gum Saan Journal [I'd?] start, because I already wrote-- I know I wrote a chronology. I'm not sure if I wrote anything else for them. But mostly it was just, number one, programs, monthly programs. Number two, provided as speaker to-- I mean, like I said, I remember, going on Channel 2 to talk about Chinese in Los Angeles. What year was that? Probably 1978. Spoke with KNX Radio. There was a workshop same era, LA city schools wanted to, I guess, instruct their staff on, I guess, Asian American topics. This was probably late 1970s. So they had a program at one of the campuses, and they had the Japanese speaker was Professor Harry Kitano, former UCLA. I think back then he was, what, sociology? I think he may have eventually transitioned into the--
W GOW 36:00	I think with Asian American Studies eventually.
D CHAN 36:02	Yeah. And then for Chinese, there's nobody else, so I represented the Chinese as a tax senior at Kenneth Leventhal & Company. I was sat next to him, just talking about the Chinese when he was talking about the Japanese. Yeah, and there was a bunch of--
W GOW 36:23	I mean, what's interesting is it sounds like there is not-- I mean, we've talked about the society kind of bringing together this kind of group of people that are mostly not student activists, but older, that have an interest in Chinese American history. But it sounds like there's a wider interest from the general population, the white population, the non-Chinese American population, about Chinese American topics, if you're talking at radio stations and TV places, TV stations and things like that.
D CHAN 36:50	Yeah, I think that's-- I mean, you talk about diversity, and I think that's probably-- I mean, post civil rights movement, and it was just basically the beginnings of diversity. It has to start somewhere. That's where it started.
W GOW 37:05	Some of the people I've talked to said that there was a link in their minds. I'm curious if you thought the same thing. A link between kind of African American kind of desires to kind of define and discover their own histories in the '60s, and kind of some of the things that were happening at the Historical Society. So one person in particular talked about being influenced by Alex Haley's Roots, for example. Was that true in your case at all? Did you see any kind of influence from, let's say, African American struggles during this period to kind of become self-aware about their own communities, and your kind of experiences in the Chinese American community?
D CHAN 37:47	Not anything specific, aside from the fact that it started on campuses, and it started with Black Power and things like that. So yeah, certainly a common heritage, but it's not like it's something that I thought about.
W GOW 38:05	Were you yourself involved in any-- other than taking this course, were you involved in any Asian American activism in the '60s and '70s?
D CHAN 38:11	No, I was an accounting student. None of the accounting students participated in stuff like that at all.
W GOW 38:19	Accountants can be activists too, though. I don't know. I said an accountant could be an activist, too, if you wanted.
D CHAN 38:26	You don't know as many accountants as I do.
W GOW 38:28	Okay. No, I probably don't. So one of the things I'm really interested in here - we're almost to the end here - is this kind of topic of Asian American oral history. Did you use oral history as a methodology at all on any of the pieces that you wrote? Did you interview anybody?
D CHAN 38:46	No. Like I said, I interviewed my grandfather for my just own personal interest, but don't forget, I was out of the loop from-- let's see. Christina was born in '82, so starting from '82. And the only reason I actually got anywhere near this stuff [again]is because of eating at all the Chinese restaurants. And then people started asking me to write about it, and then I started thinking about it. A lot of food writing is just in the context of food. If you look at Chinese food in the United States, it's inextricably tied to the Chinese American experience. And it's an experience that most people don't know about and who wouldn't even imagine would be in connection. And I thought to myself, I could do two things. Number one, explain things in that context. But number two, also educate them about what happened. Why is the San Gabriel Valley full of Chinese? Because there was housing discrimination in the city of Los Angeles. Why was Chinese food completely Cantonese for 100 years? Well, because of Chinese exclusion, and the only Chinese who were here were Toisan people, and some of the other Cantonese. So yeah, I'm basically using it as a soapbox. I don't tell people that.
W GOW 40:27	Right. Kind of as an entryway to kind of teach the broader public about Chinese American history in some ways, right?
D CHAN 40:31	Yes. I mean, that's the good thing about the movie, The Search for General Tso, that I was in, because that's what they do in that movie.
W GOW 40:39	Yeah. You've talked a little bit about this already, but just in closing, do you want to say a few more things about anything you can think of in terms of the relationship between how the Society has changed today? You said it's more professional. What other changes can you see between when you look at what the CHSSC does now and what you did as one of the [crosstalk]--
D CHAN 40:59	Well, I mean, would not have dreamed of a guy like you being involved. No, really. I mean, just amazed-- you see that now you have these-- you hire interns to pore through documents. I mean, the Society is doing-- it's creating its own original works. Yeah, and I know they started doing the publications. I'm not sure when those started.
W GOW 41:30	The first one is '84. So that's Linking Our Lives. That's the first [crosstalk].
D CHAN 41:35	Okay, yeah, you had the-- yeah. I dropped out by then. Yeah, but I remember the East Adams Project was interesting to me, because that's where my mom kind of grew up too. She went to Jefferson High School.
W GOW 41:53	Yeah. I worked on that too, right? I think I told you that I was a coproducer of that. That was a fun project. But a lot of it has-- I mean, I should thank you. A lot of that's shared-- we draw on your kind of thought, like with that East Adams Project, drawing partly on this idea of five Chinatowns, even though it's not explicitly stated, right? I don't even think we knew about it as thinking about it as that, as such. But yeah, I think the work that you did and the work that some of the others did with the society back in the '70s and early '80s certainly still has an influence on what the Society does today, and has an influence on what academics do too. So I personally thank you for that. Any final thoughts here, David?   Thanks, Will.  I really appreciated the opportunity to reflect on the past.  The only comment I would like to add is that I feel very fortunate to have had two separate experiences of being able to communicate the story of Chinese-Americans, separated by many decades.  The first was being able to become a pioneer in the study of Chinese and  Asian Americans, having no real credentials to validate what I wrote or spoke about.  And certainly being active in CHSSC was a big part of what I was able to do.  And in this internet era, it has been surprising, and obviously rewarding, to see some of my original works cited in subsequent, real academic work.  And then in the past decade, having stumbled into the public eye as the Chinese celebrity diner, have been able to turn this into a platform for educating people about not just what I originally learned decades ago, but also being to view the world through a unique combination of lenses which I developed over the years.  This includes knowledge and background in Chinese-American history, Los Angeles history, Chinese-American food, law, and the real estate industry, which I have been able to synthesize into original concepts about the Chinese American experience.