John was our Chinese Odysseus
August 9, 2021
John gifted me a (second) copy of A Chinese American Odyssey: How a Retired Psychologist Makes a Hit as a Historian when we hat dinner in Monterey Park May 22, 2021 with Jeff Lee
and his cousins Donna Lee and my cousin Steven Lu and son Eric. Just a month later, I had emailed him and Roland Hui who is working on a book about Lew Hing (Bruce Quan's ancestor who was one of the owners of China Mail steamship, among many other enterprises) so that John could give his advice and encouragement about self-publishing. I used to drive John around when he came up to San Francisco, either from his brother's house in San Carlos or the BART station next to the SF Public Library where he introduced me to Chang Chiuchen and Herstory. We visited with William Gee Wong in Oakland Chinatown, with Brian Tom in Piedmont, and Chang Chiuchen in El Cerrito. John truly created a network which connected hundreds, if not thousands, of us Chinese Americans of the baby boomer post-WWII cohort. We are truly the transition generation as Henry Tom (Chinese Genealogy Workshop in Las Vegas) puts it. We must come to terms with our immigrant, often non-English-speaking immigrant parents, our own journey to become Chinese American, and our adult kids who are now raising our grandkids who are not exposed to their great-grandparents. Our family roots cannot really be understood without the history as a whole
of China as a motherland, the early numbers of mostly male sojourners, the race and economic factos which led to the Exclusion Act, the Chinese Communist victory in the civil war, and McCarthyism in America. John gave us a transition network to build off ot so that we can overcome the perpetual foreigner status and find our real identities.
and his cousins Donna Lee and my cousin Steven Lu and son Eric. Just a month later, I had emailed him and Roland Hui who is working on a book about Lew Hing (Bruce Quan's ancestor who was one of the owners of China Mail steamship, among many other enterprises) so that John could give his advice and encouragement about self-publishing. I used to drive John around when he came up to San Francisco, either from his brother's house in San Carlos or the BART station next to the SF Public Library where he introduced me to Chang Chiuchen and Herstory. We visited with William Gee Wong in Oakland Chinatown, with Brian Tom in Piedmont, and Chang Chiuchen in El Cerrito. John truly created a network which connected hundreds, if not thousands, of us Chinese Americans of the baby boomer post-WWII cohort. We are truly the transition generation as Henry Tom (Chinese Genealogy Workshop in Las Vegas) puts it. We must come to terms with our immigrant, often non-English-speaking immigrant parents, our own journey to become Chinese American, and our adult kids who are now raising our grandkids who are not exposed to their great-grandparents. Our family roots cannot really be understood without the history as a whole
of China as a motherland, the early numbers of mostly male sojourners, the race and economic factos which led to the Exclusion Act, the Chinese Communist victory in the civil war, and McCarthyism in America. John gave us a transition network to build off ot so that we can overcome the perpetual foreigner status and find our real identities.