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So, today is September 12th, 2023. My name is Karis Lai, and I'm here with Karina Pan, and we are here today with Mr. Chee on behalf of the–the Houston Asian American Archive at Rice.

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So kind of diving right into the beginning of what you can remember, can you first state your full name and where you were born, and then kind of describe the house and neighborhood that you grew up in? Now you're asking me to go back 70 years?

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Okay. Now let me start—you remember the list of questions I sent over? [KL: Yes.] I mean, I'm working off of that because that's really a chronological situation from where I'm coming from.

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I remember coming down from New York. I was born in New York, Manhattan, back in the old days—When I say old days, I was born in 1943, so I'm not going to tell you my age because you have to do

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some calculations there yourself. But that being said, they had a dysentery, you know, epidemic in the hospital that–that was in the Queens area, so my parents took me or sent me to

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a—actually, both of us—sent my mother and I to a hospital in Manhattan. So I was born in Manhattan. And that was—I was born there, and when I was about 2 or 3 years old, my—I was in New York City, you know,

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playing with the snow in the carriage. And as a consequence of that, the snow was coming down, having a great time, my father said, "Get in the car, we're going to Texas." I said,

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"No, I'm not. I'm going to stay here and play in the snow, catch the snow." But my father said, "Okay, that's up to you. And we're leaving. Bye." I said, "Wait a minute, what about my food?" He said, "Well, that's tough.

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You're on your own now. Bye." So then, of course, I had to go chase the food. So I got in the car, and from there we came down to Houston, Texas. We've been here ever since for about 70,

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some 80, almost–almost 80 years. So that answered that first question, is there—do you want me to proceed on in a chronological explanation or how do we want to do this? Yeah, that would be great if you could just, like, share what happened in your childhood,

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any, like, favorite memories that maybe stood out to you, the neighborhood you grew up in or anything you feel comfortable sharing? Okay. Now–now here, that being said, since you guys are the moderators, you stop me at any time.

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I'm easy to get along with. My wife tells me, "Be quiet," I do that. "Take out the trash," I do that. So, just–just feel free to say stop. You know, you guys are the directors.

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Okay? So in any case, came down, my first language was Chinese. There are nine kids in the family, and I helped my mother take care of number–of number five, six, and seven because, you know,

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we had a grocery store. My–my parents had a grocery store, and I had to go—or somebody had to go make the meal, change the diapers, and wash the clothes. So that was my job.

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And as a consequence of that, you know, we—I had a lot to do. Run around here, run around there. Not anything important. You know, when you change the diaper, you make sure the safety pins on, okay,

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and so on and so forth. And when they come around complaining, hey, I got a full pack, so you got to change them from there. So other than that, I'm going to move from here to my—to the first grade, if that's okay.

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When I first entered school, obviously I only spoke Chinese, or our dialect. Like I said, it was Taishanhua(?). And as a consequence of that, my–my first grade teacher was doing this, shaking her finger at me, and I didn't know what she wanted.

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So, the day after that, I realized, the next day, I–I—two months later, actually, two months later, I discovered do not spit on the floor. So then I said, oh, I didn't know.

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You know, you have something in your throat. You have to get rid of it. And you didn't know how to ask or talk because the only thing you spoke was just Taishanhua(?). You didn't speak in English. I didn't speak in English. So, that was my first experience.

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That was when I was in the first grade, and needless to say, it was uneventful in elementary school. We did basically the same thing all the other kids did. We–we went to class, listened to the teacher,

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go out and play around doing—they were playing, you know, kickball and stuff like that. So that was the elementary school–– Could I just interrupt real quick [CHC: Go ahead, go ahead.] and ask you, yeah, like,

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were you—would you say that you were an anomaly in your class? Like, were you basically the only Chinese student there, or were there other people? Like, what was the demographic of your class? Well, obviously it's all white.

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You know, it's all white. At that time, we represent 0.000% Asian. I mean, I went to elementary school. I was the only Asian there—I wasn't the only Asian.

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I was the only Asian in my particular class. Obviously, when my brothers came along and my sister came along, they also were the only ones inside of their class. And this was here in Houston.

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And, going to school, it was over at Crockett–Crockett Elementary School off of Houston Avenue. And you go down Houston Avenue where the police station is, and you turn to the left, and you would go down Crockett Street,

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and you would come up to Crockett Elementary School. So I went there. My older brother went there as well. And I enjoyed school. My older brother didn't enjoy school. But when I came back, we were working in the grocery store,

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stacking up grocery, doing whatever the parents tells us to do. Okay. Now that was elementary school. I'm going to move from there into junior high school. Junior high school again, I was the only Asian in there.

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They thought I was smart, but I fooled 'em. And in doing so, what happened was that when I graduated from junior high school, I was given the American Legion Award.

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What that was, especially in the school, was they honored the student who was the best male student and then the female student. They also honored them by giving them the American Legion Award. And from the junior high school, we went to senior high school.

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And the high school I went to was called Jesse H. Jones. Back in those days, this was out in the Sunny Side. I don't know if you guys are familiar with this area or not, but Sunny Side is a predominantly black neighborhood.

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Back then, it was predominantly white middle cl—lot—white, lower class, middle class, white people that went to this particular high school. And again, we were in a club called the American Legion Club.

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We would sell pencils and paper and school supplies to all the other students, and we would gather there inside that little office selling there was, you know, those school supplies to the other students. And in high school, I graduated from high school.

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And, it's just a typical graduation. I was the class lawyer. I was the president of the honor society at the–at the high school. And that was by default.

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My life is always made of defaults. And what I mean by default is that somebody else was ahead of me, but they were the one in charge, but then they dropped out of that situation. And then, of course, I came into being and being in an honor society,

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it meant that, you know, you made fairly good grades. And the person who was ahead of me, who was the president—I was the vice president there—had a nervous breakdown because, you know, in high school, you're expected to do so much.

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And if you can't, you know, do that because there's all kinds of problems. And then, of course, he dropped out, went to another high school. And I then in turn took over the the honor society as the president of the honor society. But in high school, everything was uneventful.

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I mean, we had to go to school. After we went to school, we walked home from there to the grocery store. That's about two miles. It took about an hour, hour and a half to walk from the school back

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to the grocery store. When we got in, we got something to drink. We put our books away, put everything away, and we start stacking up groceries, filling up the milk cases, and did all the things, you know, that–that were expected of the–the children.

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Now, do I go on to college or do you have any questions so far? Yeah, I think we have a couple questions based on what you've said so far. I noticed that you were involved in ROTC in high school and then later on also in college. Do you mind talking a little bit about your experience there,

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like why you decided to participate in that program? And, like, maybe how it shaped your character or what you learned from your experience? Okay. Hey, do you have that—are you working off that–that–that synopsis or summary I gave you?

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Yes. Oh, okay. Good. Okay. Talking about ROTC, needless to say, you can look at me and see that I am not a football jock, okay? I don't have the muscle.

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I may not have the brains either, but in any case, what happened was that we joined an organization called ROTC: Reserve Officers Training Corps. And rather than to, you know, participate in sports,

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we did that. And while in ROTC, it was not quite the Vietnam era. I can't remember what date it was, but we were in that particular core. And as a consequence of that,

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it was easy to transfer over to ROTC in college as well. Now, the concept—have you—are you familiar with ROTC? I am relatively familiar with ROTC, but some of our listeners might not be. So if you want to explain a little bit about that,

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that'd be great. Okay. ROTC is, like I said, Reserve Officers Training Corps, and students were there for physical education. They were required either to go to gym or take ROTC.

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And as a consequence of that, they gave the students another opportunity to kind of get their P.E. requirement, physical education requirement. Other than that, that was in high school.

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I–I was staff sergeant. And the reason why, and I found this out later–I found this out later that from my brothers who were also in ROTC, because I was the second oldest.

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And I kind of led the way to do this, do that, try this and that. And needless to say, the other brothers would follow me doing basically the same thing. So in that vein,

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the—I was created—I was made a staff sergeant, but my other brothers told me they were going to put me in as battalion chief when I got to be in my senior year. But what happened was that the–the commandant of

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the ROTC did not see fit at that time to put an Asian in there because what is it—the—they were not ready to have an Asian in that leadership position. And as a consequence, you know, I fulfill my requirement.

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And I just kind of moved on to college. But that was my experience in that particular situation. Wow. I imagine that must not have been easy experiencing that sort of, you know, discrimination based on your race.

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Well, you got to remember, we were ignorant. I mean, at that time, I didn't feel slighted from it. I didn't even—I wasn't even aware of it. And of course, the only reason why I even know about this was because my–my brothers

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who came in following me into ROTC, they talked about it. And then, of course, you know, he also rose up into the ranks of–of the ROTC situation. But you got to remember, this was during the 50s. And if you look back to your history, especially what was

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happening in a whole general scope of things, the–the United States was upset with the communists, and they were upset with Russia. There was a lot of incidents going on.

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There was a lot of things going on in the undertow of going to school. I remember during that period of time while we were in high school, they had more or less a cure for tuberculosis. And that helped a lot in the sense that it gave the–the

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community a certain amount of assurance that they're taking care of all the medical problems. There were—there are during the 50s, a lot of incidents that occur that kind of shape, you know, the way we were growing up.

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And I'm going to move from here into the college, you know. Is that okay? That'd be great. Thank you. Okay, so you keep me in track because you're the director here now.

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I–I went to—I applied at the University of Texas, and back in the old days, I applied there, and I was—I didn't know what I wanted to do. Since I was a class lawyer in high school there,

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I assumed that I had some gift. I was also in debate in high school, and I was assumed that, you know, I had some skills in that particular area. So, you know, when you graduate from high school,

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they—everybody asks each other, "Hey, what are you going to do? What are you going to be when you grow up?" That type of situation. So I didn't know what I wanted to do. So I entered into University of Texas expecting to go maybe into law,

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for example, because I was class lawyer. But I was in the School of Communication. It was called the Walter Cronkite School of Communication. Walter Cronkite, you may or may not be aware,

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it was a very famous newscaster. And in his particular case, they–they honored him by forming this particular school. Needless to say, as time went by, they eventually,

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you know, took him off the list and put somebody else, the Moody's, in charge of that particular school of communication. But anyway, to extend this a little bit further, I was in the School of Communication, and I was in what was

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called—to get a degree instead of a Bachelor of Arts, which they had originally, they had just formed another entity that they called the School of Science, Bachelor of Science. You will get a Bachelor of Science if you took some statistics course.

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So there were 22 of us that decided that we wanted to be in there, in the statistic arena because they–they stress STEM. At that time, they was beginning to stress STEM. It was in that particular era they were going to the moon.

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They had all kinds of activity that stress science and technology. And as a consequence of that, I took the the BS route instead of the BA route. 22 of us did that. But in 1966 I was the only one that graduated,

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so I was the number one BS-er from the University of Texas in Speech. And that's my claim to fame there. Being number one by default. It seems like by everything I did was by default.

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I was president of the Chinese Student Association at the University of Texas. And back then, you know, the Chinese especially coming over from Taiwan, they were just coming in—they had to serve two years in Taiwan military. And then from there, they came into the university doing

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their Masters and so on and so forth. We had all kinds of interesting people. The Chinese—for the most part I did hang around at the university with the Chinese—the Taiwanese since they were there.

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And we had one gentleman that we would call the vampire. And the reason why was because he–he was in the medical area and he was doing blood tests, and he would ask everyone to donate blood so that he can do some experiment on them,

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on these blood types and determine, you know, different types of–of entities that were associated with that blood situation. But I had a great time. You know, I talked to a lot of the people there.

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In fact, I met my future brother-in-law there. He was from, let's see, Burma. He was from Burma. And Dr. Teal. He eventually became a doctor.

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He got his PhD from the University of Texas, and then he went over to meet my sister. They got married, they moved out to Long Island, and he was head of the physics department at the Long Island College Westbury campus in New York.

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But anyway, I graduated in 1966 from the University of Texas with a BS, and then from there, it was during that period of time where it was the–the inception of the Vietnam War and the Vietnam War occurred.

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And as a consequence of that, my mama says, I don't want you to be killed, so you should go on to college. And at that time I said, oh, okay, but what am I going to do? And—because if you were going to school, you were exempt.

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So that being said, I went to law school at South Texas College of Law here in Houston. And then at the same time, I found a job as a school teacher. That was in '66. I found a job at the high school.

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I was at a Kroger's grocery store checking out, and I was—I worked as a cashier there, and my principal came by and he said, "hey, didn't I send you to college?" And I said, "yes, sir." "Well, you better come by and talk to me." So I went by and talked to him.

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He said, "No, no, look, we need you here to teach, and we want—we need a speech teacher." I said, "okay, I can do that." So then I became a teacher at the school that I graduated from—high school I graduated from, and that started a four year stint

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there. Now, it was at that time, I was in law school, I was teaching, so I had two exemptions from going to the war. Otherwise you wouldn't even see me today. But then, let's see what was my third

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reason? Oh, I got married. But stay away from women. Don't get married because they'll give you a problem. But in any case, the—I got married and we worked—my father had bought an apartment

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project, and my ex-wife and I were taking care of the apartment project. And, later on, he told us, "hey, you guys gotta move out of that apartment." I said, "what happened?" "Well, I sold the apartment." So what happened was we were expecting him to sell the apartment to us because we were

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managing the apartment, but that didn't happen. So then my–my wife at that time got upset and said, "Your family is not going to take care of you. Why don't we just move to Austin and let my family see if they can

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help you?" Okay, well, let's do that. So we moved to Austin and I moved back to–to the school, you know, back to the area where I went to school. And her father was a builder.

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He was a actually, like, the typical Chinese. They worked— So sorry to interject. I just wanted to know, what year do you know around this—what time?

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Like what year it was when all this was happening. When you moved back to Austin? Probably around 1969–1969. [KP: Ok.] About 1968, 1969.

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I had–I had a pretty famous student that I had. In the process, I can tell you about him. And later on, if you want, you can contact this student because he's also a Chee. His name is Robert Chee.

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I told my class, "Hey guys, you guys are slacking off. You're not doing your homework. So if you don't—if you come to class without your homework, you're going to get busted." In other words, they knew they're gonna get spanked. So

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Robert came up to me. He said, "Mr. Chee, I don't have my homework." I said, "You know the drill." Okay. So he went outside. Pop, pop, pop. Right. Robert went to law school at the University of

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Texas. He went to—up to the—he was in the PUC: Public Utility Commission. He was chairman of the PUC.

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That means the company that the–the organization that control all the electricity and–and utilities in the southwest area. He eventually went up to Bill Clinton's administration, and he was the undersecretary for the Department of Energy.

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So I said, okay. Then I called him, I said, "Robert, how you been doing?" Because I was concerned about his daughter. He–he had adopted a daughter. So I said, "How you been doing?" He says, "I'm doing okay,

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Mr. Chee." So sometimes they remember, sometimes they forget. But in any case, that was one of my more ambitious youngster. Now–now that we were in Austin, when I was in Austin, I was a school teacher, you know, just been a school

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teacher all this time, since 1966 and in 6-69, yeah, 69,68,69, then let's see what happened then? Oh, I taught at high school called

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William B Travis. William B Travis High school. It was there that I met this young lady. Her name was Susie Nelson. Now, most of you don't know who Susie Nelson is,

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but her father's very famous. Willie Nelson. And Susie came to class, and she had been gone for three days, and I said, "Susie, where have you been?" She said, "Well, we were having some problem at home.

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Mama and daddy were fighting" and so on and so forth. I said, "what happened?" "Oh, daddy came home drunk." She didn't know what was happening. Daddy had been smoking and toting and having a good time, so he came home drunk.

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He fell into bed. Her mama took the blanket, threw it over him, sewed them up inside of the blanket, and he beat the devil out of him. Needless to say, he wasn't too happy. He divorced her. And that's all–all the history now.

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But anyway, people do what they need to do. And, so I realized when I was in Austin, that I was teaching, but I was looking for a side hustle because you couldn't feed a family of four on $500 a month. So I decided to follow my father-in-law,

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my ex-father-in-law. But I followed him, and he–he–he showed me. Hey, hey, we need to learn—teach you how to be a carpenter. So I said "yes, sir. Okay." So in the—after–after I get out of school every day, I would follow him around.

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I remember my first day on the job site with my belt, you know, the–the belt to carry the nails and everything. And the skill saw in one hand. We were upstairs in the second floor of the house we were building,

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and he just—he was just running along the–the–the tracks there as fast as he can. And he expected me to follow him. So I followed, but I wasn't used to doing that kind of work, so I slipped and fell.

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I was hanging by one hand on the two by six, and he turned around and looked at me and he said, "What is your next act?" And then he walked on. So I had to pull myself up and follow him and do what I needed to do. Because, you know, these guys, when you're doing construction work,

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it's not fun. It's hard work. So we did that after school every day. After school we were doing construction. Then later on, he sold us an apartment project,

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and I went back and I took that apartment project, and I fixed it all up again, and added four more units onto that apartment project. And all the rest is history. So I built apartments.

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I built a house. The first house I built in Austin was a stone house, completely stone. And that was my first adventure in–in real estate, you know, building my own stuff.

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I built a house. And what happened was it wasn't the orthodox. It was different. The entrance in the house was two feet wide. We had a little courtyard there.

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It was two feet wide, but normally it would be three feet wide. So you can get all your furniture in, but a two feet wide, you can't get all your furniture in there. So, in any case, when my daughter got the house,

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my oldest daughter got the house. That house, I was expecting it to be around $38,000. You know, that was my budget. Because I figured I could pay for that house with $38,000.

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So, I built the house, and I found out we had a $3,000 cost overrun more than what I expected. And it was $41,000. So I realized, hey, I better go work harder now. If I don't work hard enough, I'm not going to be able to afford this house

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and take care of the family and etc., etc.. So, I taught for a while, and then I went to interview for a job with the Texas Rehab and Disability and they said, well, we need you over here to do some

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evaluation of people who are disabled. I said, "Well, I can't do that now because I'm working as a school teacher." And they said, "Well, okay, you do what you need to do." So I left, and then I came back. I told my–my–my ex-wife at that time—my wife at that time,

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that there's a job opening. So she went and she applied for the job. And then in applying for the job, she got the job. She eventually moved up to be deputy commissioner of the Texas

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Rehabilitation Commission. Anyway, that in itself didn't work out too well because as time went by, I was building shopping centers, I was building apartments, all kinds of stuff in real estate.

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You know, we're—by the time I was 30, I was already a millionaire. But that wasn't the issue. I was working 18 hours a day. And then my wife came to me one day.

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She looked rather sad, and she said "Here, can you take this paper?" I said, "What is this?" "It's a divorce thing. I want a divorce. I don't see you for 18 hours a day." I said, "Yeah, I got to work." She said, "I don't see you.

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I have a boyfriend, so adios." So I said, "Oh, okay. All right. If you're not happy with me, I've got to just let you do what you need to do." So we got a divorce. We were worth probably at that time, probably $3.5 million.

00:27:43.100 - 00:27:56.060

And as a consequence of that, her attorney said, okay, we're going to go to court now and decide, you know, we're going to ask for half of the money. I said, "No, no, no, we're not going to do that." She said, "What are you talking

00:27:56.060 - 00:28:07.790

about?" "Well, just give it all to her." She said, "what?" Yeah. Because if she's not happy with me, there was love at the beginning and she's not happy with me now. Why even fight over money?

00:28:07.790 - 00:28:20.420

So I gave her everything. And I was homeless for a couple of years until I met my current wife from China. And we've been married for about 40 years. The first time I was married for about 14 years.

00:28:20.420 - 00:28:33.160

The second time, 40 years. So, after we got married—I'm going off on a different topic now. Is that okay? Yeah. No worries. I think this is taking a great direction.

00:28:33.160 - 00:28:44.380

Yeah, this is crazy. Yeah. Wow. Well, it's not my fault. You know, just things happen. So in any case, my—I have two daughters from my

00:28:44.380 - 00:28:59.080

first wife. And then when we got married with the second wife. My wife is from Guangzhou. When we met—Let's see now, what was the deal? How did we meet? We met on the streets of San Francisco.

00:28:59.680 - 00:29:18.690

My aunt had told me that there was a young lady coming in from China, and she was involved in what you call the–the cultural—what is it? You know, when the Chinese were trying to turn over the government and a lot of people didn't want to comply,

00:29:18.690 - 00:29:34.760

so they were in the some sort of cultural situation where they–they gave the people a difficult time. Her father went to Beijing University, and when he was at Beijing University, he–he had a couple of

00:29:34.760 - 00:29:47.330

courses he didn't get when he was in Beijing. So he went to Taiwan to take these courses. And when he came back, eventually—excuse me a second

00:29:47.330 - 00:29:59.510

here. When he came back, he worked as an official in Guangzhou. And as a consequence, you know how the Chinese are. They always trying to jockey for position to be,

00:29:59.510 - 00:30:13.370

you know, upper level and lower level and so on and so forth. So they accused him of being a spy because he went to Taiwan University. And when he came back, they said, oh, yeah. Yeah. So they put him under a house arrest for two years and

00:30:13.370 - 00:30:30.530

being in house arrest, the mother would cook the food, take it to him and feed him, and then come on home and take care of the family. So they had a pretty–pretty tough life over there in China. But then she came over to—or he eventually he got an

00:30:30.530 - 00:30:44.120

opportunity to get out of China to come over to the United States. And when he came over, he ended up in California. He was a waiter in California. And here you can imagine this person has a degree from Beijing University,

00:30:44.120 - 00:31:02.210

which is equivalent to a degree from Rice or Harvard or one of the better schools. And as a consequence of that, he was kind of disappointed with the situation in China. But eventually he turned out okay, because then I met his daughter, we got married.

00:31:02.210 - 00:31:16.160

And like I said, we've been married for about 40 years. Ten years into the marriage, I said, "Hey, what do you want? You want a Mercedes, you want a new house?" And she said, "No." I said, "What do you want?" "I want a baby." I said,

00:31:16.160 - 00:31:29.990

"what are you crazy, woman? Do you know how old I am?" And I had been unable to produce any more. So she said, "Well, you try, go talk to the doctor." And I just turned my back and said, "Oh yeah, doctors can solve everything." So I went to

00:31:29.990 - 00:31:43.670

the doctor, said, "Doctor, what are my chances of having a baby?" Because I had to get it reversed. And he said, "Well, the chances of you having a baby is 1 in 200,000." "Oh, thank you doctor, thank you." So I ran home,

00:31:43.670 - 00:31:54.590

told my wife, "He said 1 in 200,000." "You tried. You tried. That's okay. That's all it counts." First one came out was stillborn. The second one came out.

00:31:54.590 - 00:32:11.120

She has a hearing problem these days. Every time I call her up, she said, "Who is this?" I said, "I'm your daddy." She says, "Oh, what do you want?" Here you see this young lady. She's 26 years old now and she still has this hearing problem.

00:32:11.120 - 00:32:25.280

She graduated from the University of Texas in two years. She graduated from NYU in one year. She's smart like her mama, but good looking like her daddy. But you can't have everything, right?

00:32:25.400 - 00:32:37.050

So in any case, that's where we are now. I think if anything else— Well, I have a small question. How did you end up in California?

00:32:37.050 - 00:32:52.970

Is that—you said that's where you met your current wife? Well, yes. Yes and no. We met in California. We got—we came back to Austin. Okay? Now re-remember that I was involved in the real estate business and had apartments

00:32:52.970 - 00:33:09.830

and shopping centers and–and with apartments, you have problems. The problem being, a lot of times these guys don't want to pay the rent. So I had a friend who was a justice of the peace, John Windsor. And what happened was that John—when

00:33:09.830 - 00:33:28.930

I brought my wife back from California, we were living together, and finally I had and I wanted to go to China to do some trading business, but at the same time, the—you know, I was going to go and because I can't

00:33:28.930 - 00:33:40.240

speak Chinese, I wanted her to come as my interpreter. So when I went to the JP, I went to—at that time, he was a district judge. I talked to the—to John.

00:33:40.360 - 00:33:58.690

I said, "John, we want to get married." And then John turned to my–my wife and said, "I know this guy for many years. He's a rascal. Are you sure you want to marry him?" And my wife said, [unintelligible]. I said, "Say yes." And she

00:33:58.690 - 00:34:08.110

turned to him and said "yes." And then he asked, "Okay, now are you sure? Now do you want to marry him? Let me know." And then she said, [unintelligible].

00:34:08.110 - 00:34:21.970

I said, "say yes." And she said "yes." So then we got married. Now, all 40 some odd years later, she said, "Can I rescind my yes now?" I said, "It's up to you.

00:34:21.970 - 00:34:39.360

You know, if you're not happy, let me know." So in any case, we went to China. We went around and we tried to do business over there. It didn't turn out. So I came back. We went to the immigration crossing

00:34:39.360 - 00:34:54.310

the border, get on the boat and everything. She followed me and then boop—said—the immigration—the US said, no, she can't go. I said, "What happened?" And she had been telling me this all this time. But, you know, men being what they are, they're kind of stubborn.

00:34:54.310 - 00:35:08.960

They don't want—they don't think that female know anything. But anyway, she told me, "We can't do that. I came in as a student, I-I'm going out—going back into the United States as a bride, but you have to wait two years." I said

00:35:08.960 - 00:35:22.360

"Oh, okay. You're right." So nowadays I listen to women a lot more. That's why you guys are directors, okay? 'Cause you got to tell me what to do. In any case, what happened was she couldn't come–come

00:35:22.360 - 00:35:32.970

back. I came back first. And then I had one of my friends. The gentleman's name was Phil Graham. Phil Graham ran for president in that time period.

00:35:32.970 - 00:35:44.050

His wife, you know, was a Korean lady. So Phil Graham wrote me a letter saying, hey, yeah, this—it's okay to let this lady come over. She's not going to do anything bad and anything. So he wrote me a letter.

00:35:44.050 - 00:36:00.160

And then the Speaker of the House in Austin also wrote me a letter of recommendation to try to get her back. So I sent both of those letters to the immigration office in Guangzhou. And they looked at the letter, said, "Oh, this lady looks like she has pretty—is pretty powerful.

00:36:00.160 - 00:36:16.930

We better just let her get out of here." So when I told her that you can come back now, she says, "Uh uh." I said, "what are you talking about?" "I'm going to stay in China, write some more visas." Now, what she was doing was writing the visas for

00:36:16.930 - 00:36:34.480

sending—you know, she was in the textile business. She sold—their company sold their textiles to the Gap and the Spirit, and she would write these visas, and she would get $100 for every one that she wrote. So she said, "I'm going to stay here for a month and make

00:36:34.480 - 00:36:44.920

some money." Oh, okay. You know, women control my life. So then I said, okay, I had no choice. So she stayed there for about a month.

00:36:44.920 - 00:36:58.170

Then she came back and she made a little money. And she's pretty happy about that. But that was the first time in California. The second time in California that we went was when I was asked by one of

00:36:58.170 - 00:37:11.220

my friends to go work for Lockheed. I don't know if you know what Lockheed is. Have you heard of them? Lockheed Martin? I think I have heard of them. Oh, okay. Well, I went to work for them.

00:37:11.220 - 00:37:26.460

My job, my—the manager told me—he was one of my friends, he told me, "Okay, since you're not working, you're–you're unemployed and you're old. We can give you this job and we can give you stock option if you work and do well." I said, "Well,

00:37:26.460 - 00:37:43.800

what is my job?" He said, "Well, your job is to feed the monkeys." I said, "Feed the monkeys?" He said, "Yeah, we're going to have a biosphere, put vegetation in there, put animals in there, send it to outer space and then see what happened to all these creatures." I said,

00:37:43.800 - 00:37:54.750

"Okay, that sounds like a good job. It's not too much work. I don't have to do much." So he said "But there's one caveat, and that is if any of the monkey is hurt or they die,

00:37:54.750 - 00:38:10.430

we're going to cut your pay." I said, "Okay." Long story short, when I got there, they lost the contract, but I was walking around there for four years and in the process of walking around, I became a systems engineer.

00:38:10.430 - 00:38:26.240

You know, Lockheed is the premier company to create systems engineer. All the guys that graduate in engineering courses all want to go to Lockheed to learn the systems engineering system. Now, I learned to do that.

00:38:26.240 - 00:38:42.980

They also made me an ISO 9000 auditor, which means I ordered all the work that they do, write up a report, etc. which is okay, but in the meantime, my wife got a job at Cisco, which is a computer company, hardware computer company.

00:38:42.980 - 00:38:57.770

And she's–she worked there for about 15 years, and then in working there for 15 years, she made enough money to buy two houses in California. So she makes more money than I do, but I'm still the better looking one of the two.

00:38:59.720 - 00:39:11.750

So, all right. From there, where do we–where do we go? I went—Oh okay, before I—what—how's our time looking? Are we okay? We're doing fine on time.

00:39:11.750 - 00:39:25.130

Yeah. We're doing fine on time. Okay. So when I came back to Houston from Silicon Valley, the wife said—we came back simply because of the educational system in

00:39:25.130 - 00:39:39.770

California is not too good. It's very good for high–higher education like Stanford and Berkeley and etc., but it's not really good for, you know, lower level high school and etc. So when we came back, we wanted to come back to Houston because the

00:39:40.010 - 00:39:54.110

Texas school system is a lot better, you know, from that point of view. So when we—my daughter went to school here and in–in Houston and I told you, you know, she eventually ended up at

00:39:54.110 - 00:40:07.940

University of Texas and moving on to her stuff, but as it was, it was interesting and exciting situation. But while we were here, my wife said again, you know,

00:40:07.940 - 00:40:20.150

the women tell me what to do. She said, "You're not working?" I said, "We got enough money." I said—then she said, "Well, you better go find a job. Otherwise you're going to be out there making trouble for everybody." I said,

00:40:20.150 - 00:40:34.520

"Yeah, that's what I'm good at." And she said, "Well, go find a job." So then I ended up in Alief. There's a school—there's a district called Alief Independent School District, and I was at a GT school, a gifted and talented school.

00:40:35.090 - 00:40:47.620

Now, eight years of their existence, they have never won one trophy. And they said, you're Asian, aren't you? I said, I can be Asian if I can get this job. And she said, well, okay.

00:40:47.620 - 00:41:03.200

What we need you to do is take the students to the tournaments and make sure the furniture stay inside of the room. Oh, okay. So the first two tournament we went to, we lost everything. We met our expectation.

00:41:03.620 - 00:41:22.080

Then the third tournament, we won one trophy. That one trophy turned into 175 trophies in four years. Finally I came back. I took a Nigerian student to the national competition and I was expecting to

00:41:22.080 - 00:41:38.370

take two Chinese girls, one from Shanghai, one from Chengdu to the nationals. But when I told the ladies that we're going to national, they said, "Mm, we don't think so." I said, "What happened?" "We got boyfriends." Oh, okay, if you're not going to work, I'm not going to work.

00:41:38.370 - 00:41:49.970

So I stopped teaching in 2006. I sent you the picture of those students didn't I? Yes you did, you did. Oh, okay. So that's the story behind those guys.

00:41:49.970 - 00:42:06.710

So I stopped teaching in 2006, and I'm wandering around bothering people all the time. I go to the Whataburger's. Hey, next time, if you're interested, I can teach you how to get a $1 meal at Whataburger with eggs, lettuce, tomato

00:42:06.710 - 00:42:24.180

and senior coffee. So you got to tell them you're a senior, okay? They'll give you that meal for a dollar. But anyway, that's about where we are right now. These days I just walk around playing ping pong over at the

00:42:24.180 - 00:42:39.490

community center. I do tai chi. I go swimming. My wife is doing gardening, she's retired. But my father, like I said, he's 106 years old and he had a good life.

00:42:39.490 - 00:42:51.690

He has a good life. For the 64 grandchildren and great grandchildren. So far, I only have three grandchildren. But that's a different story. I'll tell you about that later.

00:42:52.950 - 00:43:07.070

Any other questions? Wow. Yeah. That is such a rich, rich life you've had. Thank you so much for sharing up to this point. I was wondering if we could ask you some questions about what it was like,

00:43:07.070 - 00:43:19.520

you know, watching the formation of Chinatown and how we went from, like you said, you were, like, the only Asian student in your class to, like, now, having such a rich Asian American community. And, like, how was that experience, like, for you?

00:43:20.060 - 00:43:34.280

Okay. When I came back to Houston, you know, we were in Austin and we moved back here to Houston. Back in the old days, there was—people think, you know, the Chinatown out here on Bellaire is the second

00:43:34.280 - 00:43:51.770

Chinatown. In fact, it was the third Chinatown. The original Chinatown was on Franklin Street downtown near the post office. The second Chinatown was on Chartres and Bell. I mean not—Chartres and Discovery Green,

00:43:52.250 - 00:44:08.840

the Discovery Green area, that's the second Chinatown. The third Chinatown is the one here in—on Bellaire. And the–the–the community here was–was created predominantly by the Taiwanese because the

00:44:08.840 - 00:44:23.270

Taiwanese had money—and they were flush with money. They came over, they bought, you know, shopping center, created shopping centers, they bought land, they bought houses in this area. So the Chinese were here in the Chinatown area.

00:44:23.270 - 00:44:35.930

We're currently living in Chinatown area. But when they were–were—after they bought their houses here, there was a new community coming up called Sugar Land. And eventually they left.

00:44:35.930 - 00:44:47.180

They sold their houses here in Chinatown and moved out to Sugar Land. And then some of them later on moved out to Katy. So there's a large contingency of Chinese in Katy now, as well as in Sugar Land.

00:44:47.300 - 00:45:00.740

So that's how it developed when I came back to Houston, there's a gentleman here by the name of Kenneth Lee. He is supposedly the mayor pro tem of Chinatown, and I was his general manager.

00:45:00.950 - 00:45:19.370

I worked for him to try to teach his–his salesmen to sell real estate. But when I started talking to him, they said, "Ah ha." And I said, "Did you understand what I say?" "No." Okay. All right. So they were not interested in learning because they were so used to

00:45:19.370 - 00:45:32.870

doing what they were doing and having a certain amount of success, they didn't want to get, you know, more information to do better. So I said, okay, I'm going to stop, you know, working for Kenneth. I asked Kenneth, "Can I go ahead and be a salesman instead of

00:45:32.870 - 00:45:47.060

a general manager? Because I would make more money." And he said, "No, if you do that, you're going to be in competition with my salesmen and they'll get mad at me." But in any case, if you guys need a lead into Kenneth–Kenneth Lee, I can introduce you.

00:45:47.360 - 00:46:01.910

These days, like I said, I hang out at the Whataburger on Beechnut as well as the Whataburger on 59 and Fondren. And when we go there, there's a whole contingency of Chinese over there, over on the Beechnut side.

00:46:01.910 - 00:46:16.010

On the other one, there's a whole contingency of Americans. So my life is these Chinese and Americans, English and Chinese. Kind of going off of that. I was wondering, like, would you say that you feel more Chinese or

00:46:16.010 - 00:46:28.910

more American, like, do you identify with either side more? Well, okay. You understand I'm an ABC, right? American Born Chinese. And that being said, I'm influenced by one society,

00:46:28.910 - 00:46:40.400

which is the the American society. And I'm also influenced—my teaching was with Chinese. My mother, you know, she was the one that kind of guided me. She said, you better do this. You better do that.

00:46:40.400 - 00:46:57.470

And as a consequence, I listened to my mother more. And then I–I'm–I have the Chinese traditions. But I acclimated into the American society and worked hard, did what the typical Chinese would do, which is to work hard and get ahead in life

00:46:57.470 - 00:47:08.030

because they are very focused. They're very—the Chinese, for the most part, is very dedicated. They follow up, they do what they're supposed to do. So as a consequence, they all seem to be successful.

00:47:08.770 - 00:47:24.190

Now, this is traditional Chinese teaching that we had. Did I answer your question? Yeah, definitely. Something else I was wondering is I–I know from the outline that you texted us that you wanted to try to live towards 100,

00:47:24.190 - 00:47:40.070

and I was wondering if you could elaborate on why and if there's anything that you feel like you've learned over time that sticks out to you. Well. That being said, because I can go—you know, I have all these BS that I can go into.

00:47:40.070 - 00:47:57.050

So you open up another door, you're going to get caught for that too. What happened is in the Chinese culture, see, we're Zhus. Z-H-U and the Zhus were in control of the Ming dynasty. I don't know if you know that much about the Chinese history,

00:47:57.050 - 00:48:12.290

but–but while they were in control of the dynasty and the country at that time, they were always fighting: the Northern Zhus and the Southern Zhus. So my ancestors—my ancestor, which was—I don't know who

00:48:12.320 - 00:48:26.810

they were, but they moved from Beijing down to Fujian and from Fujian, they didn't like it there. They moved from there over to Guangdong. And then from Guangdong, they moved to the southern part of Guangdong,

00:48:26.810 - 00:48:41.840

which is Taishan, and it was close to the ocean. So a lot of them would would be Shanghaied. You heard of the expression Shanghaied? You know, the–the ships would come from Europe looking for things like

00:48:42.110 - 00:48:58.040

porcelain, gunpowder, compass, silk, etc., etc. and when they came into China, their crews were decimated because they got scurvy and they all—half of the crew would die. So then when they got into China, they would ask the Chinese,

00:48:58.040 - 00:49:10.040

hey, do you want to see the world? We can take you around in our ship to see the world. Then the Chinese would say [unintelligible]. So then, in order to resolve the communication problems,

00:49:10.040 - 00:49:25.820

the sailors would take this blackjack and thump the Chinese on the head and take him and throw him on board the ship. They would Shanghai him. Now, then, you ask the question, what is the etymology of Shanghai?

00:49:26.150 - 00:49:40.550

Remember that the Europeans were settling in Shanghai. If you go there, you see a contingency of German, French, Americans and so on and so forth. So that's how they got their exposure to the Chinese people.

00:49:40.550 - 00:49:52.550

So when they wanted–they wanted to kidnap these guys, they thunk them on the head and just threw them aboard. When they got on the ship, those that were rebellious, they would make them walk the plank.

00:49:53.370 - 00:50:06.300

When they walk the plank, they got to the end, boom, into the ocean and they died. So when they—when the ship got into the West coast, most of them would come in through the West coast and land in the San Francisco area.

00:50:06.300 - 00:50:21.060

And when the Chinese saw that they had the opportunity, they would jump ship and go into Chinatown, and the captain would say, "Hey, go find our crew, bring them back. We need them to sail back to Europe." So in doing so,

00:50:21.690 - 00:50:32.790

the sailors would go into Chinatown. They come back and the captain would ask him, "Hey, where's–where's our crew?" And they say, "Well, we don't know all these Chinamans, they look alike.

00:50:32.790 - 00:50:48.090

So we couldn't find them." So that's what happened there. But then that was approximately 1820, around that period of time and then in 1848—uh oh, data warning. Used up two gigabytes.

00:50:50.810 - 00:51:02.380

Hello. Can you hear me? Hello? Yeah, we can hear you. Okay, now you can't see me now because something's happening to my cell phone again. Should I just kind of leave it like that?

00:51:02.380 - 00:51:15.040

Or— Karis, can you request the camera again? I just requested, I don't know if it'll work. It could be—I don't know, battery or something.

00:51:15.930 - 00:51:26.700

Who? I have no battery. Did anything show up again? Worse comes to worst, we can just continue on because we can still hear you.

00:51:26.730 - 00:51:44.610

Oh, okay. You're like my wife says I'm not worth listening to. But anyway, going back to California, the Chinese would escape. And then that was in 1848, 1849. You will remember–you will remember that they

00:51:44.610 - 00:51:59.850

discovered gold in California, right? So the majority of the Chinese that lived along the coast of China, they had an opportunity to get a–get on ship and come to America. And when they did that, what happened was that they came here and

00:51:59.850 - 00:52:12.870

they called this country Gold Mountain. Gimsan(?). And as a consequence, they all wanted to come to America for the, you know, opportunity. Now, the second thing that the Chinese did that they're known for,

00:52:12.870 - 00:52:30.750

aside from the gold rush thing, was they built a railroad. Now, coming from the East coast, where the—were the Irish that were building the railroad across the United States. Coming from the West Coast, this guy named Stanford of Stanford

00:52:30.750 - 00:52:46.110

University, Leland Stanford got a crew of Chinese, and he bid in on building the railroad coming from the west. Now, originally, what they wanted to do was build separate railroads coming across the United States.

00:52:46.110 - 00:52:56.280

But then the government says, hey, no. One's starting from one side, the other one's starting from the other side. Why don't you just go ahead and meet in the middle and form one railroad? And as a consequence, they did that.

00:52:56.280 - 00:53:10.780

But they met at Promontory Point in Utah. And when they met there and they were taking pictures—can you still hear me? Because my screen is going black now. Oh, no. Yes! We can still hear you.

00:53:10.780 - 00:53:20.980

Yeah, we can still hear you. But since it seems like you're having a couple problems on your end, do you mind if we just, like, move into a couple last questions that we have?

00:53:21.100 - 00:53:34.330

Go ahead. Okay. I think one of them that we have is, I know you mentioned wanting to live until 100. So, do you have any, like, specific reason for that,

00:53:34.330 - 00:53:45.250

or is it just like, a nice round number or— It's a nice round number. I mean, we're old now, and as a consequence, we're meeting people who are coming to the end of their life.

00:53:45.250 - 00:54:00.330

My father, I told you, was 106 years old. And as a consequence of that, you know, I expected to live that long. So I just got to keep myself busy long enough to see 100, which is another 20 years, so...

00:54:00.330 - 00:54:15.270

Be it as it may, just try to—right now, the main project we're working on, because now everybody's got to have a project. If you don't have a project, you have no reason to get up in the morning. So my project is that I want to teach another 10,000 students before I

00:54:15.270 - 00:54:29.810

go. And the reason for that is that I feel I have something to contribute to teach them English, to teach them public speaking, to teach them to acclimate into our society. So I'm teaching some people from China.

00:54:29.810 - 00:54:47.580

We're starting up a relationship where we're taking these students from China and taking them over to a public university here in Houston. You've probably heard of HBU, or in this particular case is HCU: Houston Christian University.

00:54:48.060 - 00:55:01.950

Now we're doing that, training these people in China, Africa, and South America. And then using the technology, which is the cell phones, you know, everybody—all the youngsters know how to use a cell phone. So the technology is

00:55:01.950 - 00:55:13.230

there now. And all we need to do is go ahead and get these people all organized so that we can go ahead and do that. So that's the next big project we're on now. Wow, that is so exciting.

00:55:13.260 - 00:55:29.120

And it's so cool to see that you're still so passionate about teaching. I think a few last questions that we have: are you religious in any way, or were you raised with any sort of religious beliefs? No. I'm not religious.

00:55:29.120 - 00:55:44.000

And yes, I am. Now, that seems like a contradiction. But, because, you know, the Chinese have been infused with so many different philosophies like Taoism, Confucianism and Buddhism.

00:55:44.000 - 00:56:00.620

And then, of course, with the latest advent of Christianity as well as Muslims coming into China, I can say that I'm probably more Chinese in that sense. I believe in Taoism, Confucianism and Buddhism.

00:56:00.620 - 00:56:13.100

And I try to practice that as I, you know, do things in life. Number—it's a simple formula of one, two, three. One: be good to yourself. Take care of yourself.

00:56:13.100 - 00:56:24.290

Be in good physical health. Two: be nice to other people. Be kind to other people. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you type of situation.

00:56:24.290 - 00:56:41.060

Three: Buddhism talks about think about the whole society and be kind and compassionate to everybody and everything. So for the—to answer that question, I'm not Christian, I'm not into any kind of formal

00:56:41.060 - 00:56:55.550

religion, I'm into philosophy much more so. I consider myself a philosopher, an inventor, a builder, a developer, and shaping, hopefully, you know, the ideas of people who are willing to listen or want to listen.

00:56:56.400 - 00:57:10.000

That's it. Thank you so much for sharing that. As we wrap up, are there any final thoughts or anything you want to share? Hey, you gotta keep in mind I was the number one BS'er at the University of Texas.

00:57:10.000 - 00:57:26.310

I can BS all day long. If that answers your question. No, at this point not anything, but do feel free somewhere down the road, if all of a sudden you have a question, give me a call and I'll help you out the best

00:57:26.310 - 00:57:37.070

I can. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. Oh, yeah. No problem. You guys did a great job. So, next time—oh, I can—I tell you what.

00:57:37.070 - 00:57:46.380

I associated with Dr. Chan. Have you ever heard of Dr. Chan? No. No, okay. Dr. Chan graduated from Rice University with a PhD in chemical

00:57:46.380 - 00:57:59.160

engineering. And he is a pastor. He's also a pastor in the Christian, you know, Christian church. He got his pastor from Fullerton College.

00:57:59.160 - 00:58:17.640

But he and I are also working on this program of trying to get people all educated so that they can acclimate into the American society or wherever else they may want to go, trying to build a better person, in other words. But if–if you need another person to interview, I would recommend you try to talk to him.

00:58:17.640 - 00:58:27.040

He's a Rice professor from Rice University. Awesome. Thank you so much. Okay, I'm going to stop the recording now really quick.