HIM MARK LAI: A Brief Biography
(November 1, 1925 – May 21, 2009)
Internationally renowned as the Dean of Chinese American history, Him Mark
Lai’s extensive research collection provides a mother lode of source material on the
experiences of Chinese in America, including their districts of origin in Guangdong
Province, their detention at the Angel Island Immigration Station, the development of
community organizations and newspapers, and the political left. His groundbreaking
writings—10 books and over 100 articles—are models of scholarship; his commitment to
his bicultural heritage, democratic principles, passion for history, and generous spirit are
an enduring inspiration to future generations.
Born on November 1, 1925 in San Francisco’s Chinatown, Lai was the eldest of
five children. As a child, Lai escaped the confines of his family’s 8’ x 10’ home by
reading Chinese novels of errant knights and a diverse range of English books borrowed
from the Chinatown Branch Library. By middle school, he was adding to his immigrant
parents’ limited income as garment workers with a part-time job in a sewing factory.
Nevertheless, he excelled at both the Nam Kue Chinese School and San Francisco
public schools. In his final year of high school, Lai won the first city-wide Hearst U.S.
History Contest. Yet when he expressed his desire to go to college, his father urged him
to go after the good wages in the city’s shipyards, pointing out that racism had prevented
other Chinese Americans with college degrees from pursuing their professions. Lai,
supported by his mother, refused. But pragmatism dictated he pursue a degree in
mechanical engineering while continuing to work part time, and he graduated from San
Francisco Junior College as valedictorian and received a B.S. degree in engineering
from the University of California at Berkeley in 1947.
Working as a mechanical engineer for the state, then at Bechtel Corporation, Lai
did not abandon his passion for Chinese history, culture, and politics. In 1949, he began
volunteering for the newspaper, Chung Sai Yat Po, and he became a member of the
Chinese American Democratic Youth League, more familiarly known as Mun Ching,
leading study groups, introducing the songs, music, folk dances, and vernacular dramas
of the New China to the Chinatown community.
In 1960, he enrolled in “The Oriental in North America,” a relatively new course
taught by sociologist Stanford Lyman at the University of California Extension in San
Francisco. Exposure to the histories of the Chinese, Japanese, and Filipinos in America
whet Lai’s appetite for more. He read the few titles then available on Chinese
Americans and joined the Chinese Historical Society of America (CHSA) soon after its
founding in 1963. These events, together with contemporaneous changes in the status
of minorities spurred by the Civil Rights movement, led Lai towards developing a
Chinese American identity and pursuing Chinese American studies.
In 1967, he accepted a proposal by Maurice Chuck, editor of the bilingual weekly
East/West, to write a series of articles on Chinese American history. These articles—
revised and annotated—became the cornerstone for the classic A History of the Chinese
in California: A Syllabus, co-edited with Thomas W. Chin and Philip P. Choy, as well as
the basis for the first Chinese American history course in the United States, which Lai
team taught with Choy at San Francisco State College in Fall 1969 and which resulted in
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another classic Outlines: A History of the Chinese in America. He subsequently also
taught at the University of California, Berkeley.
Lai’s seminal works in Chinese American history include: “A Historical Survey of
Organizations of the Left Among the Chinese in America,” published in the Fall 1972
issue of the Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars; Island: Poetry and History of Chinese
Immigrants on Angel Island 1910-1940 (1980), co-authored/translated with Genny Lim
and Judy Yung; “Chinese on the Continental U.S.” in the Harvard Encyclopedia of
American Ethnic Groups (1980); From Overseas Chinese to Chinese American: a
History of the Development of Chinese during the Twentieth Century (in Chinese, 1992);
Becoming Chinese American: A History of Communities and Institutions (2004); and,
posthumously, Chinese American Transnational Politics (2010).
In pursuit of source material, Lai climbed into dumpsters; combed through
thousands of newspapers, unpublished manuscripts, and documents; traveled to
archives and Chinese/American communities on both sides of the Pacific; and
conducted scores of oral history interviews. To share his discoveries, he not only wrote
and taught but provided text and translations for exhibits; compiled bibliographies of
Chinese newspapers and Chinese language materials; served as consultant for
individuals, historical projects, institutions, and documentaries in China and the United
States; and gave talks at conferences in America, Australia, Canada, mainland China,
Taiwan, the Philippines, and Hong Kong. To encourage and bring to light new research
by others, Lai worked for decades on the editorial committees of Amerasia Journal and
Chinese America: History & Perspectives, CHSA’s annual journal that he co-founded.
Authors, artists, and political activists for the past thirty plus years have noted their
indebtedness to Lai. Footnotes often reference data he unearthed—and which is now
available to all, either through his writings or his vast collection of books and source
material which he donated to libraries at UC Berkeley, San Francisco State University,
and CHSA.
In 1989, Lai helped organize the first symposium on Chinese American family
history and genealogy at the Chinese Culture Foundation (CCC) in San Francisco. Two
years later, he and Albert Cheng founded the “In Search of Roots” program for youth,
enabling hundreds of “rooters” since to locate their ancestral villages and learn about
their family histories. For thirteen years Lai produced Hon Sing, a weekly radio program
of news commentary, community announcements, and Chinese music. He served
multiple terms on the boards of many organizations—such as CCC and CHSA—often
assuming the responsibilities of president. His community work and prodigious
scholarship garnered many awards, including the Association for Asian American
Studies Award for Lifetime Scholarship; and Outstanding Service Awards from Chinese
for Affirmative Action, CHSA, and CCC.
Adding Him Mark Lai’s name to the Chinatown Branch Library not only honors
the man but the community to which he was devoted.
Ruthanne Lum McCunn
April 27, 2010
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