‘Celebrating Him Mark Lai’ Luncheon
November 9, 2007
Laura and Him Mark Lai (photo credit: Frank Jang)
Historian, writer and community activist Him Mark Lai was honored for his contribution to Chinese American history with a luncheon at the Empress of China in San Francisco’s Chinatown on Oct. 28.
As “the scholar who legitimized the study of Chinese America,” according to The Chronicle of Higher Education, the celebration encompassed his many years as a historian and also celebrated his 82nd birthday.
An engineer by trade, Lai began his career by writing for East-West, the preeminent bilingual weekly published from 1967 to 1989.
Lai’s first book, A History of the Chinese in California, was co-authored with Phil Choy and Thomas Chinn, and published in 1969, the same year he and Choy taught the nation’s first course in Chinese American history at San Francisco State University.
Lai’s participation in the study of Taishan emigrant villages by UCLA and Zhongshan University in Guangzhou inspired the “In Search of Roots” program a decade later for young Chinese Americans to learn about their ancestral history.
Subsequent years also saw the publication of many books, such as Becoming Chinese American, Chinese American Voices: From the Gold Rush to the Present, as well as the 2004 documentary Him Mark Lai: The People’s Historian.
The celebration’s committee included Chinese for Affirmative Action, Chinese Culture Center, Chinese Historical Society of America, the “In Search of Roots” program, Chinese American Association of Commerce, Lawrence Choy Lowe Memorial Fund, Self-Help for the Elderly, Phil and Sarah Choy, Linda and David Lei, Emily Leung and Ricky Ho.
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