Lai, Him Mark 1925- (H.M. Lai, H. Mark Lai)

PERSONAL:

Born November 1, 1925, in San Francisco, CA; son of Mark Bing and Hing Mui Lee; married Laura Jung, June 12, 1953. Ethnicity: "Chinese." Education: San Francisco Junior College, A.A., 1945; University of California, Berkeley, B.S., 1947.

ADDRESSES:

Home—San Francisco, CA. E-mail—hmlai@aol.com.

CAREER:

Utilities Engineering Bureau, San Francisco, CA, mechanical engineer, 1948-51; Bechtel Corp., San Francisco, mechanical engineer, 1953-84; University of California, Berkeley, lecturer in Chinese-American history, 1984, affiliate of Chinese materials research collection for Asian-American Studies Program, 1986-88; San Francisco State University, San Francisco, adjunct professor of Asian-American studies, 1990—. San Francisco State University, lecturer, 1969, 1972-75; University of California, Berkeley, lecturer, 1978-79. Coordinator for radio program Hon Sing (title means "Voice/Sounds"), 1971-84; Chinese Culture Foundation, president, 1982, co-coordinator of Chinese in America in Search of Roots program, 1991—, and member of board of directors; member of editorial board, Amerasia Journal, 1979—, and Chinese America: History and Perspectives, 1986—; consultant to Americans All, 1992-96. Exhibitions: Director of "Chinese of America, 1785-1980", Chinese Culture Foundation.

MEMBER:

Chinese Historical Society (member of board of directors; president, 1971, 1976, 1977).

AWARDS, HONORS:

American Book Award, 1982, for Island: Poetry and History of Chinese Immigrants on Angel Island, 1910-1940; President's Award, San Francisco State University, 2005.

WRITINGS:

(Under name H. Mark Lai; with Thomas W. Chinn and Philip P. Choy) A History of the Chinese in California: A Syllabus, Chinese Historical Society of America (San Francisco, CA), 1969.

(With Philip P. Choy) Outlines: History of the Chinese in America, privately printed (San Francisco, CA), 1971.

(Under name H.M. Lai; compiler, with Karl Lo) Chinese Newspapers Published in North America, 1854-1975, Center for Chinese Research Materials, Association of Research Libraries (Washington, DC), 1977.

(Translator; and editor, with Genny Lim and Judy Yung) Island: Poetry and History of Chinese Immigrants on Angel Island, 1910-1940, HOC DOI (San Francisco, CA), 1980.

The Chinese of America, 1785-1980: An Illustrated History and Catalog of the Exhibition, Chinese Culture Foundation (San Francisco, CA), 1980.

(Compiler) Russell Leong and Jean Pang Yip, editors, A History Reclaimed: An Annotated Bibliography of Chinese Language Materials on the Chinese of America, Asian American Studies Center, University of California (Los Angeles, CA), 1986.

(Coeditor) Collected Works of Gilbert Woo, 1991.

Cong Huaqiao dao Huaren: ershi shiji Meiguo Huaren shehui fazhan shi (title means "From Overseas Chinese to Chinese American: History of Development of Chinese American Society during the Twentieth Century"), Joint Publishing Co. (Hong Kong, China), 1992.

Becoming Chinese American: A History of Communities and Institutions, AltaMira Press (Walnut Creek, CA), 2004.

(Editor) Chinese American Voices: From the Gold Rush to the Present, introductions by Judy Yung and Gordon H. Chang, University of California Press (Berkeley, CA), 2006.

Contributor to reference books. Contributor to journals, including East-West and Chinese America: History and Perspectives.

SIDELIGHTS:

Him Mark Lai is a leading historian whose writings, in both English and Chinese, are read by international audiences. He has accumulated a vast amount of information about his passion, Chinese-American history, much of it during his long career as an engineer. Decades before Asian-American studies programs became available on campuses, Lai was offering access to his huge collection to students, researchers, and writers who sought to understand and record the details of the lives of Chinese immigrants who had settled in America.

Lai began his lifelong celebration of Chinese-American history in 1965, when he joined the Chinese Historical Society of America and studied under historian Stanford Lyman at the University of California Extension. He spent weekends visiting university libraries and other sites, as well as Chinese-Americans in their homes, collecting fragments of data on all aspects of the lives of Chinese immigrants and their ancestors. Eventually the field expanded, and Lai wrote a series of newspaper columns that became A History of the Chinese in California: A Syllabus, which he compiled with Thomas W. Chinn and Philip P. Choy in 1969, the same year Asian-American and other minority students staged a strike in support of establishing courses on ethnic studies at San Francisco State University. Both Choy, an architect, and Lai were invited by the school to teach their first courses in Chinese-American history. Lai taught there and at the University of California, Berkeley, during the 1970s and 1980s. Lai and Karl Lo, a librarian at the University of California, San Diego, compiled Chinese Newspapers Published in North America, 1854-1975, in which they noted that Chinese-language newspapers were published in the United States before they existed in China.

Lai's father came to the United States in 1910, his mother in 1923. They arrived at the Angel Island Immigration Station, located in a state park not far from Alcatraz off San Francisco Bay, which was modeled after Ellis Island in New York City. They were both detained during the Chinese Exclusion period that ran from 1882 until the 1940s, during which time Chinese immigrants were questioned before a decision was made as to whether they would be accepted into this country. During the holding period, some carved poems into the walls where they were housed, many of which reveal their frustrations. The Chinese were required to undergo more medical and legal tests than were required of other Asian immigrants, including the Japanese. Lai translated 135 of these poems and edited them with Judy Yung, associate professor of American studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and playwright Genny Lim. They include historic photographs and oral histories of detainees and workers at the immigration station interviewed for this collection.

The poems are grouped into sections titled "The Voyage," "The Detainment," "The Weak Shall Conquer," "About Westerners," and "Deportees, Transients." The first edition of Island: Poetry and History of Chinese Immigrants on Angel Island, 1910-1940 was reviewed by David Meltzer in the American Book Review. Meltzer said that the book "exists simultaneously on many levels: history, poetry, the pathology of racism…. Island is a moving and significant work." Lorraine Dong wrote in the Journal of American Ethnic History that "translating from one language medium to another is not an easy task. This is especially the case with regard to poetry or any form of creative writing because translation itself is another creative activity. The process is complicated when it is not enough merely to know standard Chinese. One must also have a Chinese American sensibility to comprehend any Chinese work written about the American experience. Lai, Lim, and Yung have taken great pains to ensure accuracy." Charles Solomon reviewed the later edition for the Los Angeles Times Book Review, saying that "this moving volume documents a neglected chapter of American history."

Lai's A History Reclaimed: An Annotated Bibliography of Chinese Language Materials on the Chinese of America contains 1,600 items selected from the libraries of the University of California, Berkeley, the East Asian collection of the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace at Stanford University, and the Chinese Historical Society of America. Topics covered include literature, journalism, emigration, business, Chinese-American organizations, and politics.

Fluent in both Cantonese and Mandarin, Lai coordinated a long-running Chinese-language radio show that featured news, interviews, and music. Lai's articles have been published in many journals. His topics have included the history of Chinese benevolent societies and the Chinese-American left.

"The Chinese-American left, although it strongly supported nationalist movements in China, did work closely with the U.S. Communist Party and anti-imperialist causes, until the McCarthy era put an end to the move- ment," wrote Peter Monaghan in the Chronicle of Higher Education. "Mr. Lai had his own McCarthyite experience. In the 1950s, he helped run Mun Ching, a community organization that held English classes, published a newsletter, and presented drama and music—until the Federal Bureau of Investigation agents pressured it to shut down, judging its activities too leftist."

In order to preserve his life's work. Lai is working with University of California, Berkeley on the indexing and housing of his collection. Through the San Francisco program, Chinese in America in Search of Roots, Lai continues to help young Chinese-Americans trace their ancestry through genealogical research.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Book Review, July, 1983, David Meltzer, review of Island: Poetry and History of Chinese Immigrants on Angel Island, 1910-1940, p. 11.

Chronicle of Higher Education, January 14, 2000, Peter Monaghan, "The Scholar Who Legitimized the Study of Chinese in America," p. A21.

Journal of American Ethnic History, summer, 1995, Lorraine Dong, review of Island, p. 80.

Journal of the West, October, 1993, Jeffrey G. Barlow, review of Island, p. 103.

Los Angeles Times Book Review, July 19, 1992, Charles Solomon, review of Island, p. 14.

MELUS, summer, 1991, Stan Yogi, review of Island, p. 77.

Pacific Affairs, fall, 1992, David Chuenyan Lai, review of Island, p. 448.