Well, Hong Kong, this was still colonial. Hong Kong, right, that I grew up in. So I was a colonial subject without really completely realizing it. It was a colonial existence. It was a good existence, but still colonial. For instance, in our school, I remember thinking backwards in what's equivalent to maybe ninth grade here form three. We learned British history, and I knew all the princes that murdered each other, the kings that, you know, I knew it in detail and I was very good at it. And thinking back, that is kind of odd. Why would I know that in detail and know almost nothing about Chinese history? It was taught in such a superficial way in Hong Kong, and it went all the way to in 1911, which was when China became a republic. And then it went back and started from the beginning again, more or less like that. And so there's a lot of interesting things in hindsight that that was interesting about, you know, sort of the mentality that we were born with, right? That we didn't question that we fought, I from a child. I was always thinking like, Oh, I'm pretty sure I'll end up in the United States going there to study without thinking, like, why, right. And all that. So there's a lot of things. Yeah.

So we were very fortunate. We were in we're middle class and so so weekends I, you know, you know weekends was for the family. We like to go to our favorite spots for afternoon tea. That would be what we would do, watch movies and yeah, as Hong Kong became prosperous. Right. Hong Kong, as people know, is a economic miracle. All right. So from the fifties to the eighties, and all the way to 2000s, was this kind of golden age. And all the people got more prosperous. Most people started with very little as refugees to Hong Kong, and we all prospered and we were able to take vacations and going abroad for vacations, going to Japan, going to Taiwan were some of the highlights I could remember.

Hong Kong from an early age. I was very aware that growing up in Hong Kong is so different from arguably in the United States where all news is local, arguably. Right. America first, almost, right? We we don't really is this too much to say that we really don't care what's happening elsewhere? In Hong Kong, it's all about the world. Hong Kong is within the context of the world, right? So we had to pay lots of attention to what's happening in the United States, what's happening in China, what's happening in Southeast Asia, in Japan and so on. And so in terms of media, I remember in high school reading Time magazine, Newsweek, those were the magazines of the days, Far Eastern Economic Review, watching news on TV. Everybody was very aware of…It was a culture of awareness, media awareness through the news, both for adults and for younger people, too. Yeah.

(Interviewer) Do you think you would carry that on with you as you move to the States?

Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. It's like context is everything right? Knowing, you know, it's our context that makes us who we are, that in many ways can give us meaning to our journey. And so the context is the world, right? And the context is our community, you know. You know, when I was in high school, I was very active in as a scout, and we were a really unruly group of teenagers. And I was a patrol leader. And suffice to say, we did many crazy things and we had a lot, a lot of fun.

I remember kindergarten was at a, I think it's called Saint Philomena, and it's very interesting. Hong Kong is such a product of its time and space. So the elementary school, now that I think back, I remember very little, but I think it was a a lot of mixed race people in elementary school we lived in Kowloon, Tsim Sha Tsui, which was a very mixed-race area and so I mentioned that because of that, that context of living in that kind of environment, elementary school, I went to Saint Theresa's, which is a good Catholic school. I was, I remember unfortunately being one of the worst students in that school, because I didn't realize you had to study. And my parents are great. They just left me, which means that I didn't know you have to study in school and yeah. So it was a very strict school. It was very good and that was my elementary school.

Then I went to an Anglican school called Diocesan Boys' School to be as DBS is well known in Hong Kong. And I went there in my primary five, which is equivalent to fifth grade and was there throughout high school and and I flowered in that school and I was eventually…there's a story I when I went to the school, I, you know, people were coming out from the lower school, right?

Elementary school. I was one of the outsiders in that new class. And they asked, "Who wants to be class captain?" Well, like an idiot. I put up my hand too, and I got one vote. I actually I think I got zero votes because I didn't know I could vote for myself, probably. But things got better since then. And then I eventually I was form captain throughout most of my high school years and as I said, I enjoyed being a Boy Scout a lot. So anyway, that was a defining experience. It was a different from many other schools in Hong Kong. It was one of the few schools in Hong Kong. We actually pride ourselves in putting athletics ahead of studying, and so it gives you a sense of the kind of school, the kind of headmaster that we had. And it was very interesting. Even though athletics was was was a big deal at the school, you were kind of looked up to right, because of your athletic prowess. But for me now I became a, people may not relate, in those days, maybe even now, you know, in track and field, in track especially, you need timekeepers.

And so in our school, being a timekeeper was something, and I became the head timekeeper, one of the head timekeepers, which in my mind is nothing like being an athlete. But, you know, you do what you can. It was a very interesting time. First of all, the context is that it's it's a it's it's one of those schools which had borders, although I was a day boy, it was also a had a very a good contingent of student. Well, I would say in our days, 90% of the students Chinese ancestry, but 10% were mixed or from other countries, which is unusual. And because of that, our teachers, maybe half of them would be from what we call ex-pats from other countries, from Australia and so on. And they had all had an influence on young minds. But I would mention one that is important in my journey, in my story, and his name is Richard Bore from the United States. Harvard graduated. I don't think he went to Vietnam. He came to DBS to teach the Bible. He probably went to divinity school, maybe at Harvard, maybe some other place. I get them all confused. And then he was also a China specialist. He studied Chinese history, got his Ph.D. in Chinese history. And so on eventually. I don't think at that point he was.

But the most memorable thing I would mention was that he planted a seed that was very confusing. He came into a class, you've got to remember, a colonial Hong Kong. We were the elite school, and we were in the elite class. And he comes in to teach the Bible and he would write Chinese on the board. He wrote Chinese and he wrote Laozi and he wrote, Tao Te Ching (Mandarin). Lo Zi, To Tuck King (Cantonese) is, you know, Laozi is one of the important philosophers in China. Right. And so he wrote Laozi. So which is, you know, you know, you know, the founder of Daoism, if you like and Tao Te Ching. In our class, our reaction was to laugh. Right? We were just rolling around, laughing. Never seen a white guy write Chinese. Right? And then here he popped the question. He goes, Do you know who he is? Have you ever read the Tao Te Ching? And we were just laughing. We were. But it was you know; it planted a seed and it was very unsettling. Like, why is this guy, this white guy from the United States, no less, chaplain of our school, why is he, he's supposed to teach the Bible, so do your thing.

But no, he's saying to us, there's something important here. There's something about your cultural heritage and do you know anything about it? And the answer is no. We know nothing about it. We know so little and we've never given it the time of the day, if you like. So that really planted a seed, where we had, this was the colonial experience, right, where you had your exposed to a bigger world, a Western world, and you find that you don't know your own world, you don't know your own heritage. You don't always understand the cultural or even the political context of your own existence. So. So, yeah, many memorable teachers, but that's one.

So I started college. So in Canada, I went to a boarding school for one year. It's called Upper Canada College in Toronto. And I was lucky to go there because that was the college where, in the old days now, of course, everything's changed, where they produce prime ministers. All right. In Canada. Okay. So that was an interesting experience. I was only there for one year then I went to Victoria College, which is one of the colleges in the University of Toronto system. As people note, U.T. is a very good university. But by the time, Richard Bore got to me, so in Hong Kong, I was all about learning about the West, right. Beginning in Canada and definitely in the United States, I was all about learning about my Chinese past, right?

So my love was really Chinese philosophy and Chinese thinking. And so I remember taking a course in Confucianism at the University of Toronto, along with other things, you know, sort of your your splattering of, you know, intro to sociology. I learned Marxist sociology, interestingly enough, Mandarin, and economics, which turned out to be quite useful in other things. So, okay, one year of University of Toronto, Victoria College, then I came to the United States. As I mentioned, I stood in line, got into San Francisco State, which I wasn't sure what to think of San Francisco State. I mean, it's like, it's not the right trajectory. It's like, yeah, but it turned out to be the best thing ever.

You know, I love San Francisco State. I double majored in the end. I majored in business and accounting. And that was my practical side, trying to make a living in the United States. And then I continued to take classes in Chinese thought, that I was where I met my Buddhism professor. Of course I come to the United States to learn Buddhism from a Jewish professor. Right. And we're still in touch. He's still a great mentor to me and so on and so forth. And I took philosophy classes. I took so many philosophy classes; I was asked to go meet the chair of the philosophy department because they need people to major in philosophy. And they said that, well, if you just take a couple more classes, I'm sure, you know, you can have a double major. So that's what I did. So that's how I ended up as a double major. I graduated from S.F. State. I that's where I met my other mentors. I took Asian American studies, life changing. Who are these people in my classroom? They are Asian, but they're not like me. You know, they're not even Chinese. And. And they're so different. And so I start to learn about all this history of Asians in the United States.

And it was like a real awakening, because by that time, I realized that my future is probably going to be in the United States. And I realize that that's an important framing that, you know, I inherit all the legacies, right, of this Asian American experience. And it really gave me a way of understanding how this society have behaved, arguably, towards Asians, for, since we got here, and it again helped help me contextualize myself and what I have to do for myself to navigate this society, and what our community, how far we still have to go in the world. So even though I was not an Asian American studies major, George Woo was my mentor there. And he a side note he he was actually the only professor that was willing to be a witness when I got married to my girlfriend from childhood, from high school. Right. So yeah, he's the most non-conforming professor I've ever known. He wants to say that he's the only professor at San Francisco State University that became a full professor with only a bachelor's degree. And he came out from the community. He was activist, he was a photographer, and most famously, he was a social worker. And in those days, the gangs in Chinatown, Wah Ching, was really big. And the gangs says, George Wu, the social worker? He's our spokesperson. So it gives you a sense of Third World Strike, the Asian American component on it. You know, and these folks, where I learned, you know, where I learned a lot from.

(Interviewer) So what was your, you know, community like when you were in college? You would mention a little bit about like the gains in S.F., what was the environment?

So undergraduate, I was becoming Asian American, right? I had this new identity. It was like, so I'm not just Michael, the guy from Hong Kong. Immigrant. I was getting very comfortable with the American born Asians, right? And you know, I feel like I could relate to them. And they were super nice to me, too. And in San Francisco, you know, there was a certain pride about our legacy and our background and so on, so forth. And so it was a process. It was a slow process of transforming into really an Asian American. That was mainly my undergraduate. But once I go into graduate school at Stanford, so my degrees at Stanford first was that I was, so at Stanford, I became like a, I think I became like a professional student because it was interesting life, right?

Whether it would be studying Asian studies because I was going to become an Asian expert. So I studied. I was very good. I, you know, I studied history, tried to get into history, that didn't quite work out. As I mentioned, I was interested in philosophy, but I felt like philosophy wasn't going to get me a living. So being practical, or at least I thought, I thought I should do history, but history didn't work out.

So, so but at Stanford. At Stanford, uh, so I spent many years there as I mentioned in Asian studies. I went through all that program and then I, I got into the political science program and did that program. I didn't take any of the degrees at the beginning. They had to hunt me down to say, How come you're not taking your degrees?

Because, oh, important thing. At Stanford, I found a job. I started to work for unit, which we're still, I'm still connected with. And in fact, I am helping my boss celebrate his 80th birthday in a film next month. And David Grossman hired me to work in the China Project. It's got a geautiful name. It's called SPICE. Stanford Program for International and Cross-Cultural Education. And what we did was as graduate students, we would write curriculum for high school and elementary school and work with teachers to design curriculum that would help young people learn about this country and have an open mind. It was very progressive in that way. So at Stanford it was great. Stanford, I had, you know, I was studying. I love to study.

I have to say I would, I had a job that I was there for all my years. It helped fund all my education at Stanford. And then I also became very involved in student life. I was tapped through my job to be a resident fellow. Right. And resident fellow, I guess, is like an advisor in a residence situation for the East Southeast Asian Studies themed dorm. And so my wife and I, we were literally, we weren't that much older than the students, but we didn't know that. We were like maybe five, six, seven years older than them. And so we became these advisors, usually the advisors, they're usually professors or you know, at that time we were the most probably underqualified resident fellows ever, I think. But anyway, we became resident fellows at the East House for three years and we worked with the student staff. And then more important to my journey and story, we went over to Okada house to be resident fellow, and that was the Asian American themed dorm. And so of course we worked with other students, you know, undergraduate students. We have a student staff. You know, one of whom is my doctor now. And we, you know, being a themed dorm, we helped students learn about Asian American heritage and so on, so forth.

So just to complete that story, you're asking about my life at Stanford. So at Stanford, I was super busy. I was doing research, I was writing curriculum. I was being in the dorms, you know, trying to lead a staff to learn residential education. And then the most important change at Stanford was that I changed my focus for my dissertation from being a China expert because the thought of, I don't know, as I learned more about it, it was just not as exciting as I thought it might be to be a China specialist in the United States.

I drifted to become an Asian American specialist. I wrote my dissertation on the model minority and sort of a macro view on policy how how public policy and education are created. A situation in the Chinese American community where we had a very bimodal distribution that resulted in what people called the model minority, and it was an effort, a contribution, to help debunk the model minority myth. Yeah, basically saying that a lot of the folks that were in the opposite of the model minority story were imported, right? Were imported as elite immigrants to this country and hence, you had this sudden a sudden change in the complexion of the community, which to outsiders look like, oh, they've really progressed, where it's a lot more complicated than that.

There are many there are many you know, there are generational differences, of course, where, you know, we have communities here, you know, Chinese, Japanese that's been here 150 plus years and very old communities, you know, whether it be San Jose, whether it be San Francisco, extremely old communities that have contributed so much that people don't know. So that history of contribution, of just being here in large numbers, there are new immigrants and newer immigrants and new generations and newer generations. They are different ethnic groups. So it's in a state of constant change and can lead to fragmentation. Asian Americans, as I understand it, is a coalition, right, a coalition of different Asian American groups. Right. And as such, its most basic core, I think, is political, which is to say that when you're like 0.2 percent of the US population, you're, you're not going to have a lot of clout. Right. You know, even if you're half a percent. Right. So right now Asian Americans probably 5% of the US population. Right, probably 15% of Californian population. Right. And so when you divide it into the different groups, you're not going to have a lot of political clout. And that's what it's all about. And so we come together to advance each other, right? To be visible minimally, right, because of that. And so there are lots of challenges built into that because we're not monolithic. We have different needs; we have different socio economic profiles. We have, you know, different generations. And we even have different political orientations.

Right. So there are many. I think what we focus on is how do we move together and forward, right? How do you make this community work together and move forward? What is possible and what is less likely? And what, how is it that you can move forward together? And the principles there are not that hard. It's trying to be inclusive, trying to be to present your best self and present people in there that would challenge you to be better. Right? Each community is built on certain values and to ask, what are your values, and build on those and expect those challenges. Because one thing we know is that communities are always changing. And so what we see, whether it be in Cupertino or what we see in Silicon Valley or in New York or San Jose, the communities change. And we need to see that as a process. We need to see that as messy. But there's something at stake. It can get better or get worse. It can address more needs or address less needs. It can include you, if you want to participate, or it will go without you, if you or your community decide not to be a factor.

But life is always messy, right? You just have to take it as a process. But I think the silver lining is that if you know history, the arc of Asian American history, I always argue that of all the periods that we have, while we have challenges today, we are it's never been better. Right. And and they'll continue to be lots of challenges. But the question is, do we rise to our potential as individuals and as community? So sometimes you have a large number of people, but for a long time, certain groups have large numbers of people. And people go, oh, if politically activated, they can become the biggest voter block. Well, that's just potential. It takes a lot to go from that potential to activating it and to be deliberate and to make it happen in a good way. And that takes a lot of knowledge, that takes a lot of skill, that takes a lot of commitment, that takes a lot of creativity and that takes a lot of effort and collaboration by people.

So I always think, what's the mark in the early days? Just to be honest, when we're recruiting people to run for office, nobody wanted to run because they thought, Oh, it's so hard, and once you get in, it's even harder, right? Nobody wants to. Now people go, people come to me, students. They say, Hey, I'm really ambitious. I want to be governor. And that doesn't impress us anymore, right? Just being a, at first, it impresses us that you just to have that ego to be able to say that is something, right? But now you got to be more than just one thing that you've got to say because it's rough out there and you got to know. You've got to be well-prepared. You got to know what you want and what you are made of in order to have a chance of getting to even where you want to be. So you have to say a lot more than just what you want, but that's a starting point. But there's so much more.

Influences, it’s the same people here: it's part Paul Fong, it's, you know, Paul Sakamoto, Mike Honda, even Norman Mineta and then the Asian American Studies folks that I collaborate with, my early mentors at San Francisco State University, George Woo in particular, others that taught me there and gave me a sense of what, you know, grassroot activism look like. Being involved in AACI, that gave me a sense of what activism by professionals, right? AACI was founded by these Asian American professionals. That really was amazing. And they definitely rubbed off on me in terms of both style, in terms of their fearlessness, when they need to be. And really so a lot of it is up here, right? Leadership is in the head. Right. And a lot of people gave me things, I have to say.

Yeah, I have to say that on my personal side, during our AACI years when we advocate, we very often advocate with different communities. There were lots of common issues of interest. And so we advocate with other communities and intellectually, which is also very important. I want to say that in our civic leadership program, in our youth program, we always look to, I want to say, especially Black leaders or Black authors, for some of the most, best I would consider them, best analysis of American society, best ideas about organizing and the struggle, so to speak.

And so even more the intellectual side or learning from their experience side, but it's very prominent. It's very inspirational to us in APALI. And we select their books. You know, we form book groups where people read a book and talk about it. And those are really very, very well received. And people really appreciate that. With the Latinx folks, one thing that's very special about our civic leadership program, which is the adult program, I hate to say it is the only because I don't know, but that program has been around for more than 15 years. And even from the beginning, it's always been an Asian and Latinx program. And so we have three leaders, for instance, in the program we all share some commonalities is myself leading the program and also Myra Cruz, who is also a former elected official, former, you know, college professor and so on, and then Dennis Chu. And so in that program, we always outreach to Latinxs to be involved and one thing I would say is that it's been such a delightful journey. It's so helpful because minorities' communities, I like to say, are separated from each other. Everybody's in their own silos. And even in our community, we could be in silos. So so we really try hard to break those silos.

So APALI is a place where everybody has a place we try to make it like that. And having Latinx in our cohort has enriched each other so much. And the amazing thing, the testimony I would say, is that they find they start off feeling like, oh, would I fit in this Asian American program? Like maybe 80% of the people in the program are Asians. They don't always realize that all different kinds of Asians, right? And then they go there one day and then, of course, like, oh, do we, you know? And then once they're in the program, it's so easy. They love each other because there's so many commonalities with all immigrant communities. Many times people live in the same neighborhood, whether it be East Side or East Palo Alto. There's so much, right, the struggle, and there's just so much to share. And we are proud that we have really worked hard to make that happen. And so that's a kind of collaboration, if you like, with other communities that we could point to that we try to walk our talk and, try to make it count and make it effective, make it worthwhile, you know.

So that's why I always say that I'm an immigrant because it implies, I don't know what I'm doing. Right. You don't need to know. That's the good thing about community involvement. You don't get a PhD, well, usually most people throw in that. You do it by wanting to by trying to be authentic, by being your best self, by having the best intentions and starting where you are. And you start by processing your own story, telling your story a lot of people. You have so much power to tell about your family, what they have experienced, being aware of your own context. That is the first step and taking that first step and not being afraid to feel that I belong here. I have a right to have a voice here. I demand that you also listen to me and my community. What I say is not stupid and that is already involvement. And then as you, depending on how far you want to go, some people just give testimony for their community, tell their story. Some people really want to work at it and try to solve it and that would take skill. So you learn on your job, you start picking up, how do you talk? What do you need to know? How do you become more substantial? How do people take you seriously? How do you take yourself seriously? How do you take care of yourself? So that is a life journey, the community journey is part of a life journey. It's not divorced from the life journey.

And if you feel that you want to be a better person and that has a place in your life, you should start right now. High school student, perfect. Right. The wrong thing to do is wait. Oh, wait till I'm a CEO. Wait till I'm rich. Wait till- because you pick up lots of bad habits, including not being engaged, right? So being engaged is a state of mind, it's a lifestyle and just go with the flow. And for me, I'm always learning. I'm looking at people and saying, hey, what can I learn from this person? What can I pick up from that person? You know, what are they good at? How can I help them help the movement? Is there something that we share? So that's that's kind of how I think so you have to develop your mindset. What is your mindset? And you have lots of choices. What kind of mindset do you want? Some people are fighters, some people are strategists, some people are very good with details, some people are good with people, some people can persuade people. Oh, all kinds of skills. There's a place for everything in everybody and the right place. And it's for you to discover.