Chinatown: Community adopted him as a native son — ‘one of us’
Ed Lee wasn’t born in San Francisco, but that didn’t matter to the large Chinese community that adopted him as a native son.
“He was one of us,” Norman Fong, director of the Chinatown Community Development Center, said Tuesday. “One of our guys made it to mayor.”
Lee became known in the Chinatown community in the 1970s as the civil rights lawyer who pushed residents of the Ping Yuen public housing complex to speak up and fight to improve conditions. He became a perennial volunteer behind the scenes at the
Chinese New Year celebrations and then — as the city’s first Asian American mayor — moved front and center, boisterously and with a characteristic giggle, wishing the community a “gung hay fat choy.”
He symbolized a “coming of age of Chinese Americans, Asian Americans in San Francisco,” said Assemblyman Phil Ting. “He really represented Asian Americans and Chinese Americans being accepted into City Hall.”
Despite San Francisco’s historically large Asian American population — currently comprising more than 35 percent of 860,000 residents — politics in San Francisco was long dominated by white men, with Willie Brown and Dianne Feinstein the exceptions. For years, the Asian American community sought a seat at the table in City Hall, and Lee was the “fruition of so many years of work,” Ting said.
At times, the Chinese community judged Lee harshly, especially after his 2015 appointment of a Nob Hill activist, Julie Christensen, to Chinatown’s supervisor seat. That decision prompted a vocal rebuke from Chinatown power broker Rose Pak, who had helped propel Lee into the mayor’s office.
But regardless of the criticism, the Chinese American community largely remained supportive of Lee.
“The fact that he was the first Chinese American mayor gave me a huge sense of pride, and it was something to look up to,” said Brandon Jew, owner and chef of Mr. Jiu’s on Waverly Place. “Chinese Americans don’t often get seen as leaders, and it felt like something for the city to be proud of.”
Lee’s parents came from a rural village in Taishan and settled in Seattle, where the family lived in public housing, a background that drove him to want to improve the conditions at Ping Yuen, which included a rent strike in 1978.
One of his first priorities as mayor was to renovate 3,480 units of public housing in 28 buildings for low-income residents, including Ping Yuen apartments.
On Tuesday afternoon, as ongoing construction took place at Ping Yuen, several residents said they were grateful to Lee for pushing to renovate public housing projects and considered him one of their own.
“He liked to help the lower-income people,” said Paul Yuen, a retired salesman who has lived in Ping Yuen for 10 years. “He’s really a good man.”
He will always be known for his ardent protection of affordable housing in Chinatown, said Bettie Louie, who owns a number of shops and restaurants on Grant Avenue. “Our community has just lost one of its heroes and a strong advocate.”
Lee’s story was the stereotypical American dream. His family was so poor that
he and his siblings would scavenge items to give as Christmas presents, including an old shoe — just one old shoe, his daughter recounted in 2011. When Lee was a high school student, his father died of a heart attack, and he took on a job, washing dishes at a Chinese restaurant, to earn money for his family.
“He proved to Asian Americans that you can rise to the top,” said George Chen, owner of China Live restaurant. “And he got young kids here to take civic leadership seriously as a career.”
Lee never seemed to lose that aw-shucks allure, said Jenny Zhao, 37.
“I’ve seen him walking around Chinatown a few times,” she said. “He wasn’t like those people who get high up and then ignore where they came from.”
He reveled in his sponsorship of the annual Chinatown Ping Pong Tournament, gleefully taking on all challengers.
But he was also just “a working guy,” said Steven Lee, a local entrepreneur who helped reopen the iconic Sam Wo’s restaurant in Chinatown, with the support of Lee.
“He’s not a politician,” Steven Lee said, unable to use the past tense. “We were just going to have a conversation with the mayor about what’s going to happen in (Chinatown) in the next two years.”
The entrepreneur said you could tell what kind of person someone is by the car they come in — and the mayor would pull up in an electric Chevrolet Volt.
“He’s just such a nice guy,” Steven Lee said. “His legacy is he’s trying to do the best he can for everybody.”
“Chinese Americans don’t often get seen as leaders, and it felt like something for the city to be proud of.” Brandon Jew, business owner