With generations carrying on tradition, L.A.'s Chinatown celebrates 70th anniversary

With generations carrying on tradition, L.A.'s Chinatown celebrates 70th anniversary
By David Pierson, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer June 28, 2008

Ron Louie has successfully designed high-end homes from Santa Monica to San Marino for four decades.

But at least once a week, the architect leaves his Pasadena home and heads to Chinatown in Los Angeles to run his family's aging trinket store, K.G. Louie.

Making a profit isn't the point. They're lucky to ring up $100 a day.

Carrying on the store is an act of respect to the siblings' father, Gar Fong Louie, and mother, Lee Shee Louie, who were among the original tenants of Central Plaza, the colorful center of Chinatown.

As "New Chinatown" marks its 70th anniversary today, those celebrating will include the so-called grandchildren -- the second- and third-generation Chinese American professionals like Ron Louie who no longer live in Chinatown but keep a finger there nonetheless.

"We all have our professions, but we want to keep the tradition alive," said Louie, 69. "If it wasn't for our parents' sacrifice, we wouldn't be where we are today."

The Louies opened their store in Central Plaza because the original Chinatown was razed for Union Station. Its founding families lived at a time when the Chinese were prevented from buying property, obtaining bank loans and securing desirable jobs.

It wasn't until the next generation that Chinese began to find mainstream professional success.

Many fled Chinatown and moved to the modern Chinese community to the east, in the San Gabriel Valley.

Yet a handful of families, like the Louies, who were part of the neighborhood's 1938 opening, still cling to the narrow pedestrian streets and pagoda-style buildings.

Many will be present tonight at a retro anniversary celebration meant to evoke the glamour days when Hollywood stars would descend on Chinatown.

Organizers will show historic photographs, a swing band will perform and one of Central Plaza's more recent tenants will unveil newly installed neon lights along the roof lines of his three buildings -- an ornament that long distinguished Central Plaza until the lights fell into disrepair in the 1980s.

"We want to pay tribute to these original merchants," said George Yu of the Chinatown Business Improvement District, which helped organize the event that's open to the public. "I think they'd be proud to see what their children have become."

New Chinatown was a popular tourist destination for decades after it opened, perhaps reaching its zenith in the 1970s during then-President Nixon's trips to mainland China. But by the 1980s, the district was in decline, as the epicenter of L.A.'s Chinese community moved east to Monterey Park and vicinity. Merchants struggled as business dropped and crime increased.

But in recent years, Chinatown has rebounded with trendy new boutiques, restaurants, bars and galleries. A new generation of merchants -- many from Vietnam -- have also brought vigor to the district.

Some of the older establishments have seen an uptick in business while others continue to struggle.

Phoenix Bakery is more successful than ever -- settling into Los Angeles icon status to a loyal group of customers, much like its neighbor a few blocks east, Philippe's.

In 1977 the Chans moved the bakery, originally tucked into a corner of Central Plaza, around the corner onto Broadway, where they sell their famed strawberry cream cakes and Sticky Sugar Butterflies from an aqua blue storefront with a logo of a robed boy carrying a cake box behind his back.

"The bakery is still an anchor for our family," said Kellogg Chan, a retired banker and lawyer whose father opened the store. "We all come in and help out."

Two cousins, one a biochemist, the other an engineer, work the bakery on weekends. The store is now managed by Chan's younger brother, Kelly, and his son, Craig.

"I feel like downtown is on the way back," said Craig Chan, 30. "We want to be part of the redevelopment of Chinatown. This is our legacy."

Kellogg Chan, 68, said he was put to work in the bakery by his parents as a young boy. He learned to slice berries, clean pans and bake and ice the cakes.

It was a lesson in discipline and hard work that helped him later in life, he said.

"They stressed education," he said of his parents. "The bakery taught me that success takes a lot of hard work. Why do I come back? Because this was the source. This paid for our educations and our homes."

Sitting at one of the bakery's round tables Thursday, Kelly Chan, 61, was more precise: "We've spent the last 20 years making more money than we know what to do with."

While "the grandchildren" help out in some businesses, other Chinatown shops are still overseen by older generations.

Eileen Soo Hoo stood behind her glass counter selling jade necklaces and beaded bracelets at Phoenix Imports on a recent afternoon, much as she's done every day since 1953, when she married into one of Central Plaza's first families.

"I always say 'one more year,' but we never leave," said Soo Hoo, who is originally from England and speaks with a noticeable accent.

"It's a habit now," she said. "So many others left. They grew tired of Chinatown. They had no childhood because they had to work. They don't want to be tied to a business like this. My kids always ask me why I stay here."

But Soo Hoo can't imagine leaving.

She is so tied to the store that she asked a passing organizer how much of a distraction today's celebrations would be for her business. She said she'd rather look after the store than go outside to join the festivities.

Ron Louie said he invited more than 80 family members to the celebration. He doesn't expect the youngest to show. Some of them haven't ever seen the store.

He sometimes worries that history will be lost. In the last four years, three of Chinatown's mainstays have died: Roger Hong, the son of a pioneering Chinese American lawyer; Gim Fong of Fong's Oriental Works of Art; and John Chin of Sincere Imports.

But Louie doesn't think the family will ever lose the shop.

"Someone will take over," he said. "It's too unique to give up. I'll force my daughter. There's enough of us to find someone."

david.pierson@latimes.com

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/california/la-me-newchinatown28-2008jun28,0,4430138.story

At California's Asian fish markets, freshness is everything

At California's Asian fish markets, freshness is everything
By John M. Glionna, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
6:45 PM PDT, June 22, 2008

OAKLAND -- Rafael Anguiano takes his corners gingerly. He has to -- he's driving an aquarium on wheels, a lumbering delivery truck carrying 3,000 pounds of live fish in large, sloshing tanks.

One sunny afternoon, he sweats freely as he hustles hundreds of flopping fish into the Lucky Seafood Market inside a rolling rubber trash can. Breathless, he dumps five buckets into the store's tanks, the sturgeon, catfish and carp slashing and struggling like salmon surging upstream.

"C'mon, make me full," a Lucky market worker pleads. "One more bucket, one more."

Anguiano's cellphone rings. It's Johnson Cheng, owner of Yet Sun Market six blocks away. Customers are demanding their fish, he says. Wincing into the receiver, Anguiano asks wearily: "People are already waiting for me?"

Cheng, Anguiano says, is a ruthless negotiator: "He wants all my fish and won't take no for an answer. I'm going to have to cut somebody bad today."

Anguiano, 33, is a critical link in California's ethnic food chain. He works for The Fishery, a Central Valley aqua farm that's one of a handful statewide catering to a unique niche: California's Asian markets.

In Asian cuisine, live fish are a delicacy. Asian diners insist they can distinguish on the plate between a fish freshly plucked from a tank or stream and one previously gutted and languishing on ice.

Ken Beer, Anguiano's boss and founder of The Fishery, once believed the Asian live-fish venture would be short-lived. His older ethnic customers would die off, he figured, and new generations would adopt American habits and take to buying fillets in Styrofoam packages.

Instead, new immigrants kept demand high for the dozen California fish farmers who raise product for the state's Asian customers. Small neighborhood markets catering to Asian tastes have expanded outside traditional Chinatowns to suburbs such as the Sunset District in San Francisco and Monterey Park in Los Angeles.

About 25 years after Beer and several others began supplying Asian markets, business is swimming across California.

According to several aqua farmers, the Asian appetite for finned fish -- sturgeon, large-mouthed bass, tilapia, catfish, carp -- comprises 70% of the estimated $50-million California aquaculture industry, not counting algae and shellfish. That's a whopping 20 million pounds annually.

Beers delivers 1 million of those pounds -- and he's in the process of expanding his farms. The Fishery's small fleet of delivery trucks serves markets in San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose and Sacramento.

Still, he worries he won't be able to keep up with demand.

Already, Anguiano plays a cat-and-mouse game with markets. On his twice-weekly Oakland rounds, he serves his veteran customers first, then hits those who play the field with other suppliers.

But word gets out the moment Anguiano's truck is spotted. "I can't drive past a market without my phone ringing," he says. "Everyone has their spies out."

In market after market, Anguiano weighs his loaded trash can on scales. Then he pushes his load -- fish writhing, water spraying off whipping tails -- down narrow aisles with slippery tile floors, shoppers jostling to eyeball his catch. Anguiano knows the appearance of his fish is critical. Anything off-color or under stress will be rejected.

He passes splayed fish heads and turtles with their shells broken open to expose red meat -- soup ingredients. There are live bullfrogs and geoduck (pronounced gooey-duck), which are large saltwater clams with long, meaty necks. Workers scoop a fresh fish from a display tank, stun it with a mallet, then quickly skin and fillet it.

Anguiano negotiates both language and cultural barriers.

"Hey, amigo!" he calls out to one Asian worker. "Boss?"

People smile and point. "I don't know much Cantonese -- just the names of the fish, that's it," he says in one of Oakland's Chinatown markets. "But luckily this owner speaks fluent Spanish."

Ken Beer wanted to study bighorn sheep.

The year was 1975 and Beer had a summer to kill at home in California before starting graduate school. That's when three Arkansas entrepreneurs approached him with a harebrained scheme.

Soon Beer was hooked. He skipped graduate school and started raising fish. Mistakes were made. One customer wanted 100,000 finger-length catfish, half his year's earnings. An excited Beer scrubbed the holding pool with bleach to kill any bacteria. A tad too much bleach, it turned out.

"Within 15 minutes, the fish were dead," he said. "That took a lot of the starch out of me."

By 1982, Beer was selling live catfish one or two at a time right from the farm in Galt, just outside Sacramento. He noticed that Chinese and Vietnamese from the Bay Area would snap up a hundred fish at a time to sell in their city markets.

That's when he thought: Why not deliver wholesale?

Beer now serves more than 50 markets in the Bay Area -- a far cry from the days of the bullfrog incident a decade ago.

When he began his run that day, the frogs were sedate inside a burlap sack on the back of the truck. By the time he reached San Francisco, the ice had melted and the heated frogs were jumpy.

He was in for a surprise, he said, when he went to fetch some frogs for delivery. He opened a sack and 50 leaped out.

"People were chasing them around, helping me round them up."

Esther Lin is wide-eyed as she watches Anguiano empty 150 pounds of large-mouth bass into the display tanks of her corner market in Oakland's Chinatown. She scans the tanks for dinner.

As a child in Hong Kong, she used to run to meet the fishing boats. "For Chinese, a live fish means good luck," she says. "It's part of the joyful process of eating."

Outside, Anguiano stands atop his truck bed with a large net. He scoops the catch 10 at a time into his rubber can. Water splashes onto the windshield of a car waiting for the light to change. The motorist glares. Anguiano keeps working.

People stop and stare at the wet fish, skin glinting in the sun. Once, Anguiano said, a woman asked what would happen to the fish. When he told her they'd soon be killed, she asked to pray for them.

His cellphone rings. It's Johnson Cheng. Again.

"OK, OK," Anguiano says. He hangs up, shaking his head. "Ay, ay, ay. He's gonna kill me."

Soon, he's parked outside Cheng's market. Co-owner Sherlyn Cheng meets him at the curb. The market delivers to 20 restaurants, and customers are hankering for their fish.

"They're complaining like crazy," Cheng says.

Johnson Cheng leaps onto the truck to select the best fish. "Frozen fish is like chewing wood," he says. "My customers want everything live."

Cheng wants 700 pounds of bass and keeps cajoling until Anguiano relents and offers 100 pounds more.

"Usually, he's my enemy," Cheng says. "Today, he's my amigo. You saved my life, man."

When Anguiano warns him the next delivery will be smaller, Cheng quips: "Next time you will be my enemy again."

Then the old woman appears. Stooped over her cane, she shows up every time, like a sea gull trailing a fishing trawler, in search of free fish. She smiles, raising her tiny sack.

"She plays hardball," Anguiano says. "She buys me fruit as barter." He motions that he is out of fish. The woman vanishes. Then she's back -- with kiwis. "Plan B," Anguiano says.

He slides a wriggling catfish into her bag and she scurries away. Later, as he readies to leave, he sees the kiwis she has left on his truck bumper.

"A deal's a deal," he says. "She's some businesswoman."

john.glionna@latimes.com

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/columnone/la-me-fishnew23-2008jun23,0,6769960.story

New Chinatown grows in far east San Gabriel Valley

New Chinatown grows in far east San Gabriel Valley
Wealthy ethnic Chinese immigrants are fashioning their own enclave in the cities of Rowland Heights, Diamond Bar, Walnut and Hacienda Heights.
By David Pierson, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
June 19, 2008
The celery and squid sizzle in Suipao Tsai's blackened wok as she prepares lunch for up to six dozen employees of the family's multimillion-dollar lingerie business in the city of Industry.

It's a scene repeated every weekday morning at her palatial family compound in the hills of Rowland Heights.

A Mercedes-Benz SUV parked next to an 18-foot koi pond is lined in the back with old Chinese newspapers and loaded with a steaming pot of beef brisket and turnip stew.

After the Mercedes arrives, the employees -- most of them Asian -- pile heaps of food on plates, then sit quietly eating and watching a Mandarin-language talk show on a flat-screen TV.

"It's a cultural thing," said Mike Tsai, 38, Suipao Tsai's second son and chief operating officer of the family's company, Leg Avenue. "My father used to be responsible for providing lunch for 200 employees" in Taiwan. "We brought that tradition here to America."

In fact, much of the eastern San Gabriel Valley has more in common with Taipei, Beijing or Shanghai than it does with neighboring Los Angeles. Here, Asian-immigrant entrepreneurs have transformed once-sleepy suburbia into a Chinatown like no other.

They are far from struggling newcomers trying to achieve the American Dream in other Chinese enclaves such as Monterey Park and San Gabriel farther to the west.

Here, the power of Chinese culture and its economy is on display, said Joel Kotkin, an expert in urban affairs and ethnic economies.

"It's so overwhelming," he said. "It's a suburb anchored to the tribal economy of the Chinese and China. They have an ideal life with a spacious backyard and institutions and amenities close by. You have a 15-minute commute to work rooted in city of Industry. You don't have to step out."

And many don't.

Since the family moved its offices to the city of Industry two decades ago, Mike Tsai says he's visited China and Taiwan more frequently than he's been to downtown L.A.

Tsai and other Asian entrepreneurs have created office parks where most of the signs are in Chinese. At the trendy shopping arcades one is more likely to hear Mandarin than English.

At Life Plaza off Fullerton Road, Tony Liu works at a high-end sneaker store. The 24-year-old from northern China has been in the U.S. for two years and said it often feels as if he never left home.

"I never get to practice my English," said Liu, who's been west of downtown L.A. only twice. "Sometimes it feels like I'm still in China."

The combined populations of Rowland Heights, Hacienda Heights, Walnut and Diamond Bar have not only doubled in the last two decades but also are now two-thirds Asian.

Close to 40% of the businesses in Industry are ethnic Chinese-owned.

Up the hill from Life Plaza, at Blandford Elementary School, close to 60% of the students are Asian.

Many are the children of wealthy immigrants, dropped off in luxury cars by their mothers. Many fathers are absent, having to work in China.

The school recently had to revamp its lunch policy. The main office was overwhelmed at noon with mothers trying to deliver hot lunches either from home or Chinese restaurants. Now they must leave the meals on a cart outside the school gates at 11 a.m.

Parent volunteer Rosy Chong said she overheard a newly arrived Korean parent's daughter ask her mother, "When are we going to America?"

"She thought Rowland Heights was a stopover" in Asia, Chong said.

For the teachers and administrators at Blandford, the demographic changes have been both a blessing and a challenge.

The cultural premium parents place on education has helped make Blandford the top-performing elementary school in the district. A waiting list was established to handle the high demand for enrollment.

Blandford Principal Jo Ann Lawrence said some parents told her they were reluctant to send their children to another school in the district because there were too many Latino students there.

"I'm not one to feel you have to be a melting pot; I value what each group brings," she said. "But the isolation concerns me."

Teacher Cindy Kim sees it firsthand in her classroom. In an environment so dominated by Chinese and Koreans, it's difficult to teach lessons about other cultures.

"We had Cesar Chavez assemblies, and it was difficult for them to comprehend," Kim said. "I'd ask for background information, and I wouldn't get a lot of input. They'd ask, 'Who is that?' Our big holiday is Chinese New Year."

The school usually holds its book sale after the New Year's celebration, knowing the students have "lucky money" to spend.

That was the case on a recent afternoon when Janelle Book, a Taiwanese native, was helping run the cash register surrounded by dozens of schoolchildren.

When Book immigrated to the U.S. 11 years ago, she and her husband chose to live in Rowland Heights over the western San Gabriel Valley because they considered Monterey Park and its neighboring cities the domain of working-class mainland Chinese immigrants.

Adjusting to the new country was easy at first because of where she lived. She could use Mandarin almost anywhere and could find most of the food she ate in Taiwan.

She got a job working at the cosmetics counter at a nearby Macy's. Half her customers also spoke to her in Mandarin.

The difficulty arose when she wanted to learn English. She had no one to practice with.

So Book signed up for an English-as-a-second-language class and began regularly watching "Friends" and "Everybody Loves Raymond."

She grew confident enough in her English to volunteer at Blandford when her 7-year-old-daughter enrolled in first grade. It made her feel part of a larger community for the first time.

Now she hopes that her daughter will grow up able to traverse both American and Chinese cultures. It's why she's being taught to speak both English and Mandarin.

"I'll take her to see our family in Seattle," Book said. "Show her another side of America."

The Tsai family immigrated to Southern California in 1984, fearing the political instability in Taiwan. They started modestly by selling cheap toys at a flea market in Redondo Beach. They then moved to downtown L.A., where they sold hosiery.

Early success allowed them to buy a 3,000-square-foot home in Rowland Heights in 1989.

Like many middle-class Chinese and Taiwanese immigrants, the Tsais opted for the area over more established enclaves like Monterey Park and Alhambra, partly because the homes were newer and larger.

The Tsais' fortunes increased dramatically in 2000 when Leg Avenue began making and designing sexy Halloween costumes for women.

They used old connections to secure factories outside Taipei and in Guangzhou and Shanghai to manufacture the designs affordably.

The racy nurse and pirate outfits became so popular the company went from $1 million in sales in 2000 to recording $87 million last year.

Their original Rowland Heights property has grown to become a 1.5-acre plot featuring three houses shared by more than 20 family members and a fleet of luxury cars.

The family imported ancient wood chairs and stone from Taiwan to form a table under the gazebo in the courtyard. Their annual Chinese New Year's parties have become affairs for 400. This year's party featured Peking duck, rowdy Taiwanese dice games and the doling of $30,000 in red "lucky money" envelopes to visitors.

"Even though we've gone corporate, the Taiwanese family structure is always there," Mike Tsai said.

It's a lifestyle that requires few jaunts outside their "new Chinatown" enclave, save for shopping runs to South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa or a chance to race Mike Tsai's Lamborghini, Porsche or Ferrari at Crystal Cove.

"We never have to leave," Mike Tsai said. "Everything we need is here."
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-chinatowneast19-2008jun19,0,5800685.story

Report Takes Aim at ‘Model Minority’ Stereotype of Asian-American Students

Report Takes Aim at ‘Model Minority’ Stereotype of Asian-American Students
By TAMAR LEWIN
Published: New York Times, June 10, 2008

The image of Asian-Americans as a homogeneous group of high achievers taking over the campuses of the nation’s most selective colleges came under assault in a report issued Monday.

The report, by New York University, the College Board and a commission of mostly Asian-American educators and community leaders, largely avoids the debates over both affirmative action and the heavy representation of Asian-Americans at the most selective colleges.

But it pokes holes in stereotypes about Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders, including the perception that they cluster in science, technology, engineering and math. And it points out that the term “Asian-American” is extraordinarily broad, embracing members of many ethnic groups.

“Certainly there’s a lot of Asians doing well, at the top of the curve, and that’s a point of pride, but there are just as many struggling at the bottom of the curve, and we wanted to draw attention to that,” said Robert T. Teranishi, the N.Y.U. education professor who wrote the report, “Facts, Not Fiction: Setting the Record Straight.”

“Our goal,” Professor Teranishi added, “is to have people understand that the population is very diverse.”

The report, based on federal education, immigration and census data, as well as statistics from the College Board, noted that the federally defined categories of Asian-American and Pacific Islander included dozens of groups, each with its own language and culture, as varied as the Hmong, Samoans, Bengalis and Sri Lankans.

Their educational backgrounds, the report said, vary widely: while most of the nation’s Hmong and Cambodian adults have never finished high school, most Pakistanis and Indians have at least a bachelor’s degree.

The SAT scores of Asian-Americans, it said, like those of other Americans, tend to correlate with the income and educational level of their parents.

“The notion of lumping all people into a single category and assuming they have no needs is wrong,” said Alma R. Clayton-Pederson, vice president of the Association of American Colleges and Universities, who was a member of the commission the College Board financed to produce the report.

“Our backgrounds are very different,” added Dr. Clayton-Pederson, who is black, “but it’s almost like the reverse of what happened to African-Americans.”

The report found that contrary to stereotype, most of the bachelor’s degrees that Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders received in 2003 were in business, management, social sciences or humanities, not in the STEM fields: science, technology, engineering or math. And while Asians earned 32 percent of the nation’s STEM doctorates that year, within that 32 percent more than four of five degree recipients were international students from Asia, not Asian-Americans.

The report also said that more Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders were enrolled in community colleges than in either public or private four-year colleges. But the idea that Asian-American “model minority” students are edging out all others is so ubiquitous that quips like “U.C.L.A. really stands for United Caucasians Lost Among Asians” or “M.I.T. means Made in Taiwan” have become common, the report said.

Asian-Americans make up about 5 percent of the nation’s population but 10 percent or more — considerably more in California — of the undergraduates at many of the most selective colleges, according to data reported by colleges. But the new report suggested that some such statistics combined campus populations of Asian-Americans with those of international students from Asian countries.

The report quotes the opening to W. E. B. Du Bois’s 1903 classic “The Souls of Black Folk” — “How does it feel to be a problem?” — and says that for Asian-Americans, seen as the “good minority that seeks advancement through quiet diligence in study and work and by not making waves,” the question is, “How does it feel to be a solution?”

That question, too, is problematic, the report said, because it diverts attention from systemic failings of K-to-12 schools, shifting responsibility for educational success to individual students. In addition, it said, lumping together all Asian groups masks the poverty and academic difficulties of some subgroups.

The report said the model-minority perception pitted Asian-Americans against African-Americans. With the drop in black and Latino enrollment at selective public universities that are not allowed to consider race in admissions, Asian-Americans have been turned into buffers, the report said, “middlemen in the cost-benefit analysis of wins and losses.”

Some have suggested that Asian-Americans are held to higher admissions standards at the most selective colleges. In 2006, Jian Li, the New Jersey-born son of Chinese immigrants, filed a complaint with the Office for Civil Rights at the Education Department, saying he had been rejected by Princeton because he is Asian. Princeton’s admission policies are under review, the department says.

The report also notes the underrepresentation of Asian-Americans in administrative jobs at colleges. Only 33 of the nation’s college presidents, fewer than 1 percent, are Asian-Americans or Pacific Islanders.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/10/education/10asians.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper&oref=slogin

Chinese Are Left to Ask Why Schools Crumbled

Chinese Are Left to Ask Why Schools Crumbled
By JIM YARDLEY
Published: The New York Times, May 25, 2008
This story was reported by Jim Yardley, Jake Hooker and Andrew C. Revkin, and was written by Mr. Yardley.

DUJIANGYAN, China — The earthquake’s destruction of Xinjian Primary School was swift and complete. Hundreds of children were crushed as the floors collapsed in a deluge of falling bricks and concrete. Days later, as curiosity seekers came with video cameras and as parents came to grieve, the four-story school was no more than rubble.

In contrast, none of the nearby buildings were badly damaged. A separate kindergarten less than 20 feet away survived with barely a crack. An adjacent 10-story hotel stood largely undisturbed. And another local primary school, Beijie, catering to children of the elite, was in such good condition that local officials were using it as a refugee center.

“This is not a natural disaster,” said Ren Yongchang, whose 9-year-old son died inside the destroyed school. His hands were covered in plaster dust as he stood beside the rubble, shouting and weeping as he grabbed the exposed steel rebar of a broken concrete column. “This is not good steel. It doesn’t meet standards. They stole our children.”

There is no official figure on how many children died at Xinjian Primary School, nor on how many died at scores of other schools that collapsed in the powerful May 12 earthquake in Sichuan Province. But the number of student deaths seems likely to exceed 10,000, and possibly go much higher, a staggering figure that has become a simmering controversy in China as grieving parents say their children might have lived had the schools been better built.

The Chinese government has enjoyed broad public support for its handling of the earthquake, and in Sichuan on Saturday, Secretary General Ban Ki-moon of the United Nations praised the government’s response.

But as parents at different schools begin to speak out, the question of whether official negligence, and possibly corruption, contributed to the student deaths could turn public opinion. The government has launched an investigation, but censors, wary of the public mood, are trying to suppress the issue in state-run media and online.

An examination of the collapse of Xinjian Primary School offers a disturbing picture of a calamity that might have been avoided. Many parents say they were told the school was unsafe. Xinjian was poorly built when it opened its doors in 1992, they say, and never got its share of government funds for reconstruction because of its low ranking in the local education bureaucracy and the low social status of its students.

A decade ago, a detached wing of the school was torn down and rebuilt because of safety concerns. But the main building remained unimproved. Engineers and earthquake experts who examined photographs of its wreckage concluded that the structure had many failings and one critical flaw: inadequate iron reinforcing rods running up the school’s vertical columns. One expert described the unstable concrete floor panels as “time bombs.”

Xinjian also was ill-equipped for a crisis. An ambulance and other rescue vehicles that responded after the earthquake could not fit through the entrance into the school’s courtyard. A bulldozer finally dug up beneath the front gate to create enough overhead clearance. Parents say they believe several hundred of the school’s 660 pupils died.

“It is impossible to describe,” said a nurse standing on the rubble of the Xinjian site. “There is death everywhere.”

Schools are vulnerable to earthquakes, especially in developing nations where less attention is paid to building codes. The quake in Sichuan Province has already claimed 60,560 lives, and some of the flattened schools, especially those buried under landslides, could not have stood under any circumstances. The government has not provided a public list of those schools, but one early estimate concluded that more than 7,000 “schoolrooms” were destroyed.

China has national building codes intended to ensure that major structures withstand earthquakes. The government also has made upgrading or replacing substandard schools a priority as part of a broader effort to improve and expand education. Yet codes are spottily enforced. In March 2006, Sichuan Province issued a notice that local governments must inspect schools because too many remained unsafe, according to one official Web site.

Nothing is more central to the social contract in China than schools. Parents sacrifice and “eat bitter” so their children can get educations that lead to better lives. In turn, children care for their parents in old age. As in Manhattan, affluent Chinese fight to gain entrance to top schools from kindergarten onward.

But the families who sent their children to Xinjian are neither wealthy nor well connected. They are among the hundreds of millions still struggling to benefit from China’s economic rise. Many lost their jobs when a local cement plant shut down. Some sought work in more prosperous areas, leaving their children behind to attend school.

Angry parents at several destroyed schools are beginning to stage small demonstrations. On Wednesday, more than 200 Xinjian parents demonstrated at the temporary tents used by Dujiangyan’s education bureau, demanding an investigation and accusing officials of corruption and negligence.

One of the parents, Li Wei, said his son was one of 54 students who died in a class of 60 fifth graders. He said education officials told the demonstrating parents that the bureau had reported safety concerns to municipal leaders in the past. But their complaints were ignored.

“We want to bring justice for our children,” one father said the day before the protest. “We want the local officials to pay the price.”

Poor School, Long Neglected
The earthquake struck on May 12 at 2:28 in the afternoon as 20 fifth graders were rehearsing a dance on the basketball court in front of the school. Fourth graders were outside for gym class. When nearby shopkeepers rushed over, the children were standing on the court amid a cloud of dust. “They weren’t crying,” said Chen Chunmei, 35, the manager of a shopping strip beside the school. “They were in shock.”

The main building was decimated. Parents, neighbors and nearby college students arrived to find awful carnage. Ma Qiang, a decommissioned soldier living across the street, described a sickening scene.

“We were standing on the bodies of dead children, pulling out other children,” he recalled days later. He stood in the rubble and held his hand level with his head. “The concrete was this high. On the top was a boy, and two girls below him, and another boy under them, who was dead. It took four hours to dig them out.”

For hours, this ad hoc rescue team formed a line and passed along bricks or chunks of concrete in an attempt to clear debris. Bodies of children were piled on the sidewalk across the street. By late evening, paramilitary officers arrived and ordered the parents and others to withdraw outside the school gate. Many parents considered this a tardy response that was a stinging reminder of Xinjian’s low standing.

“A lot of our students came from the mountains,” said Deng Huiying, the former long-time principal. “Their parents were migrant workers.”

Xinjian is in the heart of the city of Dujiangyan. The lack of damage to the yellow-tiled kindergarten next door or to the Beijie Primary School a five-minute walk away has served as a reminder that proximity is not the same as equality.

Beijie is the city’s elite primary school, designated as a provincial-level “key” school, boasting the best facilities and the finest teachers. The kindergarten, meanwhile, was built and controlled directly by the city government of Dujiangyan. For years, Xinjian was controlled by a smaller, local township government, which had far less money and did little to improve the school.

In recent years, China’s central government has gradually abolished primary school tuition and other fees to ease burdens on farmers and migrants. Beijing has also increased its payments to local governments for education, but the main burden remains on local authorities, and many find themselves strapped for cash or siphon it off.

When Xinjian was built in 1992, many parents worked for the Dongfeng Cement Factory. Company bosses donated 40 tons of cement. But that was not enough. “Everybody knew they didn’t have enough cement,” said Dai Chuanbin, an older man familiar with the project. “So they used a lot of sand.”

Parents say the township government cut costs further by hiring farmers to do the work instead of trained construction crews. One former school official recalled that workers poured the foundation during such heavy rains that it collapsed. Another foundation had to be poured.

The school opened in 1993 and would quickly be overrun with students. The detached annex was rebuilt in 1998 after inspectors deemed it substandard. Ms. Deng, the former principal, recalled that nearby construction work in May 2006 caused the flooring in the main school building to shake violently. But she said she never had reason to believe the building was structurally unsound and never filed any written complaints with higher officials.

“If I’d thought the building was unsafe, there’s no way I would have let the kids stay there,” she said. When she saw the collapsed building, she fell on the ground, sobbing.

Several parents tell a different story. They say Ms. Deng and other school officials told them that the building was aging and unsafe, though they could provide no written proof. One father was told that Xinjian would soon be closed. Another, Zhu Junsheng, 44, claimed that Ms. Deng filed a report with Dujiangyan’s education bureau complaining about the building.

“The education bureau said there was no money,” said Mr. Zhu, sitting in front of a blue tent in a refugee camp a block from the school. “They didn’t care.

“I just want to say: The government didn’t do its job.”

Nearly two weeks after the earthquake, Mr. Ma, the decommissioned soldier, keeps returning to the rubble of Xinjian. He smokes cigarette after cigarette and has not changed out of the Che Guevara T-shirt and blue jeans he wore on that frantic afternoon.

“That’s where government officials send their children to nursery school,” he said, pointing to the undamaged, yellow-tiled kindergarten.

Mr. Ma saved several children the day of the disaster but cannot shake the memory of one girl. Her leg had been pinned beneath a heavy concrete slab. Two small cranes had failed to free her. Her body temperature was quickly dropping. So Mr. Ma told her father, “She can keep her leg or her life.”

The father was led away. Mr. Ma used a serrated knife he kept in his jeans. He said the job took three cuts across the girl’s shin. “She will hate me when she is older if she has trouble with love,” he said with a grim smile.

He does not know the girl’s name. “I have dreams every night,” he said. “She was very pretty. Very strong.”

Deadly Engineering Shortcuts
Techniques for fortifying buildings to withstand earthquakes have been clearly understood for decades. Use high-quality concrete. Embed extra iron rods. Tie them tightly into bundles with strong wire. Ensure that components of floors, walls and columns are firmly attached. Pay special attention to columns, which are the key to having a building sway rather than topple.

Engineers are already trying to assess how much of the destruction on May 12 should be attributed to faulty construction during China’s long and often helter-skelter building boom. The earthquake was so powerful, measuring at least 7.9 in magnitude, that a certain amount of damage could not be prevented. But engineering experts say Xinjian and some other schools in Sichuan were especially vulnerable.

Six structural engineers and earthquake experts asked by The New York Times to analyze an online photographic slide show of the wreckage at Xinjian concluded, independently, that inadequate steel reinforcement, or rebar, was used in the concrete columns supporting the school. They also found that the school’s precast, hollow concrete slab floors and walls did not appear to be securely joined together.

The widespread use of cheap, hollow slab floors is significant because numerous buildings with the same flooring collapsed during another Chinese earthquake in 1976, which devastated the city of Tangshan and killed at least 240,000. (A few buildings with the same flooring also fared poorly during the 1994 earthquake in California.)

“If the hollow core slabs are not adequately tied to the lateral frames, which seems to be the case in the photos, the structures are likely very flexible and would undergo large deformations under severe ground motions,” said Mary Beth Hueste, an associate professor of engineering at Texas A&M University, in an e-mail message.

When such components are not securely joined, they are “extremely dangerous, like time bombs,” said Xiao Yan, an expert in earthquake-resistant designs at the University of Southern California.

The most pronounced failing at Xinjian seemed to be inadequate steel reinforcement of the concrete columns supporting the school, experts said. There were too few rebar reinforcing rods and too little of the thin binding wire that holds the rebar together. And, critically, the steel bindings attaching the concrete flooring slabs were inadequate.

Xiaonian Duan, an engineer specializing in earthquake resilience for Arup, a multinational design consulting company whose head office is in London, said that concrete flooring panels fall apart during an earthquake if not strongly attached, “like we see Legos collapse.”

The Chinese government has known that many schools, especially in rural areas, are unsafe. Since 2001, the State Council, China’s cabinet, has budgeted roughly $1.5 billion for a nationwide program to repair dangerous schools in rural areas. In 2006, Sichuan Province’s government issued an urgent notice calling for localities to stop using substandard primary and middle schools.

“Unsafe buildings are the major hidden danger of school safety at present, and in recent years, accidents with death tolls and injuries were caused by collapsed schools,” the provincial notice warned.

Dr. Xiao toured the disaster zone after this month’s earthquake and found that many of the problems at Xinjian were common elsewhere. He said one reason for the widespread damage was that buildings in the region were not required to meet China’s most stringent standards for seismic protection. He also noted that China rates overall building design codes from 1 to 4. Buildings rated 1 are considered “important” and must meet stricter design requirements. But the system rates schools only as a 3, which means no additional design protections are needed.

In the aftermath of the quake, a handful of bricklayers and builders have visited Xinjian Primary School out of professional curiosity. A builder from nearby Meishan City recognized the faulty columns and flooring problems. Then he picked up a chunk of concrete from the rubble and rubbed it in his hands.

“The ratio of sand and concrete isn’t right,” he said. “It fell down because of cheap materials.”

In Search of Justice
The parents of Xinjian Primary School posted an online petition last Wednesday. They demanded justice for their children. Local police officials have promised an investigation, but the parents are not satisfied. They intend to protest again.

School represents hope in China. The parents do not express it exactly like that, but they saw education as their children’s only chance. The cement factory that employed many parents — and provided cement for the school — went bankrupt in 2002. They now collect small welfare payments and hold down odd jobs to support their families.

Liao Minhui had aspirations for his daughter. He knew that Xinjian was considered inferior and that a better school might help her find a better life. So he tried to wheedle her into Beijie, the elite school. He said he offered thousands of yuan to gain her admission, to no avail. She died in the Xinjian rubble.

“I tried very hard,” Mr. Liao said. “I tried to get help from every well-connected friend I have. Everything there is the best. The teachers are the best. The facilities are the best.”

Jiang Xuezheng, 41, is a small, wiry man whose simple manner betrays his country upbringing in a village about 200 miles away. He has sold fruit in Dujiangyan for nearly a decade to support his family back in the village. But to do this, he lived apart from his son for eight years.

So last year, Mr. Jiang also paid to try to win his child admission to a city school. He chose Xinjian. To him, a peasant, a city school like Xinjian represented a step up. He paid a $1,400 fee to make the switch. His 9-year-old boy was admitted in September.

“My parents are still in the countryside, but I wanted my son to live with me,” said Mr. Jiang, bowing his head and weeping. “I waited for eight years. Finally, I was together with my son.

“And then tragedy happens.”

Jim Yardley and Jake Hooker reported from Dujiangyan, and Andrew C। Revkin from New York. Zhang Jing and Huang Yuanxi contributed research.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/25/world/asia/25schools.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper&oref=slogin

Unearthing Nevada's links to its ignored Chinese heritage

Unearthing Nevada's links to its ignored Chinese heritage
Marilyn Newton / Associated Press
A man's makeshift museum is an example of the state's slowly growing recognition of forgotten settlers.
By Ashley Powers, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
February 25, 2008

LOVELOCK, NEV. -- This wisp of a town owes its existence to Chinese laborers who panned gold in the mid-1800s and laid railroad tracks linking Utah and Sacramento. Yet the immigrants were mostly ostracized, made to live in a wood-shack Chinatown that later was bulldozed to make way for Interstate 80.

Now, their legacy is relegated to Larry De Leeuw's garage.

On a recent afternoon, De Leeuw squeezed into a cubbyhole walled off from his power tools and bottle cap collection. Strewed about him were brass opium containers, gambling tokens, a gong, rice bowl shards, turquoise ginger jars and a mirror with hand-carved dragons.

De Leeuw, 66, has cobbled together this collection of artifacts in the Frank Chang Museum, named after one of the last descendants of Lovelock's Chinese workers. Now, the only way to see this part of the town's past is through a large window in De Leeuw's garage, where a dedication -- typed on white paper -- describes Chang as an “avid hunter, fisherman, volunteer fireman.” He was also a staff sergeant in the Army.

“It was the least I could do,” De Leeuw said, to honor Chang and Lovelock's history.

His obsession took root about a decade ago, when he and his wife bought a brick fixer-upper in the Chinatown of Marysville, Calif., about 40 miles north of Sacramento. While renovating the two-story building, the now-retired construction worker -- who had also worked as a police officer and armored-car driver -- unearthed about 100 rice bowls and other relics beneath the ground floor.

De Leeuw became so enamored with Chinese laborer tales, amassing at least 40 books and pestering local mah-jongg players with questions, that one woman in Marysville nicknamed him Chinatown's mayor.

Then nearly four years ago, the De Leeuws discovered Lovelock -- a town about 90 miles northeast of Reno with mountain views, star-filled nights and few jobs beyond the nearby prison.

On a whim, they bought the 13-room Cadillac Inn. It's a short drive from downtown's Cowpoke Cafe, the Covered Wagon Motel and the Pershing County Courthouse, revered locally as “the nation's only working round courthouse.”

De Leeuw quickly figured out that the town's immigrant past mirrored Marysville's -- all it took was asking a few old-timers in this 2,000-person outpost. But as in many northern Nevada towns, Lovelock's Chinese heritage was largely overlooked.

Virginia City, Reno, Carson City and Elko had Chinatowns, settled in the post-Gold Rush westward expansion. Their immigrants helped piece together the Central Pacific Railroad, and some opened restaurants and stores in depot towns, although their fellow frontiersmen were far from welcoming.

In Lovelock, the Chinese hung signs declaring their businesses “white-run” lest they be boycotted, said Sue Fawn Chung, an associate history professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. In the ensuing decades, hostility and economic hard times drove many to Northern California, and most Nevada Chinatowns crumbled.

Only in recent years has Nevada moved to acknowledge this slice of its history; a private group hopes to raise at least $50 million for a Chinese Workers Museum near Carson City.

“The Donner Party has more prominence than what the Chinese did here,” said the group's co-founder, Khan Tung, a Carson City architect.

Lovelock demolished its Chinatown in the 1970s. But it recently has made an attempt to tout its heritage by encouraging “love-locking” -- a Chinese custom, common near the Yellow Mountains and the Great Wall, in which couples latch locks together in a show of their devotion.

About 900 locks now dangle behind the courthouse in Lovelock. The promotion, officials say, has lured a handful of drivers off the interstate.

De Leeuw considers his garage collection more a historical repository than a tourist attraction.

He unearthed many of his treasures in antique stores and near old workers' camps along the railroad tracks.

He also scoured the spot where the Chinatown stood -- now a junkyard near a McDonald's -- where decades ago archaeologists unearthed medicines, firecracker labels, an English snuff jar and 119 gold coins.

De Leeuw's passion extends beyond his driveway.About five miles west of town -- past fields of alfalfa and wheat -- is a cemetery where some of Lovelock's Chinese residents are buried.

Before De Leeuw got to work in 2005, it had been an unmarked patch of weeds and scrub brush next to the Lone Mountain Cemetery with its white crosses and marble headstones.

De Leeuw pulled death records, trying to figure out who was buried in the 35 or so unmarked graves.

He and other residents cleaned up the cemetery, and the county paid for a fence to keep out bikers and off-road vehicles. Each grave now is adorned with a dollar-store vase and a single fake flower.

In April, De Leeuw plans to preside over Ching Ming, a holiday when Chinese clean their ancestors' graves and offer roast duck and pig. De Leeuw has built a concrete-and-tile food platform for the festival.

“Last year, we had five Chinese people show up,” he said, his voice welling with pride.

ashley.powers@latimes.com

Asians, not whites, hurt most by race-conscious admissions

Asians, not whites, hurt most by race-conscious admissions
By Peter Schmidt, USA Today 2/20/08

The long-running debate over affirmative action in college admissions just got more complicated, thanks to a new study that challenges the common assumption that whites are hurt most when colleges take applicants' race and ethnicity into account।

The study, published by the University of California-Los Angeles last week in the scholarly journal InterActions, suggests that it is mainly Asian-Americans — not whites — who are held to a higher standard when top colleges use affirmative action।

Where such institutions have been banned from considering applicants' race, the study finds, enrollment of Asian-Americans has increased while admissions of whites remained flat or, in some cases, declined. The study, an analysis of long-term enrollment trends at several exclusive public universities, found that the Asian-American share of enrollment increased:
•More than 15% at the University of Texas at Austin after a 1996 federal court ruling barred consideration of race in admissions.
•More than 15% at the University of Florida after Gov. Jeb Bush persuaded the state university system's governing board to vote in 2000 to end race- and ethnicity-conscious admissions.
•More than 20% at the University of California-Berkeley, more than 10% at UCLA and more than 30% at the University of California-San Diego after that state's voters passed a 1996 ballot measure barring the use of affirmative-action preferences by public colleges and other state agencies।

Although David Colburn and his two co-authors consider themselves advocates of affirmative action, he acknowledged their numbers show "Asian-Americans were discriminated against under an affirmative-action system।"

Colburn's assessment is in keeping with other research that has suggested that Asian-Americans are regarded as overrepresented on college campuses and therefore held to higher standards to keep their numbers down। The white applicants covered by this study fared no better in the absence of affirmative action than before. In fact, the number of white admissions in some cases dropped because of increased competition from Hispanics and from Asian-Americans.

This report comes as efforts are under way in Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, Nebraska and Oklahoma to ban the use of affirmative action by public colleges and state agencies। Similar measures easily won approval in California, Michigan and Washington.

The authors of the new study seem to be hoping that their conclusions will erode white voters' support for such measures। Their report says their findings "can hardly be satisfying" to "those who campaigned for the elimination of affirmative action in the belief that it would advantage the admission of white students." The study even predicts a white backlash against race-neutral admissions policies if Asian-Americans continue to make gains.

Most leading Asian-American advocacy groups have supported affirmative action। When the U.S. Supreme Court last weighed in on the legality of colleges' use of affirmative action in admissions in two University of Michigan rulings in 2003, 28 Asian-American organizations signed a legal brief urging the court to uphold such policies given the educational benefits of diversity. (A 5-4 majority of justices agreed with such logic.)

In the long term, it's unclear what impact this new study will have on the views of Asian-Americans — or the views of the courts. If colleges are using race-conscious admissions policies to limit enrollments of Chinese-, Vietnamese-, Indian- and Japanese-Americans, will they be able to continue convincing the courts that their intent is the promotion of diversity?
Peter Schmidt is a senior writer for The Chronicle of Higher Education and the author of Color and Money: How Rich White Kids Are Winning the War over College Affirmative Action.