Roland’s Dad as Founding Leader

Roland Soohoo: They were the other founders and they formed a Chinatown corporation. As we grew, we became part of the corporation, that’s one thing. Then my dad, he needed an outlet to socialize. So in 1950, he came up here, bought the land, and founded this with one or two of other cousins and broke ground to build this association. In ’50 or ’51. I used to come up here after the association was built, we’d have weekend gatherings. Dan Wong, of course, was very prominent and he liked to work with youngsters, so he kept us occupied. We do picnics, we go down to either Alhambra or Lincoln Park and do picnics, and that really got the kids involved. Those that are around my age that wanted to come to get food, have picnics and play games and do things like that as our first involvement with family association. And that’s how the Soo Hoo Family Association got started. 

Interviewer: And you mentioned there was an old building? 

Al Soo-hoo: It was an original building on this site, like a Victorian type. 

Edmund Soohoo: You know, wood frame. 

Al Soo-hoo: Yeah wood frame. 

Edmund Soohoo: Then in 1961–or was it ’65–the new building, this building that you are in now was built. 

Al Soo-hoo: ’65 or ’66, because the old–the original building got condemned. 

Edmund Soohoo: We relocated to a building on Sunset Boulevard, which is no longer there. It is now part of the Orsini apartment buildings or actually might even be part of the Burger King that’s there. This is the new building that was built with the contributions of individuals like Al’s dad, William’s dad, and everybody, you know, contributed to it. 

Al Soo-hoo: And the associations from other cities because they went around asking the associations like any… 

Edmund Soohoo: Other chapters. 

Al Soo-hoo: The other chapters, the other Fong Lun chapters in San Francisco and New York, they were trying to raise a building and help us. 

Roland Soohoo:  Vancouver, the Far East, New York and Chicago, and different major cities, Toronto.

Timestamp:[00:21:12]

Older Generation’s Need for the Association

Edmund Soohoo: Did they contribute that much? The other chapters? You know, we don’t have records as to how much. Well in those days it was all you know, all for one, right? It was support each other so that we could have a stronger system of I think the Fong Lun chapters, right? I mean, the reality is Roland’s dad was kind of like, at least from my viewpoint or my recollection is that his dad was kind of like the patriarch for at least our family branch of the Soo Hoo clan because every one of the men would check in at their store to say, “Hey, you know, I’m coming to town and if you know… What’s going on?” Yeah, that’s where… 

Roland Soohoo: Sit down, have a cup of tea, have a cup of coffee. 

Edmund Soohoo:  They need a referral for a job, and then that’s when the gung so, even back in the day, they’d had rooms for the single men, so that until they got on their feet, they could at least have a place to stay. Although they were still paying rent, but it was very nominal, probably, at that time. When Al was talking about his sister Elsie, married Raymond, whose mother was on the same boat as my mother, coming from China. And Raymond and I were born on the same day, same year, same hospital. 

Al Soo-hoo: Oh, really? I didn’t know that part. 

Edmund Soohoo: And Raymond also grew up in Chinatown. So it’s kind of interesting when you say, you know, what Al said, you know, they came together, you know, war brides, you know, in this case they did. I know my family is very much indebted to Roland’s family for, you know, their support, when my dad first came. 

Interviewer: Did they provide certain resources? Like what kind of stuff? 

Edmund Soohoo: It was kind of like an HQ for the men that were coming from the village to check in, like Roland said. Even if it was socially, but it was also the connections that, you know, his dad and his family could provide as well. So that was important. 

Roland Soohoo: That’s how Fong Lun started. And all the cousins would come during tea and coffee, chew the fat, grandpa would be there and talk and visit. And you know, we had a few older elders that would come around. 

Timestamp:[00:24:23]

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Al’s Analogy for Fong Lun’s Purpose

Al Soo-hoo: I think that the term in Chinese is mun hao and mun hao to open the door, the front door. They provided a front door for people. 

Timestamp: [00:28:01]

Al and Ed Visiting as Children

Al Soo-hoo: Well, for me, as far as Fong Lun is concerned… Fong Lun, you know, at that time, all the family associations provided a social outlet for our parents. I mean, in terms of having a place to congregate and socialize because they had to work at least five, you know, probably most of them had to work six days out of the week. I recall, you know, on Sundays, even though for us, because we had a retail store, a tourist store in Chinatown, Sundays was not necessarily a convenient day because that’s when the business was there. You know, you can’t close the store on Sundays, the store has got to stay open on Saturdays and Sundays, that’s when the tourists would come. Nevertheless, I seem to recall that being brought up here primarily by my mom because my father was working–he was involved with a small cafe at that time and he couldn’t get out–so my mom brought us here–us meaning me and my sister and younger brother–because it gave her a chance to come up, socialize with her contemporaries at that time. At that time, most of the women with young families, at that time, were basically war brides. You know, the war was over, many of the the GIs that that served as vets, after ’45, ’46: okay, go home and find a girl to marry and stuff like that. And so they all came over more or less at the same time. Some of them even came over probably on the same boat, and all from the same area. So I recall in terms of when I was a little kid, came up here and of course, Edmund and Roland and Roland’s nephews, Arthur and Wellington, and the other contemporaries, we all met here and we played and ran around playing hide and seek in the old building and stuff like that. That’s what I remember from a young age. Somewhere along the line, as we get older, of course, in the teens and etc., you know, you find your own path and go: we don’t need to come up here anymore. I kind of stepped away from at least Fong Lun for a period of time there. A long period of time actually, other than when they had the Spring Banquets. We had to go to the Spring Banquet. In terms of the rest of the other community organizations, I think that my involvement, without getting in too much detail, came about with helping out initially with the Miss Chinatown pageant because I knew a few people who were there. With the encouragement of… There was a person named Helen Young who was, you know, getting activated, said to come on, you know, come on out and join us and help us out and all that kind of stuff. I think that for me, she also encouraged me to… They had just started the historical society. It was ’75 when the society started. She said “Come on out to our meetings” and etc. I didn’t come right away, but I did come out. Somewhere along the line, I don’t know if this makes sense, as I was talking to some of those people, I could say, “Oh yeah, I know about that. Oh yeah, I know about that. Oh yeah, I know about that.” Then, you know, without thinking and without really being confident of it, I realized, ‘Oh, I know a lot of this stuff.’ I know who tried to get a gun and shoot who and, you know, those stories and stuff like that. It was incidental because I overhear it not because I’m looking, and I hear conversations and somehow they just, you know, I was able to retain those things. And so it says, I know a lot about this community and all the different stories. So that’s kind of how I started with society and then after that CACA, etc.

Timestamp: [00:14:27]

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Edmund Discussing his Mom’s Involvement

Edmund Soohoo: I don’t know, my dad was in that generation that was involved with the family association in the fifties. So, definitely. But my mom continued to socialize here at the association. I guess, you know, at some point in time, you know, my work at Alpine actually prevented me from being active in the association during the weekends because I worked during weekends at the Rec Center. So it was not that often that I would have a day off to be able to attend. But if there was maybe a Spring Banquet or something. But even then, it was not that easy because I worked, you know, the weekends and I had a family, I started a family. So that wasn’t as easy, but later years, knowing that my father was involved, my mother having so many happy occasions here that, you know, it’s time to… Your turn to give back. It was only… I think I only came back if I had something of value to provide, right? If I couldn’t provide anything of value, then what’s the point, right? So I think at that time, you know, knowing some of the elders, I became more involved. Also Al and Roland was here, so it made the transition a lot easier because they’re kind of like, you know, my peers from my generation. So it helps to know that. And also, you know, I think you have that sense of–there’s some sense of obligation that your parents started this, right, because they were the original group that was here. So you kind of feel that obligation is there, to honor your parents, to give back, and to do your share. So I think there’s a little bit of that going on as well.

Timestamp:[00:39:58]

How Al and Edmund Got Involved

Al Soo-hoo: It was around… I’m thinking it was around 2003 or 2004, thereabouts. At that time now, prior to that, you know, Roland’s a little bit older than we are, than Edmund and I, and he was here for quite a while, because he even, you know, he served as president for a number of years and so he was still more involved than Edmund and I were, I believe. But it was in the early 2000s, the generation ahead of us, they were, I’m guessing they were in their early seventies or so, early to mid-seventies, and then they would look at us: “Hey, we’re getting to 70. Where’s the next group coming from?” All of that kind of stuff. So my recollection was that that leadership at that time asked Edmund’s mom and asked my mom, because they were still actively involved, and asked our moms, “Hey, why don’t you ask your two boys to come and help us out and start coming,” to them. That’s the way it was presented to me by my mom, gung so was asking us to ask you to come and help because they’re, you know, they know there needs to be transition and et cetera. Actually, I don’t even remember asking Edmund, “Hey, did you get this call?” or anything like that. We just… So it was just kind of, okay, next meeting so and so just show up. So we just showed up and we came at the same time. 

Edmund Soohoo: You know, it was early 2000s. 

Al Soo-hoo: Yeah, I’m thinking it was…. 

Edmund Soohoo: Had to be around… 

Al Soo-hoo: It was when Chuck Suk was first time he was president. And then when we joined in, then Terry was president for a year. Then they wanted us to be stepping in and we say, “Wait, wait, it’s too soon.” So Chuck Suk took another term. ’96? That’s his first. So maybe in the early 2000s and then when they were… I remember when we first came in, Terry was president at that time. And then when Terry’s term was–his two years or two terms or whatever–was up here, they were ready to throw us in there, and we said, “Wait, wait, wait. We’ve only been here a couple of years. We still don’t know how things work.”

Edmund Soohoo: And plus, it was back then the meetings were in Chinese. For the longest time, because half of our members, our officers are monolingual. So it was actually in Chinese. 

Interviewer: Is it bilingual now or still in Chinese?

Edmund Soohoo: Now it is more English than it is bilingual because some of our elders have passed on. So the need for translation or being bilingual is not the same. I mean, there’s a little bit something–there’s a flavor that is missing because we do have new members, or we do have members that are immigrants or not immigrants that came in the sixties, but immigrants that maybe came in… When did like Bill Suk and his family come? 

Al Soo-hoo: Oh, his was in ‘80s.

Edmund Soohoo:  They were in the eighties, right? So you have some of that, you know, Chinglish, you know, half and half, right? But they’re learning English faster than we are learning Chinese. That’s to their credit because now they’re truly bilingual and they can read and write.

Timestamp:[00:42:52]

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Importance of Keeping Traditions as Current Leaders

Edmund Soohoo: That have changed? I don’t… I think we are traditional in one sense of carrying on the traditions, right, and having certain festivities or celebrations or what do you call it?

Al Soo-hoo: I think also for the current group, it’s enough to just maintain the original tradition. You know, the demands of time on existing, it’s a different demand than in the fifties and sixties. Because in those times there weren’t there were no social outlets basically for our parents other than come up here and play mahjong on the weekends and et cetera. And you know, and when our generation started families, well, at that time there were T-ball, soccer, piano, violin, all those things that our parents, you know, were not quite able to offer to us to do. But we were fortunate enough to offer that to our kids. And so then you, you know, running around, you heard the stories about, you know, the weekend moms, the soccer moms, and everything. And so, gee, how do you make time for the gung so? And stuff like that. 

Roland Soohoo: Basically we were the ABCs, the new generation up-and-coming, the ABCs. Our traditions and our goals are not the same as the old folks who belong to the different organizations and were the president and on the weekends they represented their organization by going to the Golden Dragon or Embassy, Embassy Restaurant. It was to them an out. They had fun going to eat with their friends and he’s from the Lee family and this one’s from the Wong and this one’s from the Yee and the other one is from the Wu. To them, they’re real Chinese traditions, you know, and to us, hey, it’s not as if we’re going to be president or not, but they wanted to be president and they kill each other in order to be president for CCBA. That was what they wanted to be. To us, hey, that’s secondary. But converting them to the new generation, we’re having problems still. Activities that would bring the youth, bring the youth to utilize the structure. Otherwise, the structures are going to be empty. 

Timestamp:[00:57:22]

General Activities

Edmund Soohoo: Our association, just like, Al and Roland, I mean, we grew up coming up here on weekends and actually meeting our other cousins. For some of them, we still have relationships. For some, not that many now, because in L.A., you know, people are dispersed all over the place, right? But it was the Spring Banquets, it was the picnics, you know where the picnics were? 

Al Soo-hoo: Near the merry-go-round, at Griffith Park, near the tennis courts.  

Roland Soohoo: That was one of the first places that they went to.

Edmund Soohoo: That’s where the original is there and then, you know, and I forget all the people that organized it. I just remember having fun. 

Roland Soo Hoo: They’d get out there at seven o’clock in the morning to reserve the area. 

Edmund Soohoo: That’s something that they would like to do. The Spring Banquet is probably the biggest draw on an annual basis. Of course, there is the parents’ day. There’s the, you know, the Qingming. There’s also the Thanksgiving holiday as well as just the holiday celebration. And then, of course, Lunar New Year, right? Did I miss one? Did we have another one? We just had a parents’ day this past weekend and we had a workshop on, you know, how to make the Chinese tamales, the joong.

Interviewer: So parents’ day is more like family activities, like different types of like passing on heritage. 

Edmund Soohoo: That’s what we see that as probably the pathway to involving younger people or younger cousins and friends, relatives. 

Al Soo-hoo: It’s part of, my guess is that it’s… The idea is to try to also observe the general holidays. So the parents’ day was, “well, why don’t we put Mother’s Day and Father’s Day together?” Instead of, you know, spending two efforts, make one effort. 

Edmund Soohoo: Just do one. 

Al Soo-hoo: Yes, stuff like that. You know, the traditional holidays, Thanksgiving, Christmas. That kind of stuff. 

Timestamp:[00:32:52]

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How Activities Help to Connect to Ancestry

Roland Soohoo: Well, right now what we’re doing is we’re using this as a connection to our homeland where we came from. When we wanna know something, then we come up here to the association and talk to some of the elders and say, “Hey, what can you share with us about the village where grandpa or grandma come from,” you know, “can you tell us something?” They are finding that very interesting because they are going as groups, tour groups, back to the village to see where grandma and grandpa came from and what was their house. And the only way they’re going to have that is to come to the association and socialize. And because in a way, we’re Americanized with them, but they’re still wanting to know about the Chinese side of things, how it was back home in China, you know. And so we have tour groups or we have Chinese historical family groups, that goes back. That’s why we make joong and we do different things that are of interest that we think is of interest with our young folks so that it just doesn’t fade out all together, you know. 

Timestamp:[01:02:40]

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Seto Library 

Edmund Soohoo: Well, as Roland said, I think that idea has to start with our generation. They have to, I think, light a little fire in their own family as to their family history. Then those trips that are narrated by some of our members back to the village kind of cements their thinking about, “Whoa, grandfather, where did Ye Ye come from? Where did Gong Gong come from?” Then they start to see where their grandparents and their parents actually, perhaps, grew up. Then they starts to say, “wow.” Then you have the Seto Library, which is something that we’re proud of, where you can trace your generations all the way back to almost, what, the get-go. We have, like, what, twelve, fourteen volumes? Of genealogy of books, but it’s all in Chinese.  

Al Soo-hoo: We can’t read it. 

Edmund Soohoo: That’s when, as Roland said, that’s when you work with your elders or your grandparents to start to identify where your family tree started and leading up to now. So it really has to start with, I think, the current set of parents that are our age and younger, kind of introducing your children to the fact that you do have a heritage, you do have a foundation back in China. And China’s in the news every day, right? The idea that–I’ve always believed that, I don’t care who you think you are, when people look at you, they know your Chinese or Asian. You can’t escape that, right? So the better understanding you have of who you are and what foundation you have coming to now, I think you’re grounded and you’re better able to navigate in any society or any country because you know who you are and where you come from, right? I think that’s something that our young people are starting to also see, is that they want to be grounded. They want to have that foundation where they feel like, “I’m comfortable in my own skin. This is who I am. I know where my family came from,” versus not knowing and saying, “I just, I was born in the U.S.,” you know, right? And that’s the family association. I think that’s part of where we’re going with those two groups. We’ve started our own oral interviews with some of our elders and having kind of like this sit down where people just talk about how they grew up, right? 

Roland Soohoo: You want to know where the Soo Hoos come from and get that volume of dai pou. The dai pou is only available to look at the family association of that surname, like we have ours. Okay, Soo Hoo and you open it up, sure it’s Chinese, but some of the other members can read Chinese and they’ll translate it for you. It’s very interesting and you learn a lot in the dai pou. While you should know that in Chinatown we have the Chinese historical family meeting, and they have the slides that they show and computer overhand and all of that. Wow, this all comes from there, and everybody likes the guest speakers because they learn a lot about the history of where their family originated from. 

Timestamp:[01:07:02]

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Providing Housing in the Association Site

Roland Soohoo: We’re responsible for the assets of the gung so, right? It passes on, you know, you’re responsible now. I think we have members that also feel like we shouldn’t charge, necessarily, market rate for single rooms because it’s a service to our community and to single men, right? Because it’s only single men that are allowed and they cannot have a wife or girlfriend or a child. It’s only one person, right? So we’ve had that conversation of market rate or less than market rate. So, you know, right now we’re we’re we’re more on the side of not market rate, right? Because we want to be able to give back to the community that we are located in. So there’s always that dynamics going on, too, right? Because the new generation or the younger generation, they say, “Are you guys crazy? You need the money, so we should be charging what’s market,” right? You see, so there’s that kind of thinking along with, right, “What’s the purpose? Why did they have these large single rooms?”

Timestamp:[01:23:18]

Discussing Transition to English During Meetings

Roland Soohoo: The old folks had adapted, had to adapt to it. Now if the old folks refused and was stubborn, I don’t think this association would survive or be able to strive to go forward because the way you either are going to have to know your English and study your English and follow Edmund and follow Alfred or you guys are not going to have the next generation this step forward. So you want to step forward and you want the association to survive, then English is the way to go. Now, to prove that, there’s all the other societies at the CCBA level is adapting English, even the forms: English, bilingual. 

Al Soo-hoo: Slowly. Very slowly. 

Edmund Soohoo: Well, that was the enlightened leadership I think we were very fortunate to have here at our family association. I mean, we had a couple of our elders. Well one, Jau Suk, he was a principal, right, of a school. And then Chuck Suk was an instructor in a school. So they knew how to work with young people. Then you had our president–that was when we came–Terry, who was multilingual and also a licensed or certified translator for courts. They were all very enlightened. I think we’re fortunate to have leadership that was willing to let go of the reins and, you know, and let us have decision-making, you know, responsibilities, right? That really is… I mean, you’re talking about Roland, your talking about their generation, although he’s only five years older, but you’re talking about a generation that was willing to relinquish some of their power, so to say, to a generation that, you know, grew up basically here, which is not easy for them to do. I think that’s what a lot of associations are going through, is that, you know, their children maybe aren’t stepping up because they don’t feel like they have any authority to do anything, whereas they gave us almost carte blanche from the get-go. 

Al Soo-hoo: That’s true. But I think also, too, that that transition is a two-way street. As the “younger ones” coming in, I knew I tried very hard to be respectful of their viewpoints and, you know, not demanding: “Let me, give me that checkbook.” But, you know, respectfully ask them and always be seeking their advice. You know, when something came up and et cetera. Even though, you know, you were president or some officer that you could make the [illegible], we would always turn back and say, “Hey, Terry, here’s the situation. What do you think we should do?” So it’s a two-way street. They’re willing to let it go, but at the same time, we try to be respectful of, you know, their position and their history, their knowledge. 

Edmund Soohoo: Well, they were role models. I mean, they’re role models and they were mentors that, I think, they didn’t… I don’t think they… they didn’t impress that upon us. It was…they were there whenever we had a question, right? I think that was a good thing, is that they were available to us. Al and I being, and Roland being of that generation where we grew up as the first generation born here, I think you were taught to be respectful of your elders, right? People that were responsible for the gung so. Whereas, you know, each generation loses a little bit of that because in America, we teach young people to be independent, to be independent thinkers, right? Sometimes that’s a good and a bad. 

Timestamp:[00:47:26]

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Difficulties Due to Geography

Al Soo-hoo: I was just gonna say but you know, it’s not that easy because first of all. What–well I shouldn’t say–I mean one of the things is, of course, the geography, right? Living out there, Rowland Heights, sort of as far east and even farther east and down to Torrance and Palos Verdes. You know, it’s not like when we were kids and we’re basically all in this Chinatown area or perhaps down in the Exposition Park area were the two major at that time for us. 

Roland Soohoo: I was in San Pedro. 

Al Soo-hoo: Then  the other part, the other factor I think is it was just a weekly gathering. I mean the people who had come, they’d come, you know, they’d come on Sundays, on their day off because they had no other social so they’d come to gung so. It didn’t have to be an event that they would come out. Now, we don’t have that here. I mean, it’s we have an event and if we don’t have an event that there’s really no just informal “Oh, let’s go up here, let’s go up there. Let’s play MJ,” and, you know, stuff like that going on. You know, being the younger kids, the four or five or six-year-olds, etc., they’re not seeing each other every week, like, as if it was regular school or whatever. So that, you know, doesn’t really help the social, I mean, well, you know what I mean. 

Timestamp: [01:04:20]

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Being a Resource for Future Generations

Edmund Soohoo: Someone has to light that, you know, or turn on that light for you or help that light come on. That’s really on our generation to do that because there are some parents that if you tell them about the family association, some of my peers, that’s not for them. Even though their parents were part of it, it’s not for them. So you do have that. If that’s not for them, obviously, they’re not going to tell their children, right? At some point in time, their children may ask, right? Or they may wonder, and usually it comes around when there’s in a eulogy, an obit, like, “Oh, man, who should we ask?” Then you realize, “Hey, we don’t have anyone to ask.” Right?

Roland Soohoo: This is why we’re trying to do the young folks leadership like that. We want to set up this association so that the Soo Hoos, the kids, as they get older, they want to learn, they have a place to go to and they come to the association rather than just an empty museum building. It’s up to us to do. 

Timestamp:[01:15:23]

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Disconnect with Younger Generation

Edmund Soohoo: I don’t think that has any serious discussion or conversation. I don’t think it’s in our realm of thinking right now. This generation, our generation. The next two generations, they don’t have the same attachment to the building. I mean, they don’t see themselves in the photos of history, right? Historical photos. They don’t see, you know, they don’t have that same connection to it. So who knows how, you know, how this whole thing of conserving your history and your heritage, what shape it’s going to take, right? Because with all the things that are happening with technology to reach an audience, you don’t need to have a building, per se. I mean, you can almost with virtual reality, you can almost create that for them. I mean, with A.I., you can do quite a bit of stuff these days with recreating all that stuff, right? They can have it wherever they are, versus having it here, right?

Timestamp:[01:29:06]

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Challenges to Succession

Edmund Soohoo: But, you know, all the associations is going through what we’re going through with succession, right? But it’s going to be inspired leadership that I think, you know, that will be able to sustain that to the next generation and beyond. But, you know, it’s not about being smart. It’s about having leadership that’s also people-oriented, because, at the end of the day, that’s what you are. You have to be out there marketing the association. Because the association doesn’t… People don’t come because it’s here. It has to be marketed, as Roland said, you’ve got to have activities that resonate with them, their family. Otherwise, “Why do I want to go to,” you know, “the gung so? What’s there for me, mom?” Or “Dad?” right? You see, so it really does take that. Then when people come, they have to feel welcome that you want them here. Now that’s a … you know, I read that in a company, where the company said, “We hire nice people.” It means they don’t train them. They hire nice people to begin with. So that’s the same thing with when we elect leaders. We gotta have leaders that really want to work with people. You can’t just elect someone that is the smartest in the room. If they can’t communicate, right, then it doesn’t matter.  So it’s going to it’s going to take a whole lot, like Roland and Al said, to make that happen. Leadership is really an important piece and then the people to support them, and that’s the people skills, right? “You’re smart, but I don’t like you.” 

Timestamp:[01:45:57]