Sikee Louie 呂錫基
Sikee Louie was born in Sunwui, China and studied in Hong Kong. In 1996, he immigrated to the U.S. and settled in Los Angeles, California, where his family ran the Louie Produce Company. Louie graduated from the Northrop Institute of Technology and the University of Southern California, and worked as an electrical engineer and a manager in the aircraft industry. In 2020, he retired and began more actively serving Chinatown associations. Louie is a member of the Louie Way Ben Association, later known as the Louie Family Association, as well as the Kong Chow Association and Bow On Association. He served as English secretary for president Lillian Lee Jang of the Kong Chow Association, then as vice president under Marvin Chung before being elected as president himself in 2005. Louie is also a member of the Lingnan Foundation.
Sikee Louie was interviewed by Suellen Cheng and Eugene Moy on August 1, 2024.
History of Community Support
Suellen Cheng: So when you talk about nonprofit foundation, what are the things that you do for the members and what are the things you do for outside people or younger people?
Sikee Louie: Our income basically from rental of the area, of the space below the association. With the money, we establish, like, scholarships for our members’ children and then we donate to other nonprofit organizations, including CAM [Chinese American Museum, Los Angeles]…, Red Cross and all those other nonprofit organizations.
Timestamp: [00:40:29]
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Sikee Louie: Kong Chow is one of the 27 associations of CCBA. We support all the activities of CCBA. We do provide support, let’s say way back, when the Vietnamese came over flooding that way, flooding the country, we did provide help to help those [refugees]….We raise funds and then, we also support the CCBA whenever there were disasters somewhere else, in China or in Taiwan. We conduct education donations to the school under CCBA…Chinese School. I think we donated around 55,000 dollars to the school. We participate in raising funds for the school. So, there are a lot of activities in the past that we support.
Timestamp: [00:44:31]
The Kong Chow Temple
Eugene Moy: Now, you maintain the temple. It’s very prominent as compared to what the other associations have. No one else has anything like it. Can you tell us a little bit about the operation of that temple and how it serves the people?
Sikee Louie: I think the temple of our association is the oldest one in Southern California, other than the one in San Francisco. We used to have someone there six days a week. We welcome anyone to come out to worship. We have a lot of god there within that temple. Some of them I don’t even know their names. So, the major one is Guan Gong. They pay respect to him. Actually, we pay respect to him every major event. It’s like, I think Chinese regard him as a hero, more or less. But also some of them regard him as a god. And we do accept donation for temple, we have a box for people to drop in their donation. Not much, but maybe a couple thousand dollars a year. So, we don’t have any particular person to maintain the temple. It was kept nicely, okay, by Mr. Lao who was there before the pandemic. We celebrated Guan Gong’s birthday. It is the only thing we celebrate, the birthday. Other than that, we’ll welcome people to come up and pay respect, to go and pray.
Timestamp: [00:41:29]
Relations with China and Taiwan
Eugene Moy: But in the past, members traveled regularly to China and Taiwan?
Sikee Louie: Kong Chow tried to remain neutral. See, if you go up to the association, you can see only two flags, one U.S. flag and one California flag. You do not want to associate with either Taiwan or mainland China, because, as a nonprofit, we shouldn’t do that anyway. Although there were people try to push the association to one side or the other, we try to resist it.
Timestamp: [00:46:15]
Recruitment of New Members
Sikee Louie: I have a concern. I think that’s a concern of all the associations in Chinatown, because we don’t get enough new blood, okay, to continue with the association business. We try to recruit new members. Most people who are willing to join are those people who have grown kids, before they retire or retired. So other than that, it’s really difficult to get new people in. I hope, I have tried to establish a youth group. I am willing to give them money to have a youth auxiliary to bring them up. I even would offer a free membership to the association. But too bad that we could not get it going, you know. I have that recommendation to all of our presidents. So far it is only on paper. We want to groom future members who could manage the association.
Timestamp: [00:51:10]
Social Activities
Sikee Louie: We have a choir for the longest time. And whenever, we even come up to sing at fundraising parties, things like that. But dancewise, we only did within the association. But the choir, at that time, was quite popular and we spend a lot of money on the choir…We hired a teacher. Every Tuesday evening, they would come to teach singing lessons and then we prepare dinner to serve everyone who came to the gathering. So, people come to the Tuesday night gathering, not only the choir members but also the community leaders and things like that. It was quite a party. We stopped doing that since the pandemic.
Timestamp: [00:57:37]
Future of Kong Chow Association
Sikee Louie: Our association has been 135 years. The building there has been about 65 years. I have confidence that it will continue…I’m optimistic. The association will continue, for sure. We have quite a few dedicated person. Not young, but dedicated. I’m sure they will continue to support the association. And we are thinking of changing the bylaws to accept member of children who marry out of Kong Chow, in other words. See, existing bylaw says that people who can join Kong Chow, they ought to be from Sunwui and Heshan, only on the guy’s side. My daughter could join the association because she’s a Sunwui girl, but if she marries a Toi San guy, then his children will be Toi San, then the children are not allowed to join the association because the father is not a Sunwui. We try to change that. And to me, I think that has a little bit of a discrimination, right?…
Eugene Moy: You can expand your membership that way.
Sikee Louie: Yeah, we can expand that way. We get more talent. Not just anyone, [?] came out of the village and know nothing about. We have a lot of professionals at the association. So I hope to continue.
Timestamp: [01:16:05]
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Sikee Louie: The thing is that all Chinese association has one deadly sin, they don’t want to discard some of the tradition.
Timestamp: [01:20:59]
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Sikee Louie: I just want to, for Kong Chow, just want to improve it. To make it better and better. Kong Chow, once, was regarded [as] the leader of the pack because we were the association with a lot of talent at that time. We did have a lawsuit, a second lawsuit, the pandemic had done a lot of damage. Hopefully, we recover slowly. When I first joined the association, I computerized the association. The membership, the application form, everything is electronic. I even establish my own website for the association. We didn’t ask anyone else for help. I do the update myself. So, when we conduct national convention, everything go through the website. So, at that time, I think we were pretty advanced. I hope they will continue the tradition of leading the pack if they could.
Timestamp: [01:24:40]