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Transcription: [00:50:28]
{SPEAKER name="Samir Meghelli, Ph.D. (Interviewer)"}
Wow

{SPEAKER name="Douglas Lee (Interviewee)"}
Yeah

[00:50:32]
{SPEAKER name="Samir Meghelli, Ph.D. (Interviewer)"}
And, What kinds of-- I mean what was the experience like for you in terms of-- were you eating particular things at home uh that uh were would have been new to you after having moved from Silver Spring?

[00:50:49]
{SPEAKER name="Douglas Lee (Interviewee)"}
Oh yeah-- well you know it's kind -- I always remembered we ate very well.

{SPEAKER name="Samir Meghelli, Ph.D. (Interviewer)"}
[[Cross Talking]] mm-hmm

[00:50:56]
{SPEAKER name="Douglas Lee (Interviewee)"}
And I suppose compared to other people-- I mean when everyone wanted a steak or prime ribs, you know, or lobster we could have it. Just tell the cook-- just tell the waiter what you want and you got it.

[00:51:08]
And we ate very well, very well.

[00:51:11]
{SPEAKER name="Douglas Lee (Interviewee)"}
And my mother, later on when I was a teenager and I was thinking about what I wanted to do in college, I said I wanted to become a history teacher.

[00:51:19]
She said, "Why do you want to do that? you're never going to get rich! Look at me I don't speak much English, I didn't have any schooling, but because I have my own business we never have to pay for toilet paper, we never have to pay for beef or chicken --"

[00:51:32]
you know? And when I lived with Mrs. Hall over in spring Maryland she would always send Mrs. Hall with bags of it! She'd go down to the meat locker and get a chicken, a couple chickens, some beef, and this and that

[00:51:44]
and just load her up because Mrs. Hall was on a tight budget, and she didn't buy much meat. You know, we had meatloaf or macaroni and cheese, or you know.

[00:51:53]
{SPEAKER name="Douglas Lee (Interviewee)"}
Uh, but my mother! Oh she put in, you know, a couple rib eyes, a couple New Yorks, so you know, and so

[00:52:00]
the nice thing about it is, that indeed yes, she was very self-sufficient but she

[00:52:07]
after a while, talking to her friends and talking to Mrs. Hall, realized that we shouldn't be eating restaurant food all the time -- it's not good for us.

[00:52:15]
{SPEAKER name="Douglas Lee (Interviewee)"}
So she would make the effort, a couple of nights a week to go home and cook a dinner,

[00:52:19]
and there she cooked some unusual Cantonese dishes.

[00:52:24]
{SPEAKER name="Douglas Lee (Interviewee)"}
She makes, uh-- um, things that the restaurant didn't make ordinarily. She would make soup, you know? And so, there were a couple of nights where my father would

[00:52:36]
be there for dinner, my mother would be there, and we kind of, kind of had a semblance of family life, you know?

[00:52:44]
{SPEAKER name="Douglas Lee (Interviewee)"}
Uh, she was told this by her adult daughter in California, and Mrs. Hall that you know,

[00:52:50]
"You've got these 2 little boys, you need to have some type of
family life, you know, at home."

[00:52:54]
{SPEAKER name="Douglas Lee (Interviewee)"}
So I do remember that, you know.

[00:52:58]
{SPEAKER name="Samir Meghelli, Ph.D. (Interviewer)"}
And do you recall ever being-- getting exposed at all to, um, your father's associations in Anyang?

[00:53:08]
{SPEAKER name="Douglas Lee (Interviewee)"}
Yes! [[excitedly]] Yes, very much so!

[00:53:10]
{SPEAKER name="Douglas Lee (Interviewee)"}
Um, on weekends, uhm Sunday evening especially -- he'd make the rounds, and you know in the Chinese community they have what you call a rotating credit association.

[00:53:21]
{SPEAKER name="Douglas Lee (Interviewee)"}
Uh, rotating credit associations were developed in China, as a way to raise money. Like if a farmer had a funeral, and there's an unexpected expense

[00:53:34]
so, he would call -- typically, this -- they took many forms, but a typical form might be you get together nine friends or maybe a cousin, uh a brother-in-law, some friends and you'd take these nine people --

[00:53:49]
[[speaking hypothetically]] I have to pay for a funeral or a wedding or something and I need to raise some money.

[00:53:55]
{SPEAKER name="Douglas Lee (Interviewee)"}
So, and I'll make up a sum of money because I don't think they had this money back in the village, but I'll just say it, so let's say we all put in 10 dollars.

[00:54:02]
So if we all put in ten dollars, we have 100 dollars, right? So, if we do this for ten months, each person will get to take the pot home once.

[00:54:15]
{SPEAKER name="Douglas Lee (Interviewee)"}
So since I formed this rotating credit association and I need the money for the funeral, I'll take the 100 dollars this month. Then next month we all put in ten dollars and somebody else takes it home.

[00:54:26]
{SPEAKER name="Douglas Lee (Interviewee)"}
And so until every one of the ten people has put in ten dollars and every one of those ten people has taken home 100 dollars once, that's the life of the great rotating credit association.

[00:54:38]
And when the last person takes home the 100 dollars, the association is finished; it's concluded, it doesn't meet again.

[00:54:46]
And then some other time somebody else will open up a rotating credit association.

[00:54:51]
Well, that's how it worked in the village, but in America, urban Chinese communities, the rotating credit association became kind of a defacto bank or credit association.

[00:55:05]
{SPEAKER name="Douglas Lee (Interviewee)"}
Um, associations, family associations, district associations, and secret societies, developed rotating credit associations within their own infrastructure.

[00:55:19]
And I remember my father, he would carry paper bags on Sunday evenings, and in the paper bag would be little books and these little books were

[00:55:30]
I would say maybe 2 1/2 inches by 2 1/2 inches or maybe 3 inches by 3 inches, so they were square.

[00:55:38]
{SPEAKER name="Douglas Lee (Interviewee)"}
And each organization had a different color. So let's say the Lee family association had pink books and the um, the [[Foison?]] association would have lime green books,

[00:55:51]
and the secret society would have baby blue books, and they were almost all the same size, so he would have rubber bands with the pink ones, rubber bands on the green ones, rubber bands on the blue ones.

[00:56:04]
{SPEAKER name="Douglas Lee (Interviewee)"}
So he carried this paper bag and he'd go up to the—-let's say he goes to the family association. So he'd go upstairs [clears throat], and there'd be about maybe 10 or 12 or 15 people moving about,

[00:56:15]
talking, smoking cigarettes, you know, gabbing away, and he'd go up to the table and there'd be a man there who'd be like a bookkeeper.

[00:56:25]
{SPEAKER name="Douglas Lee (Interviewee)"}
So my father would take out of the bag those books that go with that association, so let's say the family association was blue.

[00:56:33]
{SPEAKER name="Douglas Lee (Interviewee)"}
So he'd take out the blue ones and the man would take the rubber bands off and he'd open them up

[00:56:37]
and so they remind me of, y'know, back in the '50s and '60s in the United States we had what we called "bank books"--

[00:56:44]
{SPEAKER name="Samir Meghelli, Ph.D. (Interviewer)"}
Mm-hmm

{SPEAKER name="Douglas Lee (Interviewee)"}
I don't know if-- are you old enough to remember that?

[00:56:48]
{SPEAKER name="Douglas Lee (Interviewee)"}
Uh, these bank books were, you go into a bank and you make a deposit or withdrawal, and they would make the notation in the book that you put that--

[00:56:57]
you put in 10 dollars or you took out 10 dollars, and they would stamp it with the date, and so that's how an American bank, like Wells Fargo or whatever,

[00:57:07]
that's how--you had a passbook for your savings account.

[00:57:09]
{SPEAKER name="Samir Meghelli, Ph.D. (Interviewer)"}
Mm-hmm

{SPEAKER name="Douglas Lee (Interviewee)"}
Do you recall that?

[00:57:12]
{SPEAKER name="Samir Meghelli, Ph.D. (Interviewer)"}
Uh, that was a little before my time, but I am familiar with the concept.

[00:57:16]
{SPEAKER name="Douglas Lee (Interviewee)"}
Okay, well that's what these were. And they were in Chinese!

[00:57:20]
So, there would be columns and then he would stamp it with a rubber stamp, like, an American stamp that would say, like, "July 5th, 1958", something like that, and so, and that way my father made deposits.

[00:57:36]
{SPEAKER name="Douglas Lee (Interviewee)"}
He made deposits into the rotating credit association, they would be used to loan money out to other members.

{SPEAKER name="Samir Meghelli, Ph.D. (Interviewer)"}
Hm.

[00:57:45]
{SPEAKER name="Douglas Lee (Interviewee)"}
And I believe maybe he made some interest on this.

[00:57:50]
But what was curious to me, he was always--he--my father did not have a checkbook, did not have credit cards, but he always had a huge wad of cash.

[00:58:02]
{SPEAKER name="Douglas Lee (Interviewee)"}
I mean, he would--he would have a huge wad of cash that when you opened it up, in the middle were hundred dollar bills, then there were fifty dollar bills,

[00:58:14]
then there were twenty dollar bills, then there were ten-dollar bills, five-dollar bills, and one-dollar bills, and some two-dollar bills.

[00:58:22]
{SPEAKER name="Douglas Lee (Interviewee)"}
And we're not talking a few, he would have, like, maybe...a couple thousand...dollars! He'd have several hundred dollar bills, he had lots of twenties--he just had this huge wad of money!

[00:58:35]
And so, after he gave the books to the guy to look at, he would take this wad of money out of his pocket, and he'd open it up, and he'd fish for a fifty dollar bill,

[00:58:47]
or a hundred dollar bill, and he'd put down on the table, typically, maybe four twenties, and two fifties, and a couple--he put down a large sum of money!

[00:58:58]
And then the guy would stamp the book and close 'em and put the rubber band around 'em and hand them back to my father, and then my father would visit around the room,

[00:59:06]
and I remember in those days they drank tea, so he would go up to a table that had teacups that were upside down, sitting in about an inch of water on a tray.

[00:59:19]
{SPEAKER name="Douglas Lee (Interviewee)"}
So, he would dunk them in a little plastic bowl of water and then pour it out, and then he'd pour tea and give it to us to drink and my mother used to always scold him, [[phone ringtone in the background]]

[00:59:32]
because she'd heard about Tuberculosis...and other things, and she said "I don't want you giving them tea!"

[00:59:41]
but he gave us tea, and I think that when I moved to California later in the late 50s, I tested positive for TB [[Tuberculosis]], y'know, Tuberculin skin test--

{SPEAKER name="Samir Meghelli, Ph.D. (Interviewer)"}
Uh huh

[00:59:49]
{SPEAKER name="Douglas Lee (Interviewee)"}
--and I think that's how I got exposed, y'know.

[00:59:52]
But anyways, so we'd leave that association, we'd leave that association and we'd go-- so we made the rounds to these different associations and venues- at least 3 or 4 of them.

[01:00:00]
And then every one we'd visit we'd stay for about half an hour.

[01:00:04]
{SPEAKER name="Samir Meghelli, Ph.D. (Interviewer)"}
Hm.

{SPEAKER name="Douglas Lee (Interviewee)"}
Isn't that interesting?

[01:00:06]
{SPEAKER name="Samir Meghelli, Ph.D. (Interviewer)"}
Yeah. So, you know for a fact that he was a member of the Lee family association, O-onleong [[confused]]

{SPEAKER name="Douglas Lee (Interviewee)"}
Yes [[crosstalking]]

[01:00:13]
{SPEAKER name="Douglas Lee (Interviewee)"}
And the Onle--, it's spelled O...

[01:00:18]
{SPEAKER name="Samir Meghelli, Ph.D. (Interviewer)"}
Yeah, O-n-l-e-o-n-g

[01:00:21]
{SPEAKER name="Douglas Lee (Interviewee)"}
Yeah, yeah...and he was a member of some other organizations too. Um, there was another local tong that he was a member of, I'm trying to remember the name of it.

[01:00:33]
It was on the corner of H & 6th, and it looked like a store, and it was a mahjong parlor.

[01:00:41]
{SPEAKER name="Samir Meghelli, Ph.D. (Interviewer)"}
Hm

{SPEAKER name="Douglas Lee (Interviewee)"}
And that was a local tong that was different from the Anyang tong and he was very-- he always visited there, we'd always go by there,

[01:00:48]
and of course he didn't have any rotating credit thing there, but he'd visit there with-- everywhere I went was men! [[Laughing]] Hardly any women at all, all men!

[01:01:00]
{SPEAKER name="Douglas Lee (Interviewee)"}
And everywhere you went there was heavy smoke, and everywhere you went, of course as a child of 5,6,7,8, whatever, uh, these people--

[01:01:10]
I would imagine now they were probably in their 50s and 60s, but when you're a child they look ancient, ha ha!

[01:01:16]
{SPEAKER name="Samir Meghelli, Ph.D. (Interviewer)"}
[[Laughing]]

[01:01:16]
{SPEAKER name="Douglas Lee (Interviewee)"}
And people in the '50s and '60s looked ancient!

[01:01:24]
You know, nowadays people-- I'm 70 and I wear tennis shoes and I work out, so, you know, people today look different than they did in those days.

[01:01:35]
{SPEAKER name="Samir Meghelli, Ph.D. (Interviewer)"}
Mh-hmm.

[01:01:36]
{SPEAKER name="Douglas Lee (Interviewee)"}
Do you understand?

[01:01:36]
{SPEAKER name="Samir Meghelli, Ph.D. (Interviewer)"}
Yeah. Mh-mm

[01:01:38]
{SPEAKER name="Douglas Lee (Interviewee)"}
And everybody wore ties and shirts, you know.

[01:01:40]
{SPEAKER name="Samir Meghelli, Ph.D. (Interviewer)"}
Mmhmm

[01:01:41]
{SPEAKER name="Douglas Lee (Interviewee)"}
Yeah

[01:01:43]
{SPEAKER name="Samir Meghelli, Ph.D. (Interviewer)"}
Do you happen to remember at all, any particular annual celebrations like the New Years celebration parade, or--


[01:01:51]
{SPEAKER name="Douglas Lee (Interviewee)"}
Ohh yes! [excitedly] New Year was a big thing and our restaurant was always in the middle of it.

[01:01:56]
Um, my father and mother managed to buy firecrackers from New York. And they always had firecrackers that were like, you know, maybe, 5, 6, feet long.

[01:02:11]
And they'd dangle it on a stick out the window, and Washington D.C, and like other Chinese communities, had clubs. And they had the lion dance!

[01:02:11]
{SPEAKER name="Samir Meghelli, Ph.D. (Interviewer)"}
Mm!

[01:02:23]
{SPEAKER name="Douglas Lee (Interviewee)"}
And so lions would come and on the string on the end of the poll would be a head of lettuce, and a little red envelope with money.

[01:02:31]
So, the lion dance would come and they'd set off the firecrackers-- this huge string of firecrackers! And my brother and I were always dressed-- my mother would hand-make us Chinese, men's, scholar gowns.

[01:02:45]
{SPEAKER name="Douglas Lee (Interviewee)"}
Uh, she'd choose some fabric, and it wasn't silk, it was always, like, cotton.

[01:02:49]
And then she'd make a black vest and we'd wear little black hats. So the twins we were the twins we were always out there. I have photos of us, um, standing out there just before the firecracker went off and while the lions dance were there. So, New Years was a big thing in Chinatown.

[01:03:08]
{SPEAKER name="Douglas Lee (Interviewee)"}
And that's when the population ballooned as I say people would come in from uh outlying areas of Washington D.C., the northeast, the southwest, um, the southeast parts of Washington D.C. maybe some people usually come in from Arlington, Alexandria, from Silver Spring, from uh Prince George and so the Chinese community would be you know several hundred people maybe more um so for a day or so it would be very crowded very busy bustling.

[01:03:39]
{SPEAKER name="Samir Meghelli, Ph.D. (Interviewer)"}
Mmm.

[01:03:40]
{SPEAKER name="Douglas Lee (Interviewee)"}
Yeah.

[01:03:41]
{SPEAKER name="Samir Meghelli, Ph.D. (Interviewer)"}
And wh-

[01:03:42]
{SPEAKER name="Douglas Lee (Interviewee)"}
And its August moon festival and uh you know some other festivals

[01:03:47]
{SPEAKER name="Samir Meghelli, Ph.D. (Interviewer)"}
Mmm.

[01:03:48]
{SPEAKER name="Douglas Lee (Interviewee)"}
And because Chinatown is also particularly in the 50s was very pro KMT Kuomintang um the nationalist Chinese as you know the uh nationalist Chinese law of the mainland of 49 they were in Taiwan

[01:04:02]
{SPEAKER name="Samir Meghelli, Ph.D. (Interviewer)"}
Mmm.

[01:04:02]
{SPEAKER name="Douglas Lee (Interviewee)"}
So [[clears throat]] many of these Chinese communities were very loyal to the Guomindang and so they all flew Guomindang flags. My father now there's a mention of his political life, civic life was that later in life starting in the early 60s he became very much involved with Taiwan. And he made trips and I have a photo of him with Chiang Kai-Shek [former President of China and member of KMT]

[01:04:28]
{SPEAKER name="Samir Meghelli, Ph.D. (Interviewer)"}
Wow.

[01:04:29]
{SPEAKER name="Douglas Lee (Interviewee)"}
So, he was a member of the Chinese Overseas Commission.

[01:04:36]
{SPEAKER name="Samir Meghelli, Ph.D. (Interviewer)"}
Mmm.

[01:04:36]
{SPEAKER name="Douglas Lee (Interviewee)"}
Um, so he in effect became a representative to the Taiwan Nationalist Government of the Chinese in America.

[01:04:46]
{SPEAKER name="Samir Meghelli, Ph.D. (Interviewer)"}
Mmm.

[01:04:46]
{SPEAKER name="Douglas Lee (Interviewee)"}
And uh so, whenever there was a New Years parade or a celebrated "ten ten" which is the day of the uh original republican revolution in 1911. October 10th. Uh too bad it wasn't October 10th, 1910. It would've been 10/10/10. But it was October 10th, 1911 so it's 10/10. Um so yeah that was a large part of the civic life in not only Washington D.C. but oh in New York and in San Francisco were very big, very big. And during World War 2 they raised money. Now I remember my mother telling me during--when I grew up, uh I was too young to remember uh post World War 2 but she told me that there were

[01:05:39]
{SPEAKER name="Douglas Lee (Interviewee)"}
two types of Chin- [coughing] excuse me, there were two types of Chinese in Washington DC. There were the uptown Chinese, and the downtown Chinese.

[01:05:49]
{SPEAKER name="Douglas Lee (Interviewee)"}
and we were the downtown Chinese, the Cantonese, Toisan people, the workers, the people who worked hard and didn't have a lot of money, and so we didn't have a lot of, uhh, luxuries. The uptown Chinese were the people associated with the Nationalist Government and they were associated with the Chinese embassy, and they were Shanghainese or Mandarin speaking.

[01:06:19]
{SPEAKER name="Samir Meghelli, Ph.D. (Interviewer)"}
Mmmhm

[01:06:20]
{SPEAKER name="Douglas Lee (Interviewee)"}
And this dovetailed in my life in a very personal way because when I was growing up at Mrs. Hall in Silver Spring, till I was 5, and then later on I would visit her and stay with her for a few months here and there. When I was small, she told her husband that she would not work after they were married but she was a RN, so to get around her request of her husband that she not work she took care of babies in the house, so she brought in babies to take care of.

[01:06:50]
{SPEAKER name="Douglas Lee (Interviewee)"}
And these babies lived in the house. So at any given time there are 5 to 6 babies and guess what, they were all Chinese. And of the babies, my twin brother and I were the only Cantonese, quote "downtown Chinese". All the other Chinese babies were embassy people.

[01:07:12]
{SPEAKER name="Douglas Lee (Interviewee)"}
And of course, I was too young to know, I don't even remember seeing these people. But I do remember Mrs. Hall telling me she told me, oh yes I took care of, oh, you know, 5 6 babies sometimes 7 babies. We had babies all over the house, and she remembers the embassy people telling her that if my parents came to visit me, if Mr. and Mrs. Lee came to visit the twin boys, please let us know.

[01:07:41]
{SPEAKER name="Douglas Lee (Interviewee)"}
So they would avoid coming over. They did not want to, in other words, they didn't want to meet my parents or bump into them. And so my mother, she remembers that the uptown Chinese were snobbish you know uh they rode around in cars, they had beautiful jewelry, they lived in nice homes.

[01:08:05]
{SPEAKER name="Douglas Lee (Interviewee)"}
And of course, because they spoke mandarin it was like a foreign language. Now because my father was involved with Guomindang activities, one time I do remember as a child he took me to a party that was, I can assume it was in Georgetown or some part, uh DuPont circle some part of Washington DC that was very different from Chinatown.

[01:08:29]
{SPEAKER name="Douglas Lee (Interviewee)"}
And I remember very vividly we walk into this huge house and there are all these Chinese people there, they looked Chinese but of course, they were speaking mandarin but I didn't know what mandarin was. And I kept pulling on my father's sleeve "what are they saying, I don't understand them". He said "Don't worry, Don't worry, Don't worry".

[01:08:50]
{SPEAKER name="Douglas Lee (Interviewee)"}
And he went up to, and there was this Caucasian man dressed in a white linen suit sitting in a big armchair and he seemed to be the center of attention. And I imagined maybe he was john service or some- now I'm thinking back he probably was either a diplomat, a business man or a missionary, someone who was very active in China.

[01:09:17]
{SPEAKER name="Douglas Lee (Interviewee)"}
And he appeared to me to be very old, he must have been like 70s or 80s or whatever, and he was unable to get up, so he just sat there, and people were fawning over him, bringing him food and talking to him. And they're all speaking this weird Chinese. So that's my own personal remembrance and exposure to the uptown Chinese. Isn't that interesting?

[01:09:43]
{SPEAKER name="Samir Meghelli, Ph.D. (Interviewer)"}
Yeah, it is. And do you know why the term uptown, downtown, in terms of why that particular terminology was it was it-

[01:09:56]
{SPEAKER name="Douglas Lee (Interviewee)"}
Well because the downtown Cantonese were Cantonese who lived and worked in- well, Chinatown, Washington DC Chinatown was downtown, that was the [[eighth?]] street.

[01:10:07]
{SPEAKER name="Douglas Lee (Interviewee)"}
And many- although many of the Chinese had laundries and restaurants in different parts of the city, they identified with Chinatown, 7th and H.

[01:10:17]
{SPEAKER name="Douglas Lee (Interviewee)"}
And so, downtown- this is my mother's term, it was kind of a euphemism, meant that Cantonese people were provincial, Cantonese people were workers, Cantonese people- because they spoke Cantonese, were kind of different from Northern Chinese.

[01:10:38]
{SPEAKER name="Douglas Lee (Interviewee)"}
Now, when I say uptown Chinese, of course, they could be Chinese from all over China. From Nanjing, from Beijing, from Shanghai, from Chengdu. Now I know this, but at the time, I didn't know what uptown Chinese were, and I never heard of Mandarin, I didn't know what Mandarin was, and I certainly didn't know how to speak it.

[01:10:58]
{SPEAKER name="Douglas Lee (Interviewee)"}
Later I went- later on when I went to Hong Kong and lived there for a year, I remember going to a theater owned by one of my family members there, they owned a movie theater.

[01:11:11]
{SPEAKER name="Douglas Lee (Interviewee)"}
It was primarily Cantonese films. But once in a while, they would show Mandarin films. And as I sat through the Mandarin films, I found it very strange and very amusing to hear Mandarin spoken.

[01:11:26]
{SPEAKER name="Douglas Lee (Interviewee)"}
And then when I was in Hong Kong, a part of the curriculum was to teach "guo yu" - Mandarin.

[01:11:32]
{SPEAKER name="Douglas Lee (Interviewee)"}
And so I learned a few words, but I completely forgot it. It wasn't until I went to graduate school at Michigan that I learned my Mandarin. So I speak Mandarin now, but when I was a child, it could be Russian, it could be French or Portuguese.

[01:11:51]
{SPEAKER name="Samir Meghelli, Ph.D. (Interviewer)"}
And do you happen to remember if-

[01:11:52]
{SPEAKER name="Douglas Lee (Interviewee)"}
And so our communities, the uptown Chinese and the downtown Chinese, had nothing to do with each other. You know, completely alien to each other.

[01:12:02]
{SPEAKER name="Douglas Lee (Interviewee)"}
And I, I think there was some resentment on my mother's part. It showed in how she talked, she was very disparaging. And I'm pretty sure that the Mandarin speaking people didn't hold out any love or, you know.

[01:12:16]
{SPEAKER name="Douglas Lee (Interviewee)"}
Now, Dr. Sun Yat-sen himself was Cantonese, you know. But he married a Shanghainese, Soong Ching-ling, who was the sister of Soong Mei-ling, the wife of Chiang Kai-shek.

[01:12:28]
{SPEAKER name="Douglas Lee (Interviewee)"}
So, when you think of the Guomindang, you think of Mandarin-speaking, Shanghainese-speaking, social elites, well-educated. Many of those people, uptown Chinese, they went to American colleges, they went to Georgetown, they went to Yale, they went to Harvard, they went to Berkeley.

[01:12:46]
{SPEAKER name="Douglas Lee (Interviewee)"}
And so, you can imagine, people who are well-educated, who speak English, who speak the Mandarin dialect, who are diplomats, businessmen, well-connected, well heel leverage.

[01:12:58]
{SPEAKER name="Douglas Lee (Interviewee)"}
They're very different from- a world away from the Cantonese. And there was no meeting of the two, you know.

[01:13:06]
{SPEAKER name="Samir Meghelli, Ph.D. (Interviewer)"}
Do you happen to recall if there were certain institutions, I mean were there certain institutions in Chinatown that were of significance to you personally, I mean, whether it was a different restaurant than the one that your parents owned, or a store, a grocery store.

[01:13:22]
{SPEAKER name="Douglas Lee (Interviewee)"}
No, we never went to the other restaurants. As a child, I do remember non-Chinese organizations. And we- I, my brother and I went to the Calvary Baptist Church youth program.

[01:13:39]
They had a program, I think it was like Wednesday evenings, you go over there, and there was a leader, and they would show American movies, or they had a woodshop, we'd make projects in the woodshop.

[01:13:51]
{SPEAKER name="Douglas Lee (Interviewee)"}
Or we'd play basketball, or arts and craft, and they also had a summer camp that I went to, down on the Chesapeake Bay. So that was a kind of interesting thing for me.

[01:14:04]
{SPEAKER name="Douglas Lee (Interviewee)"}
I spent a lot of my time at the library. I just was a bookworm, I loved books. I was at the main library last- and I kind of fantasized it was like Versailles, the grand staircase of the main library over there near Massachusetts and 7th, you know, is it still there?

[01:14:22]
{SPEAKER name="Douglas Lee (Interviewee)"}
Now it's a, I think a historical society or something?

[01:14:25]
{SPEAKER name="Samir Meghelli, Ph.D. (Interviewer)"}
That's right, it's no longer a library, although it's still referred to as Carnegie Library, but it's the DC Historical Society.

[01:14:32]
{SPEAKER name="Douglas Lee (Interviewee)"}
I remember visiting there when I was doing- in Washington DC, doing work on the article. And I remember visiting the- it was in the library- is in the library, but it's still there. So I was there a lot.

[01:14:48]
{SPEAKER name="Douglas Lee (Interviewee)"}
And then I remember by the later- by the late 50s, early 60s, there was a change in the Chinese community in Washington, DC. Where, when we were child, there were hardly any families, that was like 45, 50, 52, 53.

[01:15:09]
{SPEAKER name="Douglas Lee (Interviewee)"}
But by 1960, there were many- because I went on the, I remember one time my mother brought me back to Washington, DC, and I went to Seaton School. Seaton School is over, uh, how do I describe it.

[01:15:29]
{SPEAKER name="Douglas Lee (Interviewee)"}
It's- if you go up Sixth Street, then you turn right, you go down there, there's a Seaton Elementary School, you can look it up.

[01:15:40]
{SPEAKER name="Douglas Lee (Interviewee)"}
And I remember there were a handful of Chinese-Americans. There were about maybe a dozen of us. So there was this community that by the early post-war years, many of these guys, especially after the early 60s when Chinese, you recall that Chinese were allowed to bring over there wives, there was an exception.

[01:16:08]
{SPEAKER name="Douglas Lee (Interviewee)"}
This is before the change in the law in 65. But so some men brought over their wives, and so families were more evident. And so that changed, I remember going around and playing with different friends at their houses, in different parts of areas adjacent to Washington, DC's Chinatown.

[01:16:29]
{SPEAKER name="Douglas Lee (Interviewee)"}
And then I went to Jefferson Junior High School, do you know where that's located?

{SPEAKER name="Samir Meghelli, Ph.D. (Interviewer)"}
Yeah

{SPEAKER name="Douglas Lee (Interviewee)"}
In- I think it's in southwest

{SPEAKER name="Samir Meghelli, Ph.D. (Interviewer)"}
That's right.

{SPEAKER name="Douglas Lee (Interviewee)"}
and it's a very beautiful building.

[01:16:41]
{SPEAKER name="Douglas Lee (Interviewee)"}
And I went there for one year before I went to the west coast, and then I never came back. I went to junior high and high school in the west coast, and then college.

[01:16:49]
{SPEAKER name="Douglas Lee (Interviewee)"}
But I remember seeing school in Jefferson Junior High School, so I did have a life outside of Chinatown. I remember my parents didn't celebrate Christmas, so after school at Jefferson High School, I'd asked the teacher if I could have the Christmas tree,

[01:17:05]
{SPEAKER name="Douglas Lee (Interviewee)"}
so here's this little Chinese guy carrying a 5 and a half foot 6 foot tall christmas tree on his street car and i would get off, and i would put it in my room over the clothing store on 7th street, and they have neon lights so i didn't have to have lights on my tree, i made paper chains and decorated my own tree, in window was flashing neon lights outside [laughs]


Transcription Notes:
Unknown word at [00:53:13], a little hard to hear what he was saying. I believe it was just a noise made by the recorder.