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January 14, 1999
Strained Relations
Why Chinatown's venerable associations are ending up in court
By Julie D. Soo
The term "juk sing" means "caught between the notch of a bamboo stick" in Cantonese. It's also how immigrants disparagingly refer to their U.S.-born counterparts: those who genetically share the same ethnicity but are seen as being forever caught in the middle, not fully American because of their looks, but not truly Chinese because of their American attitudes and their lack of proficiency in the Chinese language.
But now, given a multi-generational populace from all over China, more is at issue for disagreements than the question of who is "more Chinese." And at stake is the direction of San Francisco Chinatown's venerable associations-some 200 district and family organizations that have collectively played a key part in the area's evolution. (They differ from tongs, which are now voluntary business organizations.)
The juk sing stereotype has long fostered battles over protocol, membership and mission, even though the groups, which determine membership largely based on one's ancestral region or surname, have for generations mediated their own affairs in the Chinese tradition that has been in practice for centuries. Now things are changing with a growing number of lawsuits. Between 1977 and 1982, only three suits involved Chinese association affairs; but between 1987 and 1992, 20 such suits were filed.
For Stanley Chow, who immigrated from Hong Kong to San Francisco over 30 years ago, the battle lines are now not so much between American-born versus immigrant, but between the old guard versus the new guard. American-born Chinese have largely left the associations, leaving recent immigrants to duke it out with not-so-recent immigrants.
Chow last year filed a case against fellow members of the Hung On Tong Benevolent Association for tarnishing his name and abridging his rights as an officer of the board. He has been a member of the group, comprised of members with ties to the elite Shun Tuck region of China, for some three decades, joining soon after he moved to this country. Over the years, he has held a number of positions on the board of the Hung On Tong Society, as it is also known, and last year, he was elected vice president.
Like many of his counterparts, said Chow, he took the unpaid position out of a sense of civic duty. However, he soon came under fire from more recent members who alleged that Chow had taken kickbacks from a contractor that the association had hired for work on its building. The allegations remain unproven and unsubstantiated according to Chow's supporters, who say the allegations were trumped up as a political maneuver to get Chow to relinquish his seat.
Amid publicity from the Chinese-language press, the matter ended up in court, where Chow's attorney, Michael Lee, says it is proceeding quickly toward a settlement.
Because both parties have agreed to keep the terms of a settlement confidential, Lee declined to release further details on the case, but he said both Chow and the association plan to release a "mutual agreement" statement to be published in Chinese-language newspapers. According to Lee, it will read: "The Hung On Tong Society has reinstated Stanley Chow as a member of the Board of Directors and to the various other positions he had. There had been a misunderstanding between the Hung On Tong Society and Mr. Chow, which has now been resolved."
For Chow, however, almost no amount in legal fees is too much to clear his name and regain his pride. For many Chinese people, one's "face"-dignity and reputation-is the most sacred part of one's being. Many see holding an executive position with Chinatown associations, even if without compensation, as a gold card to power and status. Especially among more recent immigrants, being able to flash a home-fashioned business card with multiple titles is a source of pride.
Moreover, according to observers and academicians, power comes not just from the title, but from the associations' bank accounts and property titles, both of which have gained tremendously over the generations.
"It's a clash over how money is going to be spent. It happens with any institutional organization," said Henry Der, former executive director of Chinese for Affirmative Action located in the heart of Chinatown.
Many associations are over a century old, meaning they have amassed real estate holdings that help feed growing treasuries. Most of the property-including apartments, residential hotels, office buildings, flats, stores, restaurants, schools and a hospital-are concentrated in Chinatown. According to Wayne Hu, former San Francisco Planning Commission member and a real estate analyst with Jackson, Hu & Associates, the associations own about 30 percent of the property in Chinatown, and they own several cemeteries in San Mateo County. Conservative estimates on the worth of the associations' property holdings in the two counties run upward of $250 million, mostly paid off years ago and taxed at low Proposition 13 property tax rates. The Hung On Tong Society alone had $1.3 million in savings and cash when it confronted the first in a series of legal battles around 1989, according to tax returns. The association also has upward of $5 million in real estate holdings.
As the treasuries have grown, so has the complexity of the relationships. While there may have been a time when battles such as Chow's would have been mediated within the association or through the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association, years of bad blood and changing times means such a resolution is less likely.
Even the umbrella organization, widely known as the "Chinese Six Companies," has not been immune from litigation. Comprised of San Francisco's seven oldest and largest district associations, the Six Companies has found, like other associations, that ambiguous bylaws and unfamiliarity with corporate law and business practices have cost it dearly, most notoriously in the 1988 death of janitor Simon Leung.
Leung, 53, died while overseeing the firecracker display at the association's annual Double Ten celebration marking the founding of the Republic of China (Taiwan). His widow claimed smoke inhalation killed her husband while he was on duty, and his family sued, reaching an $800,000 settlement in 1992. Unfortunately for the association, it did not carry Workers' Compensation for Leung, nor did it have adequate liability insurance, costing it not only money but causing it to lose face amid extensive publicity. On the other hand, the expensive lesson forced the organization to put its business affairs and its insurance coverage in order.
Such battles-though many remain less prominent-have taken a toll, say nonprofits who have come to rely on the associations' charity. Three of the city's most affluent associations, established more than 100 years ago to foster brotherhood and to help new immigrants, have been involved in more than half of the lawsuits filed. The three, Hung On Tong Benevolent Association, Fa Yuen Benevolent Association (also known as Chong Sen Benevolent Association), and Gee How Oak Tin Benevolent Association, control real estate worth more than $11 million and savings totaling over $1.5 million. The latter alone has seen five lawsuits recently just over association elections.
"On average, the contributions have been more modest" in recent years, said Jennie Chin Hansen, executive director of On Lok, a nonprofit devoted to helping the elderly. However, she observed that the associations have other obligations, including funding retrofits of aging buildings.
Still, financial hardships among the associations mean less money to develop institutions that rely on donations. The Chinese Hospital, long overseen by the Six Companies, is looking to once again expand its doors and keep up with state-of-the-art medical technology. It hopes to raise $31 million in a series of capital campaigns to meet its goal.
Chinese Hospital itself has been the subject of litigation-not over its practice of medicine but rather over who controls it. In 1990, the Six Companies, which donated much of the land on which the hospital sits, became embroiled in legal disputes over the proposed sale of six hospital buildings for $9.1 million and the purchase of a retail building called Orangeland.
At about that time, battles also broke out concerning the election of Pius Lee (currently a member of the Port Commission) over Thomas Ng as Six Companies president, and whether two board members or their replacements should have cast votes; and yet another over some $6,500 spent for transcription and translation of some board meetings whose minutes had not been made public.
The then-presiding Chinese Six Companies president begged now-retired California Court of Appeal Justice Harry Low and San Francisco Superior Court Judge Lenard Louie to mediate. Ironically, it was the jurists who brought with them Chinese-style mediation-the kind of negotiation that Golden Gate University School of Law Professor J. Lani Bader, who is well-known for his development of the arbitration and mediation field, stresses to students today.
Low, now with Judicial Arbitration and Mediation Services, said that the dispute was not the kind of case that belongs in the courts. He recalls that he and Louie spent many hours-"a lot of lunches and breakfasts"-smoothing things over among the parties.
The main suit, over the real estate sale, was eventually dismissed after no bids were made. The judges helped raise funds for reimbursement for the transcription fees to get the second suit dismissed, and no suit was filed over the election. Lee served out his term as president and Ng was elected president the next time. Ng last year began a two-year term as Chinese Six Companies' executive secretary. Lee and Ng now often collaborate on Chinatown-related projects and causes.
But an amiable solution can be a long shot, as San Francisco attorney Bruce Quan found when he worked pro bono to try to settle a dispute between the San Francisco branch of the Loong Gong Tin Yee Association and the national center in New York City.
Quan, who made a number of trips to the East Coast, says the disputes are never totally settled. "The disputes are tough to settle, with a lot of unresolved feelings. They are too emotional-like being in the Middle East; there's too much history and too much bad blood."
The attorney, who made an unsuccessful foray into politics with a couple of attempts at the San Francisco Board of Supervisors races, now spends the bulk of his time outside his private practice developing business law programs between the United States and China through U.C. Berkeley's Boalt Hall School of Law. He compares the cultural barriers between Americans and Chinese with Chinatown and the American legal system: "The associations are coming out of a Chinatown cocoon and heading into the American legal system; there are going to be complications."
New York's sister association to the Six Companies, also called the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association but often referred to as "CCBA," has not experienced the same power struggles and legal battles.
"CCBA at one time was extremely powerful, when citizens couldn't vote and law enforcement was indifferent to the Chinese community," said New York City scholar Peter Kwong. "But nowadays there are alternatives, like AALDEF [Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund]. But, in the old days there was no where to go except CCBA."
He observed: "CCBA is fairly dependent on the Nationalist Party in Taiwan for money. The new political tendency is towards independence. They no longer see the need to appeal to overseas Chinese."
Unlike its San Francisco counterpart, New York's CCBA appears to be characterized by a lack of public conflict. Some say this is because of the changing role of the organization and it's member organizations in the community over the years. Social service agencies and groups like AALDEF have displaced the more dynamic role that New York's CCBA had played in the community in the first half of this century and before.
"CCBA used to exist as a community self-help organization for new immigrants,'' says Paul Lee, a voting member of the organization. "Within that, it would also mediate conflicts between the member organizations. Nowadays they are displaced by social service organizations. Nowadays their function is to provide a social fabric. They provide a Chinese language school, a gymnasium and an auditorium. Beyond that, there isn't a clear vision."
When conflicts do occur, they tend to be small enough to be resolved internally by members. "Most of the members are of the older generation,'' said Lee. "They tend to just work things out when there is a problem."
But in San Francisco Chinatown, association disputes are more often landing in the courts. As San Francisco Superior Court Judge Lillian Sing sees it, even the most traditional Chinese Americans are becoming attuned to the American way: "sue happy or slap happy."
With a new wave of immigrants adding more complexity to the tangled disputes over elections and bylaws, the caseload for attorneys is almost destined to grow, say association members and the legal community. Too many people, Sing says, now force litigation by thinking: "We're in America; we're getting into mainstream America; everyone sues. We pay taxes, so use the system."
As she recalled the 1989 Hung On Tong case, which she attempted to mediate, Sing let out an exacerbated sigh. Neither side would budge, she said, observing that such cases often become emotional disputes fueled by bad blood percolating for years. She says egos are fragile and compromise is seen as weak.
Still, says Sing, lawsuits may not be the best way to resolve most disputes. Having developed alternative dispute resolution solutions for over a decade, she sees it as ironic that Chinese Americans are moving toward litigation even as mainstream America is moving toward arbitration and mediation-a traditional Chinese method.
Low, who recently mediated a case in San Jose over a Chinese association's elections, agrees that talking it out is often the best solution.
"Litigation can be more harmful; it's very public for organizations whose function is to promote harmony among its members and the community. Mediation is private and confidential," said Low, who believes that when parties work out something together, they achieve a "win-win" situation.
Sing stresses that solutions don't have to involve a civil trial to have teeth; litigants at any stage of a lawsuit can request the court's presiding judge to assign a judge to preside over a settlement. Said the judge: "We should remember the value of the traditional Chinese means of resolving disputes."
Appreciation is extended the Daily Journal and its assistant managing editor, Jon Kawamoto, for providing archival material used in this report. Heather Harlan contributed to this report.
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