Even Chinatown is firmly on U.S. soil, some of the elders remain tied to root country politics, which means the Nationalist Party (Kuo Min Tang) on Taiwan v. the Communist Party on the Chinese mainland. Most U.S. Chinatowns have leaders favoring the Nationalists, but pragmatic Chinese Americans in all Chinatowns also recognize the reality that the Communist government ruling mainland China is a fact of life.

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William Wong was born and grew up in Oakland’s Chinatown. He went on to a distinguished journalism career (The Wall Street Journal, Oakland Tribune, The News Hour with Jim Lehrer). He is the author of Yellow Journalist: Dispatches from Asian America (Temple University Press, 2001) and Images of America: Oakland’s Chinatown (Arcadia Publishing Co., 2004).

Visit his web sites, http://www.yellowjournalist.com and http://www.oaklandchinatownhistory.org.