GIVING BACK: "Our lives evolve around the Wang YMCA," says Dr. Guen. The YMCA was an important part of his childhood in Boston's Chinatown, and now he has dedicated himself to actively supporting community organizations. (Kitty Huang)
Dr. Guen has owned a dental practice for 31 years, on Beacon Street, in a prominent neighborhood in Brookline, Mass. At a glance, he lives a luxurious lifestyle, as do many Asian-Americans today. Guen, however, comes from a line of manual laborers who worked in Chinatown.
The Early Days
Soon after the repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1943, Guen’s grandfather came to America, alone from Toisan, a small coastal city in China’s Guangdong Province. Sixteen years later, Guen’s grandfather brought his three children to America.
Guen does not know the reason for his grandfather’s journey west. “The older generation was very quiet about the past,” he said. His earliest memory is of living at 100 Tyler Street, with his mother working as a seamstress in Chinatown and his father at a laundromat in Roxbury.
It was before the era of the washer and dryer. Guen’s father hand washed the laundry, starched the clothes, and dried pants with extremely hot plates. The room was scorching hot in summer, and the water was freezing cold in winter.
Guen never felt poor, though, as everybody was in the same economic class. He would play kick-the-can with his friends. A treat would be riding in someone’s car to Revere Beach—two families of three adults and six children packed in one station wagon.
Most of the time, Guen hung out with older children at the Wang YMCA. The Chinese students were not welcome in sports at school, and the YMCA provided an important outlet for them to swim and play basketball.
There was some outside help for Chinatown, too. The Sisters of Maryknoll helped Chinese parents name their babies. Dr. Sigmund Simon made house calls to Chinatown, which was one big family. Guen dreamed of someday traveling and seeing the world, perhaps studying abroad.
Over the Great Wall
At age 20, Guen began his studies at Tufts Dental School. He lived at the dorm in Chinatown, across the street from his childhood home. Tufts Dental School had always been there. Mostly it was just a thick cement wall to the Chinese community. Now, for the very first time, Guen stepped foot inside.
He had already met Lily, his future wife, before he started dental school. She was born in Toisan and moved to the United States from Hong Kong with her entire family during her teenage years. Lily felt a sense of responsibility to support her family.
“If I work a little more, then my parents can work a little less,” she said. She worked as a medical secretary and bought the family a triple-decker house in Boston’s Jamaica Plain neighborhood, where they still reside today. “Guen is active in the community,” Lily says, “but he always finds a way to include me.”
The Chinese Restaurants
Guen’s parents later worked in Chinese restaurants and finally saved enough money to open their own place in the Boston suburb of Braintree, where Chinese food was still new and exotic.
“Chinese immigrants didn’t own restaurants for money,” Guen explains. A restaurant owner works long hours and takes great risks. Nonetheless, being a restaurant owner meant being in charge of one’s destiny. This sense of control equates to the freedom and opportunity of the American Dream.
The “white man” had special power. Guen remembered seeing his father’s generation of Chinese workers complying with every demand of their white bosses and accepting the degrading treatment from their white customers. The Chinese workers did not speak up or fight back.
Most Chinese in Chinatown were not citizens. “They didn’t have time to learn English and pass the citizen’s test,” Guen said. No organization served this group. These Chinese immigrants did not complain because there was no one to listen.
During that time, the Vincent Chin hate crime occurred in Troy, Michigan. Chin, a Chinese immigrant, was beaten to death in June 1982, after his bachelor’s party, in a town that was angered by Japanese automakers causing American job losses.
The criminals, arrested by two policemen who witnessed the beating, did not serve time in jail. This case marked the beginning of the Asian-American civil rights movement.
Fighting for the Underdog
Guen was deeply affected by the injustice he saw and heard. He believes that every human being should have equal rights and wants to help those who cannot speak for themselves. To accomplish this, he has dedicated himself to actively supporting and participating in community organizations and events.
The martial arts he learned when he was young gave him self-assurance. Now he has been a head coach for the volleyball program at the Boston Knights athletic club for more than a decade. In this way, he helps teenagers gain self-esteem and develop discipline from sportsmanship—just as the Wang YMCA had helped him.
Guen also founded the Academy of the Pacific Rim Charter School in Boston’s Hyde Park neighborhood, providing minority children an opportunity to receive quality education in the inner city. He has taken an important role in more than 15 community organizations, including vice-chair of the Boston School Committee.
The Taiwan Connection
Taipei and Boston are sister cities because of Guen. When Taiwan’s president, Harvard alumnus, Ying-Jeou Ma, was the mayor of Taipei, Guen arranged a meeting between Ma and Boston mayor, Thomas Menino. The meeting was set for half an hour, but it lasted much longer because Guen found common ground to connect both parties and cities.
When Taiwan donated the Boston Chinatown Gate, years earlier, Guen helped to make the plaque and also helped Taiwan receive public recognition. The Republic of China’s (Taiwan) flag was raised at the celebration ceremony.
Most people wish for a bigger house, but Guen hopes to integrate Taiwan into the world and assist Taiwan in making connections with China. A dentist who never sought political office, Guen’s effort is sincere and genuine.
Guen’s family tells a typical Chinese survivor story. There are still numerous Chinese immigrants trying to make ends meet in Boston’s Chinatown today. Guen’s grandfather and father paved the way for him, and now he is doing the same for the generations to come.
Kitty Huang is a freelance writer in the Boston area.
