Him Mark Lai

Him Mark Lai (Chinese: 麥禮謙; pinyin: Mài Lǐqiān) (November 1, 1925 San Francisco – May 21, 2009) was an internationally renowned activist and historian of Chinese America, a highly respected leader of the community, and prolific writer. One of his many accomplishments included helping restore the state of Chinese American historiography. A master archivist, Lai “rescued, collected, catalogued, preserved and shared” historical sources in Chinese and English. [10] He was known as the “Dean of Chinese American History” by his academic peers, despite the fact that he was professionally trained as a mechanical engineer with no advanced training in the academic field of history. The Chronicle of Higher Education named Lai “the scholar who legitimized the study of Chinese America”.

Lai was born in San Francisco, California on November 1, 1925. At the age of five, Lai attended Chinese school at San Francisco Chinatown’s Nom Kue School. Early in his life, Lai showed great aptitude for history. In high school, Lai won first prize at a San Francisco citywide history contest.He attended first in City College of San Francisco for two years and later, he obtained a Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley in 1947. In the 1960s, Lai began taking night courses in history at the University of California, Berkeley’s extension program. Inspired by his instructor Stanford Lyman, Lai started to pursue research in Chinese American history. As a community activist, Lai joined the Chinese American Democratic Youth League, or Mun Ching, where he met Laura Jung, whom he eventually married in 1953. In 1963, Lai joined the Chinese Historical Society of America, and there he began to accumulate research on Chinese American history. Lai has also curated several exhibits, and taught courses in Chinese American history at San Francisco State University, University of California, Berkeley and City College of San Francisco.

Lai was not satisfied with the ways the Chinese American experience had been depicted in mainstream history writing, and so he collaborated with Thomas Chinn and Philip Choy to publish A History of the Chinese in California: A Syllabus, in 1969. With Philip Choy, Lai also wrote History of the Chinese in America: An Outline, in 1972. Lai and Choy used this piece as the foundation to co-teach a course at San Francisco State University in 1969 and also taught the same course at UC Berkeley’s Ethnic Studies Department in the 1970s. This course became the basis for understanding the Chinese American experience and agenda for pursuing further research.

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