Editor’s Note:
As the South Coast Chinese Cultural Association and Irvine Chinese School near their 50th anniversary, a special editorial team is collecting reflections from former presidents and principals to preserve this half-century journey.
Cultural Express launches the “Brilliant Fifty” series, featuring selected essays that illuminate the people and stories that shaped our community.
Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill!
This thunderous shouting was not the roar of a battlefield, nor was it soldiers training in bayonet combat.
This was the rallying cheer of the Irvine team's cheer squad during a tug-of-war competition at the Southern California Chinese Athletic Games nearly forty years ago, in 1986.
Seamless Teamwork · Championship Victory
Back then, the Southern California Chinese Athletic Games were held annually in the San Gabriel Valley. Participants were primarily teachers, students, and parents from various Chinese schools.
To encourage active participation and strive for honor, Chinese schools, parents, and boards of directors threw themselves into preparation with great enthusiasm.
In those days, our Irvine team not only excelled in various track and field events but also won the overall championship in both the men's and women's tug-of-war competitions, events that demanded the utmost teamwork.
The tournament followed a group elimination format, best two out of three matches.
To win the overall championship, a team had to overcome numerous challenges, advancing step by step with caution, without a moment of carelessness or relaxation.
Our Irvine team members weren't necessarily all tall, strong, or physically imposing.
The competition was about strategy, fighting spirit, tenacity, and the seamless cooperation among team members and the cheer squad.
That day, led by our founding principal, Mitzi Fu, and with Coach Shih-How Chang providing on-the-spot tactics, our Irvine athletes, both male and female, won match after match–astonishingly, without a single loss!
Another noteworthy point is that, compared to other Chinese schools, we in Irvine were quite far from the San Gabriel Valley.
Even with active mobilization, it was sometimes difficult to gather enough participants for certain events.
For several student relay races, we didn't have enough boys and had to draft girls to run as substitutes at the last moment. At the time, we just didn't want to miss the competitions.
Who knew that our Irvine girls, proving their mettle equal to any man, actually won several championships in the boys' division while running as substitutes.
The following year, after protests from other Chinese schools, the Southern California Chinese Athletic Association explicitly stipulated that henceforth, girls could not represent teams in the boys' division.
Scholarships Founded · Talents Nurtured
By the 1980s, many children from Chinese families in Irvine were already entering or preparing for university.
In the 1986-87 academic year, the Board of Directors, wanting to encourage these diligent students, decided to establish the Irvine Chinese School Scholarship with surplus funds from the annual conference and a generous donation from Santa Ana's Grand National Bank.
In its first year, the scholarship was awarded to three graduating high school seniors, each receiving US$500 (equivalent to about $1,500 today).
The eligibility criteria for applicants were :
- An average grade of 'B' or above in both their American school and Irvine Chinese School studies.
- Character references from teachers at both their American school and the Chinese school.
- Passing a Chinese-language interview conducted by a scholarship committee formed by the Board of Directors.
That year, after a selection process, Feng-Yi Lee, Li-Hui Chang, and Chi-Yi Ho were awarded the scholarships. They all went on to attend excellent universities.
In those years, besides learning Chinese at the Sunday Irvine Chinese School, students in the Irvine Unified School District could also take Chinese as an elective as part of their regular curriculum, offered at University High School.
The following year (1988), to further encourage Irvine school district students studying Chinese, the Board approved awarding scholarships to two graduating students from that program, each receiving $250.
The Irvine Chinese School Scholarship was later expanded in both scope and number of recipients, benefiting outstanding students in their final two years of high school.
Under the continued promotion by the Board over many years, it has aided many excellent Irvine youth.
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United in Service・Bound for Life
In 1982, my wife, Jiapyng Niu, took up the position of upper-grade teacher at Irvine Chinese School. Three years later, she was elected as the Principal of the Chinese School.
In those days, the principal was often a woman, and their spouses naturally took on the role of unpaid school aides, responsible for tasks like managing order before and after class, printing and distributing schedules, delivering documents, and so on.
This was a consistent tradition, from Dr. Tsun-Sen Fu (Mitzi Fu's husband), Dr. Tom Lee (Terry Lee's husband), Tingli Chen (Phen Cheng's husband), to me. Passing the 'test' of being a school aide was a prerequisite for being considered for election to the Board.
I was honored to be elected as the Chairman of the Board of Directors back then, with my primary responsibility being to assist and promote the affairs of the Chinese school.
The sense of fulfillment from those years was that through participation and contribution, I could play my part in the development of the community, and I also made many like-minded, lifelong companions and good friends. (Brilliant Fifty VII)
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