Chinese Club Practices Many Arts of Unity

In a spacious room where elegrant drawings of Chinese bamboo groves line the wall and a gold-painted screen shades the doorway, heels clacked in time to “Achy Breaky Heart.”

And so began another day at the Chinese Club of San Marino. Established in 1980, the club has become a focal point for the Chinese American community -- a place to maintain traditions and to learn about Californian trends.

Cobbled together in 1994 and 1997 from vacant stores, a surf-wear shop and a salon, the clubhouse features an eclectic array of weekly events, including classes in line dancing, Peking Opera, yoga and yuen ji wu (a form of martial arts that is like tai chi but faster).

The clubhouse, which was the first permanent space for a Chinese club in the region, also holds occasional workshops on flower arrangement and sushi-rolling.

Nancy Chen, 49, who has been line dancing since the class started six months ago, estimated that she visits the clubhouse five times a week.

One of the purposes of the club,Chen said, is “to combine all cultures together, not just Chinese.” The mother of three said she participates in yoga, line dancing and a book club there.

Eugene Sun, a former president of the nonprofit group, said, “In the late ‘70s, the Chinese Club was formed because there was disharmony. It was to help students to do better in schools -- get better grades and communicate better.”

Now it is a symbol of the way Chinese have also become San Marinans.

“We offer whatever the community wants, whatever is popular. Sometimes it’s line dancing. Sometimes it’s Chinese painting,” said Dennis Lin, the current president.

“We want to get people into the mainstream and be proactively involved in the community,” said Becky Ung, president of the San Marino Board of Education, who teaches workshops at the club on emotional intelligence and parenthood.

“I only remember when I first moved here -- I wished someone would explain to me how the school system works, how I can get involved,” she said.

To this end, Ung often distributes fliers about school issues during yoga or line-dancing classes.

The club has also evolved into a crucial link between San Marino community leaders and Chinese Americans.

Rosa Zee, a part-time assistant to the Chinese Club president who was doing paperwork one Friday morning in an office behind the big hall, talked proudly about the club’s monthly luncheon for city and school officials, police officers and businesspeople who may not know much about Chinese Americans.

“Becky and I usually design something cultural. There are a lot of things the community wants to know, but they don’t know where to start,” Zee said.

San Marino Police Chief Arl Farris said the luncheons have helped his department better serve the Chinese community, which constitutes 41% of the city’s population.

Farris remembers one session in which members of the Chinese community talked about traditional Chinese ways of showing respect, such as looking down or away from people as they are speaking, in contrast with Americans’ tendency to look speakers straight in the eye.

“Perhaps in the past, officers were more assertive when people were looking down and away, repeating questions more assertively or pressing the issue more than now. Now when we see a person looking down or away, we know that what they’re doing is being respectful, honoring the officer’s position,” Farris said.

He added that the Police Department, which has no Chinese-speaking officers, also draws about once a month from a list of translators supplied by the Chinese Club.

“The list is vital,” said Farris. He said his dispatcher can call one of the 30 volunteers at any hour of the day or night when officers encounter someone who can’t speak English.

The club isn’t limited to ethnic Chinese. Lois Matthews was scissor-stepping and “grapevining” with the 40 other women at the recent line-dancing class.

“I come because I love line dancing. A lot of my friends do it,” Matthews said. She knows Yung, the instructor, through their church.

Fen-Cheng Chong, a 73-year-old in a lime green warmup suit, was dancing near Matthews. Chong doesn’t speak English, so the words to “Achy Breaky Heart” and Yung’s calls to grapevine -- a sideways dance step -- were lost on her.

Luckily, Ung was dancing next to her. As Ung shouted out in Mandarin to go back, go forward, and niu pi gu (shake your behind), Chong began doing the electric slide in sync with the group.

“I adore coming here,” Chong said. “It gives me a chance to sweat.”

And laugh. Giggles erupted every two minutes during the lesson as women turned the wrong way or called out corrections in Mandarin when the teacher made a mistake.

Later, when Matthews made a joke -- in English -- they laughed with her too.