Kang memorial: Another sad event for Oakland’s Chinatown
By William Wong
Crowd scene at Jinghong Kang memorial. Photo by William Wong.
A month ago, I was out of town and wasn’t following local news. It was weeks later that I finally read in detail about the killing of Jinghong Kang on the 1900-block of Webster Street in Oakland on July 18.
Déjà vu all over again, in the immortal words of Yogi Berra, the legendary New York Yankee catcher known for his malapropisms.
In mid-April, Tian Sheng Yu was beaten near the Fox Oakland Theater and later died. That killing got a lot of news coverage and unleashed intense emotions among ethnic Chinese in the Bay Area, especially Oakland’s Chinatown.
On August 18, 2010, it was déjà vu all over again — a memorial and fundraising event for Jinghong Kang at the Oakland Asian Cultural Center in Chinatown, less than a mile from Kang’s shooting death. On April 23, there was a vigil for Tian Sheng Yu at Telegraph and 18th Street.
The two cases share some elements. Neither man was from Oakland. Yu lived in San Francisco, Kang in Fairfax, Virginia. Both happened to be in Oakland when violence struck each of them. African-Americans have been arrested and charged with the crimes — two 18-year-old young men in the Yu case, a 20-something man and a 30-something woman in the Kang case.
At a superficial level, these two killings are racial, a black-on-Chinese thing. It is at this level that emotions run high for some ethnic Chinese in the Bay Area.
Rather than being explicit anti-Chinese hate crimes, these two sad cases appear more to be crimes of opportunity with Yu and Kang being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
After Kang's memorial event, I chatted briefly with an ethnic Chinese acquaintance, who said he heard anti-black anger from a few Chinese in the crowd. In the aftermath of the Yu killing four months ago, there too was anti-black rhetoric uttered privately or in anonymous blog comments by some Chinese and other Asians locally.
In their public comments, elected and appointed officials and community leaders (Chinese, African-American, and Caucasian) have been politically correct.
That was the case at Kang memorial. Oakland city representatives — City Council members (Chinese, African-American and Caucasian), the Mayor’s office (African-American), the police department (Caucasian) — expressed condolences to Wendy Wang, Kang’s widow, and preached a message of unity, condemning the violence.
The most touching moments were the comments of Kang’s widow. According to Carl Chan, a Chinatown community leader who organized the event, Wendy Wang at first didn’t want to fly out from Virginia, but she agreed to do so after receiving sympathy and support from Oaklanders of all racial backgrounds upset at her husband’s death on an otherwise safe Oakland street. OCA-East Bay, an Asian-American civil-rights organization, sponsored the widow’s flight to Oakland.
In a gentle, soft voice, at first in her native Mandarin, then in barely accented English, she thanked everyone for their expressions of sympathy.
"The pain and impact on our family are beyond words. We are deeply touched by the overwhelming support. We have experienced love in this time of unbearable pain. I will be brave facing the future, knowing we are not alone. Let’s all treasure our lives and love each other as my husband did. He lived a meaningful life…I don’t want to see tragedy again. I hope we will unite together to stop the violence.”
After the formal program, I asked her about the future for her and her three sons, ages 17, 12, and 10. “I have no thoughts about the future right now,” she said in soft, even tones. “The whole family is in deep sorrow. My mind hasn’t concentrated well in the past month … I still can’t accept the fact that this has happened.”
A family friend, Michael Zhang, a Silicon Valley engineer, said Kang and his wife came to the United States almost 20 years ago for graduate education. Kang had higher degrees, including a doctorate, in mathematics and electrical engineering, and he was in the Bay Area to interview for a possible job with Google in Silicon Valley. Zhang said he didn’t know why Kang was in Oakland on that fateful night. News reports quoting Oakland police have said Kang was in Oakland on the evening of July 18, a Sunday, to have his teeth cleaned from an Oakland dentist who was a member of the same church as he was.
Even though the two killings happened outside of Chinatown per se, they continue to resonate deeply among many in Chinatown and Chinese-Americans in the Bay Area.
In light of the trimming of eighty police officers, Carl Chan, the Oakland Chinatown leader, said many Chinatown businesses are installing surveillance cameras. One hears that nighttime business in Chinatown isn’t what it used to be.
This story originally appeared on OaklandSeen.com.
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