Steve Yip undertook this conversation in 2022 with Richard Aston, the author of Views From Gold Mountain. In this conversation, Aston shares his introduction to the Chinese community of San Francisco, his friendship with the late Him Mark Lai, and reveals some nuggets about the early progressive movement in the Chinese community.

1965 — the calm and complacent facade of the Chinatown community was forever blown open through no-nonsense, jaw-dropping exposures about the Chinatown community. The culprit was one George Woo, a spokesperson for the Wah Ching, a Chinatown street organization composed primarily of disaffected Hong Kong immigrants.

Shannon Yip — passionate practitioner of Chinese folk dance — shares her tenure as a retired Oakland CA, educator and advocate for bilingual/bicultural education and surmounting policy and cultural challenges.

In this Part 2 interview, Shannon Yip dives into her journey as a passionate practitioner, dancer, and promoter of Chinese folk dance through the Chinese Folk Dance Association of San Francisco. As the program director, she helped to expose dance students to other cultural communities while promoting Chinese cultural diversity.

Richard Aston’s Views From Gold Mountain is four books in one sharing one relentless thread — the monumental and historical offenses suffered by the Chinese diaspora. Most saliently, it posits an in-depth look at some key historical figures of the Chinese Marxist Left in the U.S.