Ellie Lee - A Kind of Wisdom

 

 

So, there's a wisdom that fathers have and then there's the wisdom that my father has. For example, when he does things, he thinks he's totally brilliant and I just think he's crazy. For example, when we first immigrated from Hong Kong, he thought it would be a good idea for all of us to have American names which would make sense, because it would make the transition a lot easier. And so, my dad chose the American name Ming, [audience laughter] even though it's like not even his Chinese name. It's just like another Chinese name. It's like a dynasty. 

 

So, when we came over to this country, we really had nothing. We were penniless. So, in order to save money, my dad thought it was a really smart idea to make and design my first winter coat. I was three years old. And to this day, he thinks it's like the best design. There you go. [audience aww] [audience laughter] But seriously, he thinks it's like, “Oh, this is great, we should market this.” So, anyways, that's the wisdom that my father has. 

 

One more example of his wisdom. One day, he came home and there was a sale on belts and he bought a monogram belt and he was so excited. He's like, “Look at this.” It had this big shiny letter A on it even though our family name is Lee. And I was like, “Dad, why did you get a letter A belt? That doesn't make any sense.” He's like, “Oh, I got A because A is for Ace,” [audience laughter] which is-- You have to understand something about Chinese people. Chinese people are obsessed about being number one like, “I have a belt now that says, so I'm number one, Ace.” If you never noticed in Chinatowns across the country, Chinese business people, they always have to find the best number one name for their business in order to bring in all the money and the good fortune, which is why everything's like an imperial dynasty, lucky dragon number one kitchen. That is my dad. That's his mentality. 

 

So, in the first few years of being in this country, just he had no time off and worked crazy and managed to save up a little money to start up his own business. It was a very modest grocery store in Boston's Chinatown. And of course, he called it Ming's Market. But in Chinese, the name of it was piányí shìchǎng, which literally means cheap-priced market. And it was that. Even as a little kid, I didn't understand, like, literally he told me one day that he would mark up something by 5 cents, mark up another thing by 10 cents, and I was just like, “How are you ever going to make money? This business model is insane. What's the wisdom of that?” But strangely enough, almost immediately, he developed a really loyal following in Boston's Chinatown, because for the first time, I think working families and working poor families actually had a place where they could buy affordable, healthy, good groceries and eat well, which is no small thing when you're poor. 

 

So, my dad, after about 10 years of having this grocery store, he built it up to be a very successful business. And by 1989, he had moved into an enormous space. It became New England's largest Asian market. And at the same time that year-- I mean, I was a snotty teenager. I still thought, well, you're crazy. You're a successful businessman, but you're nuts. You have crazy ideas. At the same time, he'd been renting a first floor in this vacant building that had been vacant for 20, no, 30 years. And the landlord was trying to renovate the other floors to try to rent it out as retail space, but he was doing everything on the cheap. So, instead of hiring a contractor, he was welding and renovating on his own without pulling permits. 

 

So, one day, as you can probably expect, something got out of hand and this big fire broke out as he was welding. But it was okay. They evacuated the building, about 150 people, and the fire trucks arrived immediately, and everything was fine until the fire department hooked up their hoses to the hydrants and there was no water to fight the fire. They were like, “Huh, that's weird.” So, they went down a couple of blocks and tried the next hydrant, and it was totally dry. What had happened was that the city of Boston a few months prior, they were doing road construction. Generally, when you drill, if they drill deep, they turn off the water pressure in case they hit a water main. When they sealed up the road, they forgot to turn the pressure back up. So, the firefighters had no tools to fight the fire. 

 

It was just a disaster. It was just like an hour later, the building's still on fire and there's no water. They're trying to jerry rig something from a nearby hydrant, like 10 blocks away. If things couldn't get worse, the fire jumped an alley and the building next door caught on fire. And on the top floor was 10,000 square feet of illegally stashed fireworks. So, firefighters couldn't scale the ladders. I mean, it was a surreal moment, because things were exploding in celebration, you know, you'd have fireworks. As my dad stood there completely helpless, watching his life's work just be destroyed in a moment through no fault of his own. 

 

So, I got a call. I was a sophomore at the time in college, and I went out to the store the next day when it was just smoldering. It wasn't on fire anymore. As I made my approach to the store, I remember seeing three elderly women across the street and they were crying. And so, I went up to them and I said, “Is everything okay? Why are you crying?” And the lady looked at me and then she looked at my dad's store, burned down store, and pointed and teary eyed said, “Where are we going to go now that we don't have a home?” That was like a turning point for me. I hadn't really thought about my dad's store in that way. I just thought it was something he was doing to provide for the family. But in fact, he was providing for a greater community. 

 

These elderly women, they didn't have a community center to go to. They didn't have a public park in Chinatown. This was the only place where they would actually run into their friends and they spent a lot of time there, in a way, it was like a second home. I guess it is true. It sounds corny, but you only really do realize what you have when you lose it. And so, in the months that followed, I kept begging my dad for more stories. One time, he told me a story about how a little boy--

 

I asked him what he did with people who were shoplifters, because I was really curious. And he said, “Well, one day, I caught a kid shoplifting. He was only 10. He didn't know who I was. I was following him around. He was just taking stuffing it in his bag, putting it in his pockets. At one moment, he actually took a break from stealing, and sat down and started eating the food he had stolen.” He was just right in the middle of an aisle. My dad came up to him, and he didn't know who he was. He said, “Hey, little boy, have you had enough to eat?” And the little boy rubbed his belly. He's like, “Almost.” My dad's like, “Hey, so, where are your parents?” He's like, “Well, they're at work.” He's like, “Oh, why aren't you at home?” He's like, “Because there's no food at home.” 

 

And my dad said, “Well, you know, when you take stuff, especially if it's at a store and you don't pay for it, it's actually stealing.” And the little boy starts getting really nervous, like, “Oh, my God, this guy's going to get me in trouble.” He's angling for a way to get out. And my dad's like, “So, in the future, if you don't have anything to eat at home, you please just come and find me and ask me for whatever you need. If you ask, I'll give you whatever you want. Just don't steal, because stealing is wrong.” 

 

And in the months that followed, I think my dad really looked forward to seeing the little boy. It was these stories that I was craving, and I was asking my dad, because in some way, I think I was trying to recreate something that I had lost or had taken for granted. So, whenever we went to Chinatown, I remember lots of people would come up to us and say, “Please, we need a store like this again. When are you going to open up your store?” And it was hard, because my dad was basically penniless. The fire had caused about $20 million worth of damage, and he barely had enough insurance to cover it. I mean, it was not just inventory, but the bean sprout machine, like the machine that he leased to wash and dry bean sprouts. I mean, stuff like that. 

 

And so, he really had no money, but he had this idea that maybe he could pool together what little money he did have with a lot of the original employees, people for whom they were immigrants and they got their first jobs through my dad at the store and had been working there since the 1970s. So, they pulled together. It was a big risk. The only location they could find was just on the outskirts of Chinatown, which in the early 1990s, during the last recession in, it was like a no man's land. It's like this area, really-- It was so unsafe, and the only reason you would ever go there is to get a prostitute or drugs. It was so unsafe. 

 

And at the time, I remember in college thinking, what's the wisdom of that? Why are you going there? It's so unsafe. No one's going to go. You're going to lose your life savings. But he did it anyways, because he's crazy. Almost overnight, the place was revitalized. There were really loyal people that families from the suburbs came and gave patronage to my dad. People walked from Chinatown. And then, soon thereafter, more and more businesses started popping up, and then there was more and more foot traffic and then families started moving back into the neighborhood. It was an amazing thing. He helped revitalize his neighborhood to the point that then 15 years later, it became one of the most valuable pieces of real estate in Boston, which is why my dad got an eviction notice from the owner, because he wanted to kick my dad out and knock down the whole block and build luxury condos. This was a few years ago. 

 

So, I remember my dad at the time was 70, and I said, “Dad, what do you want to do? You have 90 employees, and they're all in their 40s and 50s. They don't speak English. They're very hard to employ. What's going to happen to them?” I remember at the time, my dad said, “I'm 70 years old. I'm too old for this. I'm too old to fight.” I understand when my dad says that. But at the time, I decided that I wasn't too old to fight. So, I organized the community and-- Sorry. I organized the community and led this grassroots movement to fight city hall and fight one of the largest developers in all of Boston to try to hold ground. [audience cheers and applause] 

 

At our first public hearing, it was a really amazing turnout. We got enough that even the mayor changed his tune and started supporting where we were coming from. It was an incredible thing. So, after the first initial hearing, I remember going to the store afterwards. Immediately when I walked in, there was these two older women who were my dad's employees, and they rushed right up to me and I said, “Thank you so much for what you did last night. We normally don't think that we have a voice and we normally don't think we can advocate for ourselves in that way. So, thank you for doing what you did.” When I looked into their eyes, I think I felt like the same feeling probably that my dad felt when he saw the boy that once shoplifted or saw the old women outside the store weeping. When I looked into their eyes, I saw so much compassion and humility and grace. It was at that moment that I understood the wisdom that my father had given me. Thank you.