Him Mark Lai
Chinese American Historian
San Francisco, CA
For more than forty years, Him Mark Lai has researched, recorded and published the history of Chinese in America -- he was among the first to do so. His works explore the experience of not only Chinese immigrants in America, but also Chinese immigrants around the world. He is known among his colleagues as the "dean of Chinese American Studies" and has many published works that serve as important references for scholars on Chinese America.
Lai is the co-founder and co-coordinator of a San Francisco-based program called "In Search of Roots." For more than a decade, this program has helped young Chinese Americans trace their ancestry to China by teaching them about the migration patterns within China and to the United States. Through the program, they are shown how to perform genealogical research, and then encouraged to go to China to visit their ancestral villages. Lai has created an enormous personal collection of documents relating to Chinese Americans and freely opens his archive to researchers, students, reporters and writers.
He is acknowledged in countless monographs and articles on Chinese American life, is a board member of the Chinese Historical Society of America and a former board member of the Chinese Culture Foundation of San Francisco.
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