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Profile: Esther Chung
A former railroad laborer who worked his way down to Central Texas during the 1800s, Joe Lung and his family served three kinds of food to Austinites. At Joe Lung’s Cafe downtown, the prime menu item was the 25-cent steak dinner, beloved by legislators on a budget.
Nearby, Lung’s Chinese Kitchen offered many Austinites their first tastes of Asian cuisine. The Lung family’s Cocina del Sur, located in what was then North Austin, added to the city’s wealth of Mexican food.
The stories keep on coming, especially as the city’s Asian American populace grows and transforms.
Seoul, South Korea-born Chung, 36, employs census data, city directories, architectural drawings, clippings files, biographical files, videos, oral history recordings and more than a million photographs in the center’s collection to help Asian Americans recover their cultural and familial legacies.
“We need people to start digging up these stories from the past and bring them to life — all the contributions, all nuances about our community,” Chung says. “People don’t realize how varied we are and how much there is to know.”
Growing up in Vancouver, B.C., then Houston, where her father was a pastor, then college professor of biblical studies, Chung’s young life was split between worlds.
“I was an outlier,” says Chung, whose dove gray sweater matched the winter sky outside the South Austin coffee shop where we met. “I did my own thing. When I was younger, I was heavily involved in the church. And school was just school. I almost had a dual life. Americanized life at school; Korean American life at church and home.”
At Southern Methodist University, she doubled up with religious studies and sociology. Her brother also pursued sociology.
“We’re interested in people, based on my father and mother’s work at the church,” Chung says. “And it seems like it would helpful to society if we understood it better. I always intended to go into a people-helping profession.”
After earning her master’s degree in social work at the University of Texas, Chung, who lives in South Austin with her Apple salesman husband, Stephen Martin, won one of the liaison positions at the history center.
“Prior to this job, I hadn’t seen the community out and about,” she says. “As soon as I got the job, I starting noticing Asian people more. I wanted to understand my community better and connect to it.” Then there’s the preservation part.
“Asian families aren’t taught to preserve their history, or even know it,” she says. “It’s intriguing to me. That others would care about our history and that we would be asked to share our history.”
The Chinese were the first Asians to arrive in Austin. The 1875 census counts only 20, most of them bachelors working at laundries, later at groceries or restaurants.
“There’s a mention of a Malay man suspected of killing somebody,” she says. “Probably not even Malay.”
Chung’s job at the center is confined to countries of the Indian subcontinent and farther East. This leaves out Austin’s extended Lebanese and Syrian clans, for instance, because they are considered Middle Eastern, as defined by the U.S. Census Bureau.
For many decades, the number of Asian immigrants were kept low by the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1886. Yet, by the 1930s, UT attracted students from Japan, China and India.
The Immigration Act of 1965 ended the worst of the racist quotas, and, by the 1970s, Asians arrived here in larger numbers. Successive tech booms and, as always, UT made Austin a stronger immigrant magnet.
In the past 20 years, individual Asian Americans made the news more frequently, including Austin City Council Member Jennifer Kim, Austin assistant city manager Roger Chan, community organizer Amy Wong Mok, UT scientist George Sudarshan and businessman CD Tam, for instance.
Chinese Americans were among the first to found formal associations. “Groups started as soon as there was one energized person,” Chung says.
Interestingly, the area’s Korean American social groups trace their origins to war brides who lived in Killeen, Chung says. The most recent Korean American Community Gala, which included salutes to Korean War veterans at the Renaissance Austin Hotel, was held on the same day that North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il died.
“We are so removed from the country now,” Chung says. “It’s hard to say what will happen now. No one really knows. Koreans in Korea are very hopeful about communications and possible peace. It’s hard for Korean Americans to understand the nuances.”
As early as the 1980s, Vietnamese Americans began to cluster in North Austin, especially along North Lamar Boulevard. But now, Chung says, Asian Americans are spreading out to Northwest Austin, Round Rock and Pflugerville, seeking value on homes and competitive schools.
She notices that Indian and Chinese descendants are more likely to integrate, whereas Vietnamese Americans, who arrived in a traumatic rush after the war during the 1970s, stick closer together.
Recently, she encounters more Burmese, including ethnic Karens, and Bhutanese. “I met one man from Mongolia,” she says. “He said there are three of them here. Him and his wife, and a woman in Bastrop.”
One huge resource for Chung is the new Center for Asian American Studies at UT.
“This is an emerging field,” she says. “Ours is among the few universities to have one, because Texas has so many Asians, and our history has been long and broad, but not carefully studied.”
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By Sharmyn Lilly
January 19, 2012 9:00 AM | Link to this
Michael, great article, and Esther, great work on behalf of the fabulous Austin History Center! Your work in preserving the history of this community is so significant, and you do it so well. Thank you both for this article. I will share it with my Journalism students at Travis High School.
By Michael Barnes
January 18, 2012 5:40 PM | Link to this
Harold, Thanks for the update. I'm checking with Esther to see if she meant a later version of the act. Best, Michael
By Danny Camacho
January 18, 2012 3:47 PM | Link to this
Thanks for highlighting not only Esther's work as the Asian American Community Liaison at the Austin History Center but as an individual. I volunteer at the AHC and know Ester to be not only academically qualified for her position but for also bringing her engaging personality to all who come in contact with her.
By Harold W. Leung
January 17, 2012 11:17 PM | Link to this
The Chinese Exclusion Act was in 1882.