By Sylvia Yeh Kataoka and Hal Kataoka

In 1974, at the age of six, I moved from Taiwan to Japan, where I was scorned for being Chinese. I accompanied my father, a well-known chef, who dared to immigrate there with a mere five dollars in his torn wallet and a promise to give his family a better life. His opportunities were minimal since he had a limited education. However, he was self-educated and then recognized as a master chef.

Initially he lived like an indentured servant since he only earned a meager salary in addition to room and board for the family. Being resilient and adaptable as a child, this Third Culture kid quickly assimilated, becoming fluent in the complex Japanese language. Japan’s complicated culture, still showing the remnants of ancient samurai culture, stressed honor and conformity to a strict social hierarchy. School ingrained this concept - “Don’t embarrass the school by your behavior or personal beliefs.” But my core life values conflicted with their caste system, which made me feel like a social outcast.

In just six years, my family was uprooted once again. Fearing that his sons would be drafted into the Taiwanese military, my father quickly searched for a sponsor to immigrate to California, where he became the Taiwanese version of Yan Can Cook, a renowned TV chef. My father, Hsiang-Huan, served as a guest chef for Chinese cooking on a Japanese TV show in San Francisco.

By 1987, my family had worked relentlessly to purchase their first Chinese restaurant in Millbrae, which they named the Mandarin. The restaurant flourished when San Francisco International Airport became a major global transit center for the Asia Pacific Rim.

I moved 14 times as a child. This nomadic existence happened because my parents leapt at every opportunity to pursue upward mobility and add to my father’s repertoire of culinary arts. Since my parents could barely communicate in English, I had the daunting task of managing the restaurant while attending San Francisco State University to pursue a bachelor’s degree in Japanese. I still felt like a stranger in a strange land until we finally settled in Millbrae in 1987.

Sadly, the family business closed after my mother, Shuh-Mi Yeh, passed away. The restaurant had become a sanctuary for thousands who’d witnessed the city’s cultural metamorphosis. The transformation began when the original residents vacated the area, and numerous Asian families moved in because they felt a natural kinship with the tranquil community that the Yeh family had helped pioneer for over twenty arduous years.

For the last fifteen years, I have sponsored numerous nonprofit events that have benefited impoverished families, especially those along the San Mateo Coast and in San Francisco’s Tenderloin area. I have also assisted hundreds of children who live in the Salinas Valley, many of them the sons and daughters of poor immigrant farmers, which Steinbeck wrote about in “Of Mice and Men” and “The Grapes of Wrath,” and still labor in the fields there. My humanitarian work has not gone unnoticed by the people who benefited from my passion for helping those who feel and are invisible due to societal norms and economic circumstances. Today, I am on the Board of Directors of AACP, promoting and helping the Asian American Pacific Islander community, and the “San Mateo County Jobs For Youth Workgroup Board,” which assists hundreds of at-risk children living in rural Salinas.

I still take inspiration from the examples that my mother and father set for me. This Third Culture kid is helping those who are like me, those poor kids that think they don’t have a place to call home.