The Accidental Mayor

A Collection of Stories from the Side Streets of Chinatown to the Main Street of City Hall

My family and I immigrated from Hong Kong to Los Angeles’ Chinatown in 1969 hoping to build a better life.

It felt like the universe was against us. From living in a cockroach-infested apartment with my family of nine to getting beaten up on an almost regular basis in school, I didn’t understand why we chose America as our new home.

Over the last six decades, I have lived through the happiest and most harrowing experiences and emotions. Very few things made sense in the moment, but the opacity of my very unorthodox path has gotten clearer. I strove to get a college education, dual master’s degrees, recently a doctorate, worked as an engineer, a publishing executive, a government advisor, and now the mayor of a city.

The throughline of my journey has been resilience, love from my family and friends, and an unwavering conviction to have a voice in the world. I wrote this book hoping that you can empathize, relate to, and learn from my collection of stories and adventures.