Chinese Los Angeles

First in an occasional series looking at the increasingly close connections between China and California. -- -- Midway through the first half of the exhibition soccer match this week, the local all-stars were advancing against David Beckham and the Los Angeles Galaxy. The crowd at Shanghai Stadium stood up and roared. In a VIP suite, Jamie Lee hardly noticed the action on the field: She was too busy schmoozing with Chinese reporters. "One of these days, you should come to L.A.

Halfway through a three-month visit to this country, they've received the red carpet treatment at some of Los Angeles' largest companies and socialized in the Palos Verdes, Beverly Hills and Tarzana homes of some of the city's most successful business executives. But on Thursday, the two dozen Chinese industrial managers here for an unusual manufacturing leadership conference got the gritty sidewalk treatment on skid row.

Shortly after arriving in Los Angeles in 1977, David Tan legally reclaimed the Chinese surname his family had been forced to give up a decade earlier when the Indonesian government banned the use of Chinese names, language or characters. He spent the next two decades quietly carving out a new life for himself, his wife and three children, settling in the eastern San Gabriel Valley community of Walnut.

The Sun Yat Sen Chinese Institute will hold a dual celebration Saturday to mark the language and cultural center's 15th anniversary and usher in the Year of the Tiger. The new year celebration will include Chinese folk dances, songs and plays--all performed by children who study Mandarin and Cantonese at the center's Saturday classes, said Principal Lena Lee. "They are not professionals but they have been practicing for two months to show their culture through these performances," she said.

The poll was a collaborative effort between the Los Angeles Times and the Hong Kong Transition Project, sponsored by Baptist University, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong University, University of Southern Queensland and University of Hawaii. The Times Poll interviewed 773 adult Chinese residents in six Southern California counties--Los Angeles, Orange, San Diego, Riverside, San Bernardino and Ventura--by telephone between May 9 and May 27.

Calvin Pan, a West Covina computer specialist, is no fan of communism and has no interest in ever visiting mainland China. Despite his indifference, even hostility, toward the home of his ancestors, however, this Chinese immigrant shares the mainland's desire to bring former territories Hong Kong and his native Taiwan back into the Chinese fold. That's why Pan, despite his worries about Hong Kong's future, supports the return of the British colony to China on July 1.

Hundreds of Taiwan supporters demonstrated in front of the Chinese Consulate in Los Angeles on Wednesday, demanding an immediate end to China's bombing rehearsals near the island nation. Chanting "China, hands off Taiwan!" and "China, Asia's Iraq!"

Joyce Wong, a computer programmer from Taiwan who lives near Chinatown, doesn't mind when her family watches TV. In fact, she encourages it. That's because the Wongs watch the Chinese Communication Channel, a satellite service that offers 24-hour programming in Mandarin, the official language of China and Taiwan. Wong's parents, who do not speak English, learned about the Unabomber scare that way. Her American-born toddlers hone their Chinese with a Taipei family sitcom.

A Chinese national was convicted Tuesday of kidnaping a fellow Chinese businessman from a Rosemead motel and attempting to extort $50,000 from him during a two-day ordeal in October, 1993. Carl Zhang, 32, was found guilty on single counts of conspiracy to kidnap and extortion after a four-week trial in federal court in Los Angeles. He faces a maximum penalty of life imprisonment when he is sentenced Sept. 11.

It was cold and gloomy at the city's oldest cemetery but there was excitement in the damp morning air. For Chinese American community leaders, scholars and city officials, this was a much-awaited event, dedicated to restoring a century-old Chinese shrine that had almost been demolished five years ago. Because of the rain, you could only see the top of the shrine at Evergreen Cemetery in Boyle Heights. Above the muddy rainwater stood two 12-foot tall twin kilns, connected by a stone altar.