The Prayer of a Toisan Yangban in Suburban Chinatown
by Robinson Park Lee (PZ ’26)
When this one historic city of Monterey Park comes under attack on Lunar New Year, it feels like an attack on the larger body of vibrant, multicultural communities that have resisted and endured to build the world I know and love.
Monterey Park is where Gong Gong and Po Po spent their last days. They lived full lives. From back-and-forth trips between Guangdong and America to surviving the horrors of the Imperial Japanese invasion of China, to trying to learn English, to raising five children who all had professional aspirations: all of it, a lifetime of hardship and love, came to rest in Monterey Park. Toisanese would be spoken among friends, lapchong and char-siu shared over rice, and the grandkids would come up every weekend after church. Monterey Park is where my great-grandparents spent their final days.
It’s difficult to overstate the cultural importance of Monterey Park to my Chinese American and Korean American families, but also to the wider Asian American circles in Southern California as well. Epithets such as “the first suburban Chinatown” and “the original Chinese Beverly Hills” were common in my upbringing in Arcadia, just five miles away from Monterey Park.
Indeed, the ideal of the multicultural suburb seemed to be first exemplified in Monterey Park. Following that ideal, surrounding communities in the San Gabriel Valley began to gradually and intentionally transform from racially exclusive sundown towns to a region where Chinese, Spanish, Vietnamese, and Korean subtitle English signs on every other block. So when this one historic city of Monterey Park comes under attack on Lunar New Year, it feels like an attack on the larger body of vibrant, multicultural communities that have resisted and endured to build the world I know and love.
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“Robinson, we’re gonna stay home this morning. We’ll watch church online. There’s been a shooting at Monterey Park.” My father spoke.
My home church, Evergreen Baptist of Los Angeles, was another close community devastated by the attack, in nearby Rosemead. That Sunday, the church decided to go online to focus on providing spiritual guidance and support despite the fears of traveling outside. Like my family, other church members had close ties to Monterey Park. A number of our congregation even lived in the city itself, including our senior pastor, Jason Ashimoto. Pastor Ashimoto directly spoke to the anxieties that everyone was feeling, instead of a previously prepared sermon. Growing up and still to this day, my ideal of a Christian church has been characterized by addressing the needs and concerns of its people and confronting issues with vulnerability and dauntlessness.
Despite the demands of work and school, I’ve always found a place at church to be open about my own struggles, and share with others the struggles they faced. In contrast to the crass individualism and expectations of saving face which pressured me elsewhere, pretending as if everything is okay, at church I found solace in communal grieving.
I found strengthening bonds over Discord and Zoom when I suffered intense social isolation during the COVID pandemic. I found genuine discussions about social justice and prejudice when Asian women were targeted in the Atlanta Spa Shooting in the March of 2021. In the experience of baptism, I found an affirming reminder of the innate value and personhood I have because of Christ. In contrast, to the intense academic expectations of my high school that told me I would never be enough.
If I could visualize the body of Christ, it would be the various mentors, auntees, uncles, friends, peers, and families that have all shared in this collective grief and reflection. Valuing and treating each other as created in the image of God seems to come ahead, even through times of violence and strife.
That community, connection, and valuing of each other has become even more resonant in the aftermath of the Monterey Park shooting. Two mentors who guided me throughout high school, Reverend Ken Fong and Pastor Eric Chen, are some of the people I see embodying Christian ideals of care and support.
Reverend Fong has published several episodes on his podcast, Asian America, about the shooting with various experts. As a local organizer, Pastor Chen has worked tirelessly to bring attention to the victims of the shooting who have been overlooked even among all the media attention. They share about these efforts in a podcast episode which beautifully encapsulates their work and dedication. They too are part of the body of Christ, sharing in grief and channeling it into caring, faithful labor.
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I came back to Pitzer the Monday after the shooting with the implicit pressure to pretend as if everything was okay. It’s hard to honestly respond to “how are you doing?” My heart wants to answer by screaming that “the people and places close to me were horrifically attacked this weekend. How about you?” Of course, I didn’t do that. Instead I strove to keep my mind tempered, trying to pursue healing rather than burn myself with anger at apathy and desensitization.
I next got to visit Monterey Park with other Pitzer students hosted by the then Asian Pacific American Coalition. The initial plan was to eat at Mama Lu’s, a fundamental staple in local Cantonese cuisine where my parents took me as a child, and to get boba at Feng Cha. Yet, between the food and the sharing, I made an effort to ensure that we stopped at Star Dance Studio to pay our respects. After a moment of silence in the memory of the victims, I spoke.
I shared how Monterey Park is the land of my great-grandparents’ rest. I spoke about how gun violence had devastated the various multicultural communities that I cherish and love. I lamented that one month after the shooting, a gun threat at my alma mater of Arcadia High School and other high schools in the area had sent students fearing for their lives while armed police roamed the halls.
One of my friends shared with me how his younger brother had jumped the fence with his friends and escaped to a nearby El Pollo Loco after hearing of the lockdown and seeing police cars drive down the street. I explained to the group that, while thankfully no one was physically hurt, the realities of gun violence affect the most vulnerable: children, the elderly, and minority groups.
Truthfully, I’ve always found it difficult to reconcile the immense amount of evil and destruction that resides in the physical world, with the goodness, power, and glory of God. I don’t find “God’s plan” to be a credible explanation. How could a loving, caring, almighty, and all-knowing God allow the murder in Monterey Park and countless other shootings breaking this country apart to happen?
Ironically, it’s doubts like this that have allowed me to grow the most in my faith. I’ve learned — thanks to the church, family, and communities I have — that my doubts are seeds for me to grow deeper in my faith. Seeds to learn how other people throughout time and space have pondered the existence and being of God, and what conclusions they have come to. Like many other Christians, I don’t have a good answer to why the suffering around me can coexist with a completely infallible and benevolent God. Yet, I know that the body of Christ still has a place for me in it, even with the revolutions of faith and doubts that stir in my heart and mind.
I know that the love, grace, and redemption of Jesus Christ will triumph over all death, pain, and suffering even if we, as finite humans, may never be able to imagine it in this world or the next. That the care, and devotion of the church I belong to, the family I hold, and the various multicultural communities that have built who I am provide the faint hope that all of it can supersede death. In a world with much fleeting hope, perhaps this is enough.
In the meantime, lapchong and char-shiu will continue to be shared over rice.
