Jason just turned 47 the day before last Friday’s Rotary meeting. Looking back, he did not have a “from rags to riches” story like Horatio Alger’s stories to tell his fellow Rotarians. His life has been full of vicissitudes.

He was born in a town about one hour from the City of Xi’an, which had served as the capital city of China for more than one thousand years. The tombs of China’s first emperor have been excavated on Xi’an’s outskirts to reveal columns of fired clay soldiers and chariots. These columns of army made of fired clay were meant to protect the emperor in the world of the dead and have since been dubbed the Eighth Wonder of the Ancient World! Every American president who visited China has visited Xi’an.

These clay soldiers were made very lifelike. When the American former Vice-President Al Gore visited the site the reporters for a while lost sight of him among these clay soldiers. When he emerged from among these soldiers, he was asked where he was and why he could not be found. He quipped: “It would be very easy to spot me. The wooden one would be me.”

Jason started learning English in his first year at senior high school. The conditions for learning English at the time (1978-1980) were poor so that he had to learn it mostly over the Radio. He was tuning in to VOA and BBC using a transistor short wave radio in the middle of the nights on his bed covered with a quilt. For one, the signal reception was the best in the night. For two, he had to cover himself and the radio to muffle the announcers’ voice that originated from Washington D.C. and the Bush House in London because listening to Western radio broadcasts was banned in China at the time. By tuning in to VOA and BBC he risked criminal punishment. Since he learned English in a setting where he had to use a quilt as a muffler, for a long time subsequently he spoke English in a hushed voice. It was when he came to America, the Land of the Free, the Land of the Brave, and the Land of the Beautiful, that he could finally speak up.

Jason has a BA in English literature, an MA in journalism from the University of Alabama and a Juris Doctoral Degree from the University of Iowa. He has a law firm based in Pasadena on Lake Avenue, specializing in family law and real estate litigation.