Her story

Min Mey Chang came to the United States in the late 1960s with her husband, Dr. Sheng Chang.

In 1982 the two of them co-founded the Arcadia Chinese Association, to help newly arrived immigrants and to open a line between the Chinese American community, the city, and the schools. That same year she founded the Arcadia Chinese School, and served as its principal for more than thirty years.

She built the school into something larger than a language class. A trailblazer among Chinese schools, she established its afternoon classes and its extracurricular programs. Over three decades the school educated thousands of students, who have since gone into professions of every kind and have children of their own.

Much of that work happened through the Arcadia Unified School District, where she built a relationship patient enough to solve real problems for real students. She persuaded the district to approve I-20 forms, so that students could remain in the United States to continue their studies. She was active in the district’s parent and school activities, and received its Golden Apple Award in 1988.

She led three delegations of Arcadia Unified educators — the superintendent, school board members and principals among them — to Taiwan, Hong Kong and China.

So that the people teaching Chinese American children would understand where those children came from.

In 1986 she became President of the Southern California Council of Chinese Schools, and held the post for two years. In 1989 she was installed as President of the Chinese American Parents and Teachers Association of Southern California. With the Arcadia Chinese Association she organized two-day Chinese cultural festivals, at the Los Angeles County Arboretum in 1987 and at the Huntington Library and Gardens in 1988.

She served as President of the local chapter of the Shih Chien University Alumni Association, and is today President of the national association. She founded the Arcadia chapter of Buddha’s Light International Association as its founding President, and went on to become supervisor for the Greater Los Angeles area. In May 2001 the Speaker of the California State Assembly, Robert M. Hertzberg, appointed her a community member of the California Acupuncture Board, where she served a term expiring in July 2004.

For several years now she has performed Chinese calligraphy at Lunar New Year celebrations — at the Huntington Library and Gardens, at the Los Angeles County Arboretum in Arcadia, and at Hsi Lai Temple.

She is still teaching. A believer in reflexology, she publishes talks on the benefits, principles and application of massage. They have reached more than 830,000 viewers.

She and Dr. Sheng Chang are the parents of three sons — James, Peter and Richard — and grandparents of three grandchildren.