When Pittsburgh had a Chinatown, Yuen Yee was its spokesman, advocate and right-hand man.
An industrious immigrant who ran for City Council in 1973 and served as Pittsburgh's last "mayor" of Chinatown, Mr. Yee died Wednesday at his home in Mt. Lebanon. He was 84.
His hand-written memoir describes an irrepressible life. Even at its ebb, after a stroke impaired movement on his right side in 1992, he taught himself to write with his left hand.
The chronicle of the dramas, large and small, of the tiny enclave on Second and Third avenues between Grant and Ross streets -- Pittsburgh's Chinatown -- describes a miniature of sister enclaves in larger cities, but it had the same elements. Mr. Yee's tributes include one to the isolated world of the laundrymen, whose work was "long and exhausting drudgery," he wrote. In his teens, he had been one of them.
The oldest of six and the only one born in his parents' native China, Mr. Yee was 6 when his parents emigrated and settled into a second-floor apartment on Second Avenue. He whittled wood to make his own toys.
He was an interpreter in the U.S. Army Air Forces during World War II. Back home, he tested well for a job repairing traffic lights, but when he tried to join the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, he was told, curtly, " 'There is no opening now,' " he wrote. " 'Even our own people are not working.' "
But he was indispensable to Chinese-Americans, whose ranks swelled through the 1940s and 1950s with refugees and war brides. He accompanied them to hospitals and the public assistance office, did their taxes, tutored them for citizenship tests and negotiated their leases. He interpreted for the Immigration and Naturalization Service and mediated arguments between landlords and tenants, cooks and dishwashers. He even helped former restaurant employees open competing restaurants.
He started his long and varied career as a waiter at the Chinatown Inn before joining his father in a venture on Sixth Avenue. Their Yung Toy Restaurant "did a landslide business" amid the elbow-to-elbow night life, "like a mini-Broadway," he wrote.
Mr. Yee later took a job assembling laboratory instruments for Fisher Scientific, but the free weekends were "unproductive," he wrote, so he waited tables at a restaurant owned by his sister's in-laws. Eventually, the Chinatown Inn lured him back to be the maitre d'.
After 10 years as an inspector for the Housing Authority of Pittsburgh, he retired in 1990. On weekends, he tended bar at the Chinatown Inn.
"In reality," he wrote, "I never really left Chinatown."
His youngest child, Shirley, said her father always encouraged her to see the world and follow her own dreams. "When parents allow their child to follow his or her own path, the road will always lead home," she said. Her father "taught me hard work, to be interested in the world and to be kind to others. He never had a bad word to say about anybody, always non-judgmental and open-minded."
Mr. Yee is survived by his wife, Betty; three children, Jon of Yardley, Bucks County; Lois Leung of Wayne, Pa.; and Shirley Yee of Mt. Lebanon; and three grandchildren.
A funeral will be held at 11 a.m. today at Beinhauer Mortuary, 2630 West Liberty Ave., Beechview.
First Published: October 11, 2008, 4:00 a.m.
