John Ta Chuan Fang ( 27 May 1924 – 27 April 1992) was an American businessman, publisher, and writer based in

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th ...

. He was the founder of '' Chinatown Handy Guide'' and ''

AsianWeek ''AsianWeek'' was America's first and largest English language print and on-line publication serving Asian Americans. The news organization played an important role nationally and in the San Francisco Bay Area as the “Voice of Asian America”. ...

''.

Early life

Fang was born in

Shanghai Shanghai (; , , Standard Mandarin pronunciation: ) is one of the four direct-administered municipalities of the People's Republic of China (PRC). The city is located on the southern estuary of the Yangtze River, with the Huangpu River flowin ...

, China in 1924. He earned a bachelor's degree in journalism at

Taipei Taipei (), officially Taipei City, is the capital and a special municipality of the Republic of China (Taiwan). Located in Northern Taiwan, Taipei City is an enclave of the municipality of New Taipei City that sits about southwest of the ...

National Chengchi University National Chengchi University () is a public research university in Taipei. The university is also considered as the earliest public service training facility of the Republic of China. First established in Nanjing in 1927, the university was subs ...

and worked their for the government-controlled ''New Life'' newspaper. In 1952, he moved to San Francisco to study at

UC Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant uni ...

Career

Fang started out on his own by publishing the '' Chinatown Handy Guide'' in 1959, a series of booklets to the Chinatowns in major US cities, as they were emerging as tourist attractions. In 1979, he founded ''

'', and its headquarters were in San Francisco's Chinatown.

Personal life

In 1960, he married Florence Fang, and they had three sons. Fang died on 27 April 1992.

References

1924 births 1992 deaths 20th-century American newspaper publishers (people) Businesspeople from San Francisco Businesspeople from Shanghai National Chengchi University alumni Taiwanese journalists Taiwanese people from Shanghai University of California, Berkeley alumni Writers from San Francisco 20th-century journalists {{US-business-bio-stub