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

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, 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 List of Ca ...

. He was the founder of ''

Chinatown Handy Guide The ''Chinatown Handy Guide'' was one of the early Chinatown tour books published by a Chinese American author anWorldCat, World Catalog. It was published in four different geographic editions tailored to the largest established Chinatowns in Amer ...

'' 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 flow ...

, 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 n ...

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 university, public land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of Californi ...

Career

Fang started out on his own by publishing the ''

'' in 1959, a series of booklets to the

Chinatown A Chinatown () is an ethnic enclave of Chinese people located outside Greater China, most often in an urban setting. Areas known as "Chinatown" exist throughout the world, including Europe, North America, South America, Asia, Africa and Austra ...

s 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 Florence Fang (; born 1933/1934) is a Chinese-American businesswoman, publisher, and philanthropist active in the San Francisco area. She is the former owner of the '' San Francisco Examiner'' and other media titles and has been a fund-raiser for t ...

, 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-1920s-stub