According the The Oklahoma Historical Society, the Chinese were the first Asians to settle in Oklahoma. Soon after the 1889 Land Run, a Chinese entrepreneur set up the Tom Sing Laundry in Guthrie (near Oklahoma City). Other laundries and restaurants followed. The 1940 census showed only 110 Chinese living in Oklahoma. By 1980 that number had increased to 2,461. (https://www.okhistory.org/publications/enc/entry.php?entry=AS006).
The 1980’s was a good decade for improved connections between Oklahoma and China.
- In 1980, Tulsa established a “Sister City” agreement with Kaohsiung in Taiwan.
- In 1980, Booker T. Washington High School and G.W. Carver Middle School offered Mandarin Chinese as a part of our foreign language curriculum in Tulsa. At B.T. Washington, we published the “American Express” 美國快報, which later became the “Chinese American Express” 美中快報, a student newsletter which invited young students of Chinese from all over America to contribute their experiences and perspectives regarding the learning of Chinese.
- In 1981, I accompanied six high school students and a news crew from KJRH in Tulsa to Xiamen University, in southern Fujian Province where we spent 8 weeks studying Chinese. Xiamen had only been open to foreigners for one year at that time. KJRH won a Peabody Award (along with Hill Street Blues) for their documentary, “Project China.”
- In 1985, Oklahoma and Gansu Province became “Sister States.”
- In 1987, Tulsa established a “Sister City” agreement with Beihai in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region in China.
- Later, that year, the Tulsa Global Alliance put together “Operation Breakthrough: China’s Middle America Initiative” in Tulsa where former President Gerald Ford was a Keynote speaker and Chinese scholar and interpreter, Perry Link, exposed Oklahomans to Chinese comedy in the form of Cross Talks. 100 Chinese governors, mayors and business leaders from 14 provinces and cities met and set up business deals with entrepreneurs from Oklahoma and middle America.
- In 1989, 15 year old Booker T. Washington high school sophomore, Jon Bandurski became the first Tulsa Public School student ever to live for six months with a Chinese family in Shekou, near Shenzhen in southeastern China (near Hong Kong) where he studied Chinese and art for six months at Yucai School. Jon was the best unofficial ambassador the United States ever sent to China. When he wasn’t studying, he played soccer for the school team and even DJ’d for a school radio program.
Chinese Odyssey 25
It was in Oklahoma,
kids learning Chinese
thought they should go, too.
They even said, “Please!”
From a high school in Tulsa
six students departed
on a life-changing trip
destinations, uncharted
The Panda in the Room PD 