Early Pioneer Award

Gordon Chan and Family received the Early Pioneer Award at CHCP’s Tenth Anniversary Dragon Ball

As one of the most prominent Chinese American leaders in Santa Clara County, Gordon Chan requires little introduction in the Bay Area. Coming from a family who has been exemplary in community service for three generations, Gordon Chan has distinguished himself as a longtime community and political leader in Santa Clara County.

Gordon Chan’s grandfather Chien Lung came to America in 1880 as a teenager. He learned English at the First Chinese Baptist Church and later became one of the most successful farmers in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta area. In history books, he is referred to as the “Chinese Potato King” who made a fortune until the Alien Land Laws forced him to sell his land in the 1920s.

In 1948, Gordon Chan’s father, Ted Chan started a flower-growing business in East Palo Alto. Gordon Chan, born in Macau, had just come to America a year before at the age of twelve to help his father. Ted Chan was active in community leadership, serving numerous terms as president of the Chinese Wholesale Flower Market in San Francisco and of various benevolent associations.

While growing up, Gordon Chan worked forty hours a week at the family farm while attending school. After graduating from Menlo-Atherton High, Gordon Chan earned a B.S. degree in ornamental horticulture from Cal Poly in 1959. During the same year he married Anita, whom he met in college.

After serving in the Army for two years, Gordon Chan returned to help build the family business. In the 1960s, chrysanthemums became the biggest crop in Santa Clara County, and the Chan family’s greenhouses added up to over 300,000 square feet. In the 1980s, the T.S. Chan Nursery became the first Chinese American flower grower to enter the commercial growing of roses. In the 1990s, Gordon Chan’s businesses have branched into real estate development and restaurant operation.

Like his father and grandfather, Gordon has served in many community leadership positions, including twelve terms as president of the Bay Area Chrysanthemum Growers Association, as chairman and interim executive director of Asian Americans for Community Involvement (AACI), as Executive Board member of the Chinese Historical and Cultural Project (CHCP), and as president of Hee Shen Benevolent Association.

Even more significantly, Gordon has been a pioneer in Chinese American political participation in Santa Clara County. Gordon served between 1979 and 1981 as the first and only Chinese American president of the Santa Clara Farm Bureau, which represents all farmers in the County. In the 1980s, Gordon became the first and only Chinese American to be appointed to the Santa Clara County Planning Commission. In the 1990s he served on the County Redistricting Commission and the County Trail Commission. Gordon Chan believes that as a minority group, Chinese Americans “need to establish rapport and understanding with other Americans, so that we are less likely to be scapegoated in times of crisis.”