SAN FRANCISCO—Earlier in June, a group of people wearing red T-shirts stood outside City Hall. They were there to show their presence during the city board meetings about naming the new San Francisco Chinatown station after Rose Pak—a controversial, deceased political figure.
Another group, disapproving the name, held signs and banners that read “Honor a Chinatown bully who betrayed Chinatown? What nonsense!”
Ms. Zhang, a San Francisco resident, walked past City Hall and was curious to see so many people wearing red.
“I asked them, where did you get the shirts from? They said the organization passed them out. I asked, which organization passed them out? I also want one. After that they did not talk to me, they left,” she said. She did not know Rose Pak personally, but said she had heard she was not a nice woman.
“What type of role model would she leave for the future of San Francisco? Since she’s such a person, why do we have to use her name? I find it very strange,” said Zhang.
One woman asked some of the people in red why they came. They replied that they did not know. It turned out to be a group from a retirement home who just came to get a free t-shirt and lunch.
“‘We came together with an organization. We came together, so we cannot leave until they say so,’” she said. “They seem so sad. They don’t even know why they were brought here.”
After some of those wearing red were told what they were supporting, they simply left.
“Some people also come back to me to shake my hand twice saying, ‘Thank you very much for telling me that Rose Pak was such an underhanded person,'” she said.
Many people said they thought Pak’s close ties with China’s communist regime led her to corrupt politics in San Francisco.
Aaron Peskin, a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, sponsored the resolution to name the new station after Rose Pak.
However, back in 2011 during an interview with the New York Times, he criticized her actions.
“It was very seductive,” Mr. Peskin said of being courted by Ms. Pak, recalling how she gave presents. “What I didn’t realize at the time was that I was being lobbied.”
In an interview with NTD that same year, he described Pak as a puppeteer who pushed Ed Lee to run for Mayor.
“Ed Lee is a decent man. But as one of the candidates for mayor that left last week, Ed Lee is not his own man. He is not the leader of San Francisco. He is somebody who is doing the work of the real leaders of San Francisco, and first and foremost, that is Ms. Pak,” said Peskin in 2011.
Why he changed his mind and decided to honor her that way is still unclear, but he admits he had a “very complicated relationship with Ms. Pak” and that she was “a very complicated person.”
Quentin L. Kopp, a retired judge who also served as a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, believed Peskin did it to fulfill a promise.
“He who had called Rose Pak corrupt eight years before, asked for her endorsement,” said Kopp. “She endorsed him, he was elected and defeated Julie Christensen. That’s the reason he wants to name this station after Rose Pak. It’s because it satisfies a political deal, made with a woman, now deceased, whom he called corrupt.”
Meanwhile, residents continue to protest against naming the station after the late power broker, in the hope that local leaders will not submit to foreign pressure.
