Charlie Chan and the Case of the Rehabilitation of a People

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It took a fictional detective to change negative perceptions of Chinese immigrants to the US Out of America Uneasy relations

These days, they're setting the standard: Jerry Yang, say, the co- founder of Yahoo; or Steven Chu, Nobel Prize-winner and now President Obama's Energy Secretary; or Michelle Kwan, the champion figure skater, to name but three. I refer, of course, to Chinese- Americans. Not that long ago, however, there was only one Chinese American who mattered - and he was a fictional detective.

The thought is inspired by Charlie Chan: The Untold Story of the Honorable Detective and His Rendezvous with American History, which has just been published here. …