Oakland’s Lee Mun Wah rings a Tibetan bowl to begin one of his well-attended “StirFry” seminars. The acclaimed filmmaker and educator wears a no-collar Tibetan shirt, his hair in a ponytail, his face anchored by a Confucian-like beard.
When the sound from the bowl fades, he introduces himself simply. “I am a Chinese man,” he says.
Frank Wu comes at you more traditionally. Taller, garbed in a tailored wool suit, his hair is short, his face clean-shaven. He’s sans black-rimmed glasses, but you can imagine them on him. As the chancellor and dean of the University of California’s Hastings College of the Law, he comes with the weight of a keynote’s full introduction.
As one of the highest-ranking Asian Americans in academia, he’s beyond “model minority.” Wu walks the walk and talks like a guy in a suit.
