Page 43 - WashingtonSyCip_Bio_Excerpt_2nd_Edition

Passenger on a Ship

New York itself was sizzling with energy and optimism. Just the year before, it had
hosted the 1939 World’s Fair in Flushing Meadows, devoted to “Building the World of
Tomorrow” and featuring, among others, the advent of public television broadcasting
in America. Charlie Chan was all over the movies, along with Fantasia, Pinocchio, and
The Grapes of Wrath. Broadway was ablaze with Rogers and Hart’s Too Many Girls, “a
musicomedy of college life”; elsewhere on that street, Sally Rand was wowing them
with her famous fan dance.

To all this arrived Washington SyCip, flush with excitement and hope, not even 20, a
smallish man with a sharp, capacious, omnivorous mind. He had come by way of San
Francisco, where he had met up with the son of Dee C. Chuan, his father’s partner
and co-founder at China Bank. This boy, Edward, was studying at Stanford and took
care of Wash in San Francisco, and they drove up Telegraph Hill, a popular tourist
spot from where the rest of the city could be seen. Wash noticed many cars parked
in the area, and “saw a lot of people necking. I thought, that’s why I didn’t have fun
in Manila! So many people were necking inside the cars, and some even had towels
covering them. I was shocked.” Wash stayed a few days at the Washington Hotel,
then took a train to New York.

Sharing household chores

No one met him in New York. He went straight to John Jay Hall, Columbia’s freshman
dormitory. Fifteen stories high and located on the southeastern end of Columbia’s
Morningside Heights campus, John Jay Hall had hosted, among others, the Spanish
poet Federico Garcia Lorca.

th
Subsequently, Wash moved into a small apartment on 114 Street with his brother
David. David had studied Mining Engineering in Colorado and, after finishing, came
to New York to work with a mining company located at the Woolworth building.
This company was headed by K. C. Li, a good friend of their father’s; Li’s company
mined tungsten, used as a material for hardening bullets. Tungsten was then almost a
monopoly of China, although they later found deposits in South America.

To finance Wash’s education and living expenses in New York, Albino had opened a
letter of credit with the Irving Trust Bank for $5,000, but as large as the amount was
even then—tuition in Columbia was just $400 a semester —Wash knew that every
dollar counted. He had been given a lump sum so he could exercise his judgment.

27