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ICAA LAKE TAHOE TOUR 2007
Bryant Irawan/ Indonesia Media
 With fifty-five people packed and onboard the bus, the ICAA expedition battalion was ready to set sail and leave the tranquil port of Duarte Inn. Yes, it’s that time of year again when ICAA hosts its annual nonprofit Thanksgiving vacation tour. For those of you who do not know, ICAA plans to take us to Lake Tahoe and the Bay area. Now, I’m sure almost everybody has visited Lake Tahoe at some point, but ICAA’s leader, Dr. Fritz Hong, decided it was his duty to chip in a few to help make this Thanksgiving tour not another cheap yet luxurious “ordinary” tour, but a unique one, incomparable to others. It’s reassuring to know there are still generous leaders out there that do not forget to place others before themselves.
 In addition to visiting Lake Tahoe and the Bay area, the city of Hanford , Locke, and Virginia City were added to our directory free of charge thanks to the leaders of ICAA. Even though the three cities are in fact rural cities in the middle of nowhere, it is here where the Chinese lived in America during the Gold Rush. Yeah, it might not be the fanciest tourist attraction, but at least, we were given the once in a lifetime chance to imagine how early Chinese immigrants might have felt like to be accustomed in such a diverse society. After all, ICAA was created in order to help preserve the Chinese culture.
 After hours of driving on the highway, our bus pulled off to a dirt road into the city of Hanford named after James Madison Hanford (a railroad executive). With only a population of 40 to 50 thousand residents, the small city stands no chance compared to Los Angeles . From its history, you expect to see a mining ghost town, but with Chinese architecture instead of western cowboy pubs. But as I stepped on, I realized the city of Hanford is nothing like an old Gold Rush city. It looked like a miniature San Gabriel Valley without the smog. We did a quick drive by city tour and stopped at the city hall for a quick group picture. The city, did however, have a Chinatown with no more Chinese people. Even if it was Thanksgiving, Chinese families have traveled elsewhere either to the Bay area or to LA looking for better opportunities than mining. Even so, it still had a Chinatown and an open Taoist temple which our leader was able to reserve on Thanksgiving. But, it is Ms. Camilla Wing and her  volunteer friends who deserve the brownie points for this one. Without them, we wouldn’t be able to see the temple. After Ms. Wing’s mini tour of the temple, we wandered throughout the temple observing the different rooms and procedures daily visitors used to do when Hanford was a bustling city. Unfortunately, we couldn’t spend our whole vacation learning a history lesson right? So it was off to our next city, Locke.
 Now, this city is the old West. As I stepped out of the bus into the cold night, I tried to imagine if I was standing at this exact place a century ago, how hectic this city must have been. With only three blocks, there was truly nothing in this city. Locke is however the only rural Chinese village remaining in America and can truly claim to be a continuous Chinese presence for over 125 years. Though now the aged Chinese resident number less than two dozen, Locke was even built by and for the Chinese who came searching of “Gum Shan”, the Golden Mountain . Locke was even visited by Sun Yat-sen,  founding father of the China Republic in 1912.When the gold mines closed; they laid the ties for railroads that spanned the continent. Many fear Locke’s culture presence will be a thing of the past, but fifteen years ago, a Hong Kong developer purchased the entire city and planned to develop nearby home, financing a scheme to turn Locke into a tourist town. Only a few houses were present and few shops existed. During our stay, we only spotted three of the ninety people living in Locke. The rest of the city was dark and deserted. A river bordered the city which explains why the city of Locke was such a huge mining city in the Gold Rush era. Empty mines bordered the river and the rows of houses were all decrepit and gloomy. The only signs of civilization were an open liquor store and a huge blinking antenna bridging the tiny city of Locke to the world. We did however, saw a closed Chinese restaurant, but as much as preserving culture is important to ICAA, not even Dr. Fritz Hong dared to camp out in Locke after dark. I don’t think anybody was ready to find out what happens in a ghost town after dark so it was off to our state’s capital, Sacramento . See you next edition!
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