Meet Jack Ding, Sonoma’s newest City Councilmember

Nobody would have predicted that a little boy named Junhui, by his mother, born near Shanghai, China in 1959, would one day become a member of the Sonoma City Council, but that’s exactly what’s happened. Junhui, which in Chinese means “bright fast horse,” now goes by the name of Jack, and has entered Sonoma’s history books as the first councilmember of Chinese descent.

Raised in Changzhou, a medium sized city about 100 miles north of Shanghai, Jack is the eldest son of two medical professionals; his father a surgeon and his mother a nurse. He was born during Mao’s “Great Leap Forward,” when development in China was happening fast, and his parents were busy, working together and moving from hospital to hospital. As a result, Jack was largely raised by his grandparents, and benefitted from their traditional Chinese backgrounds.

When he started school at seven years old, life in China was in turmoil; Chairman Mao’s Cultural Revolution was in full swing. “My first day at school was scary,” Jack recounts. “Sitting at the entry, wearing an ugly, oversized hat and with her head deeply bowed, sat my teacher. She was being publicly punished by the school monitor for being too ‘bourgeois’.” His elementary school photos featured him and his classmates dutifully holding Mao’s Little Red Book. 

“It was not a standard education,” he notes sadly, “I regret what I missed.” Forced into a practical education, he spent time working on farms learning how to fix and operate tractors.

Yet, his traditional grandparents, themselves raised under Confucian principles that included the value of study, had a great influence on Jack; what he learned at home outweighed Communist Party indoctrination. “I too became old fashioned,” he said, laughingly.

Illustrating his point, Jack told a story about Mr. Yi, a friend of his grandfather. “Mr. Yi was a retired finance professional with a western education,” Jack explained. “He would visit my grandfather every day and he learned of my interest in English. The English book we used at school just featured slogans like ‘Long live Chairman Mao,’ but Mr. Yi started to bring materials in English to my house, and taught me about proper pronounciation. ‘Don’t tell anybody,’ he’d warn me. As a result, I was the best student in English all the way through school!”

Unfortunately, Jack’s hopes for higher education were dashed. He explained, “A committee of farmers, peasants, and People’s Liberation Army fighters made the selection. Later, during the tenure of Mao’s successor Chairman Deng Xiao Ping, examinations were reinstated for university selections, but I completely failed. I was very disappointed.” Jack was sent to work as an employee at a semiconductor factory, but that was not the end of his education. “With government approval, the factory opened a ‘workers’ university,’ and given my facility in English, I was selected. My higher education began, and during the next three years I learned a lot. I graduated in 1982.”

As China “woke up,” contact with western nations increased, and for his semiconductor employer, it meant contact with Silicon Valley and the importation of production line equipment. Given Jack’s abilities with English, promotions followed, and in 1988 he was selected to be part of an MBA program jointly sponsored by the Chinese government and Dominican University in San Rafael. The University sent professors to China for the program, but as Jack recounts, “the tragedy of Tiananmen Square ended the program.” Then 30 years old and married, Jack’s future was again clouded behind politics.

“Professor Francoise LaPage at Dominican, a wonderful person, took it upon herself to develop a scholarship program for the MBA students, and in 1993 I came to the United States on a student visa to attend the university,” said Jack, smiling broadly. His wife and six-year-old son Andy joined him three months later.  “To make ends meet, I worked nights and weekends at a Chinese restaurant doing food delivery, washing dishes and cleaning the bathrooms.”

After obtaining his MBA, Jack began working in marketing and sales at Crown Micro in Silicon Valley, commuting from his home in San Rafael. Crown Micro assisted Jack in getting an H1B work visa, and later sponsored him for a Green Card in 2002. After five years, he applied for citizenship and was sworn-in inside Oakland’s Paramount Theater in 2008. 2008 is also the year Jack moved to Sonoma.

“I’ve been the lucky beneficiary of a flexible immigration policy,” Jack conceded, “but I also followed the rules, like filing tax returns. We need to respect the legal system, and the government needs to help people understand it. Many immigrants are scared and confused, and unaware of what they need to do to be compliant with immigration rules.”

To that end, Jack, who is a professional tax preparer, volunteers at La Luz to run a free clinic on tax preparation for immigrants so that they remain in compliance. “People break rules because they are often not aware of the process necessary for immigration compliance,” he added. “We can help people who are scared.”

“When I was a boy I wanted to see a new world,” Jack offered. Quite the understatement.

Profile by Larry Barnett