William Poy Lee's Biography

Born 1951 in San Francisco and raised with one root in the traditional Toisanese speaking urban village of SF Chinatown and one root in the heady Bohemian North Beach culture of jazz, Beat poetry, Zen, the counter culture, hedonism, and good Italian food.

From the age of 17 through 28, community civil rights & anti-Vietnam War activist; walked the streets during the electoral battle for an inclusive San Francisco political structure, and later, organizer and spokesperson for Fair Trials for Chinese American Youth, including a family member.

In the 80s, traveled the world as a legal officer for a major multinational financial institution, utilizing my cross cultural skills to effectuate contracts and solutions to a myriad of the usual business snaggles. Started writing vignettes, short stories, and poems in the mid-1990s. Started the Eighth Promise in 2000 and worked full-time for three solid years, i.e., two years more than I anticipated. But once I got going, there wasn't anything else I wanted to do (or could do as I was possessed) but to finish it, dwindling savings and other financial considerations be damned.

Presently, finishing a second book and traveling regularly between mainland China and America and making Beijing my second home. My interest is in the experience of the post-Cultural Revolution generation during this historic period called "The Modernization." Have dedicated myself towards reaching fluency in Mandarin and literacy in reading Chinese characters. To my delight, the American language version of The Eighth Promise is taught in Chinese Universities and a Chinese language University version is in the works.

2010 - teaching advance oral and written English at Minzu University - "the Howard of China" - in Haidian University District, Beijing.