On the Job – The Second Act: From Dentist in China to LA Musician

Published Feb 14, 2018, 2:00 PM

Mr. Song left his home in China and moved to Los Angeles after his wife passed away. He had plans to continue practicing his lifelong career of dentistry, but when things don’t work out quite as he had planned, Mr. Song decided to switch gears by bringing the erhu, a traditional Chinese folk instrument, to his new American audience.

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There is no mandatory retirement age in America, so at a time when people are expected to slow down, some find that older age can become an opportunity to start over in a completely new career and even a new life. Ying Chang Song did just that when he landed in Los Angeles almost ten years ago. Nah yeah, yo yeer ay. I left China because there were some things I wanted to do in my life and didn't want to admit I was too old for that. It turns out he wasn't too old, but starting over in a foreign place and in a new culture without speaking the language or knowing a single person, turned out to be more liberating than he'd ever imagined. On this edition of On the Job, brought to you by Express Employment Professionals, we've got the story of a man who gave up a conventional life in China and found his artistic calling in Los Angeles. Later in life, we'll have that story in a moment. Beyond the Job podcast celebrates the journey of hard working men and women as they work towards making their dreams a reality. In season two of this podcast from Express Employment Professionals, we share the ups and downs triumphs and challenges, and the oftentimes winding roads that lead to satisfaction. In our work, we learn how people earn a living and watch them define who they are in their communities and beyond our long term goal to put a million people to work. Are you ready for a new job. Did you take your job search online only to spend hour after hours searching and applying, but rarely connecting with anyone. It's time to find your next job with the help of Express Employment professionals. Let Express be your connection to local jobs. Find the look patition nearest you at Express pros dot com. With Express, you'll benefit from thirty five years of experience and putting people to work, and job seekers are never charged defeat. More than half a million people already find jobs with Express each year. Contact your local Express office, go in and interview, and let the people at Express connect you with available jobs in your area. Don't go alone any longer in your job search. Find your local Express Employment professional's office by visiting Express pros dot com now and here's Independent producer Rooksandra Guidi with the story of Ying Chang Song. I first met Mr Song last spring on a warm Saturday morning in Chinatown, near downtown Los Angeles. He sat in a plastic stool at the intersection of Broadway in College Street, where tons of tourists cross back and forth each day as they visit at shops and restaurants. Standing at barely five feet tall, Mr Song wore a Panama hat in a red silk jacket, the kind with the mau collar in the dragon designs all over. In his left hand, he held a bow and in his right a traditional Chinese instrument with a long wooden handle and a small, round body the size of a grapefruit. That's his ur who Our interpreter, She Shang, approached him while he played in earnest and within minutes the two of them realized they were from the same city in northern China, so they hit it off immediately. Not only did they both speak Mandarin, which made them a minority here in Chinatown, where Cantonese is more prevalent, but they knew the same folk songs. He was visibly thrilled to have met someone who could sing along with him. She's more than half his age, he's sixty eight, and a song from a popular folk song from a TV show. It turns out Mr Song has been playing the arhu on the street for money at this corner for almost five years. It doesn't matter how much money I earned. I'm just happy coming here to play. He can make as much as two hundred dollars on a weekend, he says, but still he considers this a hobby. He first started playing the instrument when he was a teenager more than fifty years ago, and kept practicing at home whenever he got a chance. Playing music is really my passion, and I have a lot of time to devote to that now. There isn't much else I want in life other than playing music. But I do have this wild dream of going all over the US. It would be going on tour solo, just he and his er who playing street corners all over the United States. He would get to visit new places while introducing the Chinese two string fiddle to people who have probably never heard the sound before. You could think of Mr Song as a cultural ambassador on the road without a worry in the world. This is his very own version of the American dream. We spent about an hour chatting on the corner of Broadway in college, but on that first visit, Mr Song didn't tell us much about his life before they are who and how it is that he had ended up in l A. So we made plans to catch him another time. On a weekday morning. We met up at his local library. That's where he often goes to keep up with the news back home through Chinese newspapers. She sat next to him at a table. He looked down at her smartphone, eyes wide open. I was just showing him, um, the one myself online based map where he can seek and zoom out and see the entire China and where we are, which is what the blue dog shows. And so we are where we're from as part of Shandong Province, and the city is called chin Dao. With his thumb and index fingers, Mr Song zoomed in and out of an online map for the very first time. He told us he had actually been raised in a rural community, but in the late nineteen fifties, alongside millions of other Chinese, his family resettled in a big city. Yeah, he was born like somewhere around here, and when he was twenty, there was the Great Famine in China, so his family, entire family moved to Harden in the north. He went to college in ching Dao and became a dentist. Mr Song got married and had two sons. He started his own dentistry practice and was able to provide his family a good, middle class life. By every measure, he was a successful man. He had a good career and loved spending time with his family. But a decade ago, his wife suddenly passed away, and Mr Song struggled to find new meaning in his life to figure out what was next. He was fifty eight and ready for a big change. He struggled as he looked for answers for about a year, and then, seemingly on a whim, he decided to leave his dentistry practice to his sons, who had followed in his path. He packed a single suitcase and got a one way flight to America. Before I came, I thought the US was a very magical place, almost like a paradise in the West. But after coming here, I realized that I couldn't really read the road sidnes I couldn't told to people, so I felt like I was blind and deaf and felt isolated. When I came to Chinatown, I finally felt like I could get accustomed to life here. At first, mom Mr Song thought that even though he didn't speak in English, he would go back to doing what he knew, fixing people's teeth. He had the idea of opening a small clinic in Chinatown, where there weren't very many. There are a lot of Chinese speaking people in Chinatown, and in most places you can see Chinese. But even if he spoke his customers language, there was another big challenge up ahead getting certified to practice here. That recertification process was lengthy and expensive, and he needed to get to work right away to support himself. Before long, he gave up on that idea of trying to become a dentist in the US. That's when it occurred to him, why not play the Rho for money. I've been playing several instruments since I was a teenager, like the flute and also the r Who. But the flute was really loud and several neighbors complained, so I primarily played the r Who. And when I started hearing complaints from the neighbors were playing the r Who too. That's when I decided I'm playing it on the street. He'd seen other street performers around downtown l A collecting change in their instrument cases, so he gave it a try one day on a corner just a few blocks from his Chinatown one bedroom apartment. It worked at first. He headed out to play the are who almost every day world. Sometimes I meet younger people who appreciate my music on the street and we have a good time together and they start dauncing. I don't really know how to play Western music. I just know Merry Christmas and Happy broth Day. A lot of the tourists would request the play Happy Birthday to someone for some change. But he had good days and bad days, and living in Los Angeles isn't cheap. His share of the rent is about a four dollars a month, so he had to figure out a new hustle on top of his street performance if he wanted to stay in the U. S. We're listening to independent producer Roxandra Guidi bringing us the story of Ying Chang Sung, a Chinese dentist who has found another calling here in the United States. We will continue with his story in a moment. First, a word from Express Employment Professionals. One company is on a mission to put a million people to work each year. Sounds like a big number, doesn't it not? To Express Employment Professionals seeking a skilled labor position or administrative worth. Maybe you're an executive looking for a career that fits. We take pride in connecting the right people with the right company. Express Employment Professionals is on a mission to put a million people to work each year. Let us help. We'll open doors for you. Go to Express pros dot com to find a location near you. I'm Steve Mencher, your host for on the job Now back to our store. Early on a weekday morning, we met Mr Song outside an old, nondescript gray building in downtown Los Angeles. He's come on his bike hauling a small cart behind him, something that he's rigged himself with a sharpening wheel, stone and some tools where you can't warrior, who gred your chamber? You will truck over you. I used to work in a garment factory as a comment worker myself, and I saw people coming around doing scissors sharpening, and I thought, I know how to shoppen scissors, So I got the idea that I can do that myself. I started doing it manually, but it was too hot on my hands, so I got a machine and I earned more money than I did when I worked as a comment worker. With cart and toe. Mr Song walks into every warehouse inside the Gray Building, advertising his services to the garment workers there. I sharpened sisters. The workers, most of them Spanish speaking, know him already. They get their sisters sharpened with him every month, and some of them recognize him from his or who playing in Chinatown. He sharpens the gartment workers all sisters for a dollar and also sells new sisters for two But I usually don't care about what they got. I just want to sell all the boxes. And at the end of the day, when he sold all the wholesale boxes of sisters he's been hauling, he usually ends up with a couple of hundred dollars and profits. I like shopping scissors. Let's speak at around and I see all the city that way. He takes the elevator down to the street level and it matches his sharpening cart to the back of his bike. It's almost new, and he's head at home, riding through l A's historic downtown and towards Chinatown, a good ten mile ride above main streets and freeway overpasses. He's in great physical shape for a sixty eight year old man, and no small part because of his daily bike rides, and because he keeps busy and engaged when he's now playing the Arhu or sharpening sisters or riding his bike. Mr Song is back at the library studying for his US citizenship test, but because he must speak English in order to take the test, he's trying to learn English too, and that's perhaps the most daunting part of his new life in America, learning a new language. As an older person, it's really half of me to memorize anything, so learning a language is a real challenge. Most of the people in English class are elderly, just like me, but some of them have faster memory than I do. It takes them wants to remember things it takes me five times or ten times, so I really have to put in a lot more efforts. Abraham, Abraham. On this day, she is sitting next to him in class, helping him with his pronunciation. Mr paris a man. George Washington is the father of our country, he says under his breath, and she corrects him, writing out what the sounds of those words in English would look like in standard Chinese. Little by little, over the many months I spent getting to know Mr Song his English skills seemed to improve. He was serious about practicing and going to class. His main goal at this stage in life was to be able to pass his citizenship test and fulfill his dream to travel across American a Greyhound bus with his RHO. But the more I looked around at other people, even much younger people, the more unique Mr Song seemed. He had a drive to succeed in his own terms and no qualms about what that took. He was endlessly positive and hard working, and even despite the challenges of a new life in the US without his grown sons, he showed no desire to return to China. Yes, you are right is a very rare case, I asked Brandy Orton, at gerontologist who works for St. Barnabas Senior Serve us IS in Los Angeles, serving a population of immigrant and low income seniors. Like Mr Song. When you become a street performer or as someone who sharpens knives, you are your own boss. There is no one to discriminate against you, quote unquote as an employer, and you determine who you're going to do business with and where you're going to go, and quite often you build a community around you. Of people who purchase your services. This is true for Mr Song. He has very loyal customers, whether they are the garment workers who get their sisters sharpened with him, or the tourists or locals who walk up to him and give him change when they hear him playing his r who in the neighborhood. Some of these people have helped him find new sources of income, or they have told him about the free English classes at the library. They are his network of friends and fans, the ones who make him want to keep playing his art who for as long as he can. What really matters? What are the critical things that make their life worth living? Dr William Vega is looking for an answer that would help explain Mr Song's resilience. He's executive director of the University of Southern California Edward R. Roybal Institute on Aging and what are the things that impinge upon their ability to achieve those things or not? That is the critical message that people want to know about, because in the end, it's an existential question. I've asked Mr Song those same existential questions, and time and time again he's told me the same thing. He doesn't want to feel like he's too old for anything, not riding his bike or learning a new language. And always, above all, he loves playing the r Who. A few other things in life seem to make him as happy. One day last summer, she and I ran into Mr Song in Chinatown had been a while. She tells Mr Song that she's going to China soon to visit her parents, and he asks her to bring him a new ar Who back. She stops to think about it. Why do you need a new er Who? Just the day before? He tells her he'd had a good gig playing as Our Who, and he imagines he'll get more of those in the future. Some TV or film producers approached me to play music on their set as part of that movie. So I've been to their studio. It paid like fifty or sixty dollars. It only took ten or twenty minutes, but they put makeup on me and they put me in costumes. From the sound of his voice, I could tell he loved it. I asked him if he wanted to be in the movies, if that was part of his dream too. No, not really. He just wants to keep playing, he says, keep getting better. He wants to prove to himself that he can be a great seventy year old or who play or some day young What do you part of being a famous musician or singer would have been great, Brett, don't think I'm playing quite at that level yet. So playing on the street is just the way for me to have fun and also a way to share Chinese culture. It doesn't matter how much money I earned, as long as it brings me joy. And with that, Mr Song jumped back on his bike. He asked she to think about bringing him back an er who he was wearing his Panama hat and his red silk jacket. His Urho case was slung across his back, and he was on his way to his corner at Broadway in College. You've been listening to the second act from retired Chinese dentist to l a musician producer Rook. Sandra Guidi first met Mr Song while working on a story for public radio station k c r W with support from the Eisner Foundation. And that's all for this edition and of On the Job from Express Employment Professionals. Find out more at Express prose dot com, and you can listen to every podcast this season at Express Prose dot com. Slash podcast. This podcast is produced by your host, Steve Mencher from men'sh Media, I Heart Radio and Red Seat Ventures. You can subscribe on iHeart Radio and iTunes, where we hope you'll leave a nice review that helps other folks find us. And of course you can listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. See you next time on the job.

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