BIO
Millie Chan is a native of San Antonio, Texas and was born in 1933. She lived in a neighborhood with a strong Asian community and her parents were very involved, socially and politically. Growing up, her family owned a grocery store and also ran the well-known restaurant Tai Shan which opened in celebration of her younger brother’s birth. Millie also had two other siblings, one younger sister and one older sister. For college, she first attended Trinity and then transferred to Our Lady of the Lake where she studied music education since she had been playing the violin since the age of five. During those years, she also met her husband Lo-Yi who at the time was studying architecture at Harvard. They bonded over their love for music and eventually moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts together. Millie and her husband wed in 1957 and the next year, expanded their family with the birth of their first child, Chris. Not soon after, when Chris was just seven months old, Millie’s husband got a traveling fellowship and the three of them traveled around the world visiting Hong Kong, Japan, India, the Middle East and Europe. Once they got back, Millie and her family ended up moving and settling in New York City, where she and her husband still live. At the time, Millie’s husband was employed by I. M. Pei, an extremely successful and well-known architect. Millie and her husband had two more children (a daughter and another son), and all of them attended the private school, Fieldston Ethical Culture, as children and went to Dartmouth College afterwards. After her children grew up and moved out, Millie began getting more involved with cooking. She attended China Institute and became president of the Women’s Association there. Millie also taught a cooking class at her children’s high school, Fieldston, and wrote her own cookbook about kosher Chinese food. Millie also became involved with the New York Women’s Foundation, which is one of the most successful fundraising women’s organizations in the country. Now, Millie and her husband are retired in New York where they’ve been joining more clubs and enjoying life with friends and family.
This interview delves more into Millie’s experiences as an Asian American growing up in San Antonio, and discusses the impact her parents had on the Chinese community at the time. Millie also talks about how she met her current husband and their journey of creating a family, while traveling the world and gaining cultural experiences. Millie also provides details about her and her husband settling down in New York where they raised their three children. Both still live there now, and since moving there Millie has made huge contributions to the Chinese cooking community as well as the New York Women’s Foundation.