'If it's not in writing, they're screwed'

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Sun, 30 Sep 2001 13:11:44 GMT
FROM MOUNTAIN MEDIA
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE DATED SEPT. 9, 2001
THE LIBERTARIAN, By Vin Suprynowicz
'If it's not in writing, they're screwed'

Howard Liang was a chemistry professor at the prestigious state university in Canton, China, when the Cultural Revolution hit in the early 1980s. Liang and his family were singled out for abuse because they had relatives in the United States.

But the last straw came when the Liangs' oldest son, then ready to enter high school, was told he would never be allowed to take college preparatory courses.

"He was a very good student, it was only because he was from a 'bad' family," explains Howard's wife, Jennifer, who met her husband at the university and also holds a degree in chemistry. "My husband said, 'All these years, I've taught college to other people's children, and now my own child won't be allowed to go to college?' "

Despite the fact the application itself could subject them to further abuse, the Liangs applied for permission to emigrate to the States. They had to wait seven years, but they were finally allowed to come here in 1990. By then their elder son was 18 -- he had only three months in summer school to learn enough English to attend an American university.

He made it. Both the Liangs' sons are now engineers. Good sons, they travel back from California to make sure their parents' mechanical equipment remains in good repair. Jennifer Liang proudly announces she now has two grandchildren. Howard Liang's brother and sister are doctors in California. "We came here for freedom," Jennifer Liang says. The Liangs are an American success story ... but it hasn't been easy.

With his limited English, landing a teaching post was an impossibility when Howard Liang arrived here. So, following the path of so many immigrants to these shores, he and Jennifer went to work at a Chinese restaurant then owned by his sister, on Flamingo Road.

After three years, they were ready to open their own place. The Liangs designed the China King (in the Wal-Mart plaza on the southwest corner of Rainbow and Cheyenne) from the ground up. I've eaten there for years, in large part because the cuisine is a step above any traditional Chinese take-out.

"We developed a lot of the entrees ourselves," from traditional dishes her husband recalled from his native Canton, Jennifer Liang recalls. The blackboard by the door offers seasonal specialties unlikely to turn up elsewhere, from pan-fried squid to fresh green beans with meat (Szechuan style) to pork-stuffed deep-fried eggplant, which brought some enthusiastic thumbs-up in answer to my informal poll of diners as I visited the Liangs Thursday evening.

I asked Mrs. Liang how business was. Actually, she confessed, disaster had struck during the summer. The shopping center was sold two years ago to a huge, publicly-traded California outfit called Pan Pacific Properties. For almost that long, the half of the free-standing duplex along Rainbow Boulevard which once held the Kenny Rogers roast chicken franchise had stood vacant. Finally, in June, a tenant was located for the vacant premises.

That tenant? Joe Chen, owner (through his Bowen Associates LLC) of the China Joe's chain of local fast-food restaurants (including the China a Go-Go in Henderson.) He calls his new place "Buffet at Asia."

As a short-term result, business at the China King fell about in half. "People coming here see the new place, and they decide to give it a try," Mrs. Liang explains.

"When we moved in, the landlord made us agree not to open any other Chinese restaurant within three miles," Jennifer Liang recalls. In exchange, the Liangs asked for a guarantee that no competing Chinese restaurant would open in the same shopping center. She recalls being told, "Of course, that goes without saying."

They asked for that provision to be put in the lease, and were told it was in there. But "We read English very slowly, and the lease was like this," she says, holding up two fingers to indicate a pile of papers a quarter-inch thick. "We trusted him," she recalls.

Needless to say, the written restriction on competing Chinese restaurants in the same shopping center now can't be found.

"They say it's an Asian buffet, not a Chinese restaurant," Mrs. Liang explains of the new competitor. "But they're Chinese people, and 90 percent of the menu is Chinese."

I stopped by for a look. Buffet at Asia is a well-lit, high-tech enterprise with heaps of appetizing food. The morning I stopped by, they opened early rather than leave a couple of senior citizens waiting outside in the sun for the official 11 a.m. post time. It's hard not to wish them well. But Mrs. Liang is right -- the inclusion of a few sushi items, a Thai curry chicken, and something called "Filipino Pineapple Beef" hardly disguises the fact that the Buffet at Asia menu consists mostly of egg rolls and chow mein, fried rice and Kung Pao chicken, sweet and sour pork and egg foo young and shrimp Cantonese. You know ... Chinese food.

I called back to ask owner Joe Chen if he wasn't concerned, opening a second Chinese restaurant in a shopping center which already held one such successful enterprise. Joe turned over the phone to his assistant, Stephanie, who explained Mr. Chen couldn't understand my questions. Sure enough, Stephanie's answer was: "We are not a Chinese restaurant, this is an Asian buffet. So we have Thai, Japanese, and some Vietnamese, so we have two different things here ..."

I asked Gabrielle Wallace, manager of the local office of Pan Pacific Retail Properties on West Sahara, if the landlord had any concerns about placing two Chinese restaurants in the same shopping center.

"No," she said.

The Liangs say they've written to Ms. Wallace's office in protest. Ms. Wallace denies receiving any such letter.

"I would have to look at their lease to see if they have an exclusive for a Chinese restaurant," she says, referring my other questions to a corporate spokesman in San Diego, who never calls back.

I called my friend the judge to ask if the Liangs have any legal recourse -- perhaps to seek help with improved signage, or some co-op advertising, if not a renegotiation or outright escape from their lease.

"If it's not in writing, they're screwed," I was told.

"Is that the technical, legal term?" I asked.

"Yes, that's the technical term we lawyers use. They're screwed."

Unless a whole lot of people decide to head over to the China King, 3175 N. Rainbow at Cheyenne, to try the pork-stuffed fried eggplant, of course ... or maybe the chef's special pork chop with broccoli.

That's what I'll be doing.

Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal. To receive his longer, better stuff, subscribe to his monthly newsletter by sending $72 to Privacy Alert, 561 Keystone Ave., Suite 684, Reno, NV 89503 -- or dialing 775-348-8591

Vin Suprynowicz, vin@lvrj.com

"When great changes occur in history, when great principles are involved, as a rule the majority are wrong. The minority are right." -- Eugene V. Debs (1855-1926)

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed -- and thus clamorous to be led to safety -- by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." -- H.L. Mencken

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