Climbing Above the Culture Clash

On Aug. 5, 2008, Gary Locke (’75)
could be found dashing through the
streets of Chengdu, China, carrying the
Olympic torch that, in just three days,
would launch the 2008 games in Beijing.
Locke is not an athlete. In fact, while
growing up in Seattle, his Chinese-
American parents didn’t allow him to
play sports so he’d have more time to
devote to his studies. Yet there he was,
decked out in a red and white Chinese
running uniform, sprinting through
the streets of his ancestral homeland as
part of a relay that began four months
earlier in Olympia, Greece, and traveled
85,000 miles across six continents.
What brought Locke this unusual honor
was his unlikely rise from humble roots
as the son of immigrant shopkeepers
to become the first Asian-American
governor in U.S. history. As governor
of Washington state, he presided over
an economy that is more dependent
on foreign trade than any other state
in the nation, courting high-level
Chinese contacts in his efforts to
promote the state’s manufacturing,
high-tech and service industries.
When he left office eight years later, he
built upon these contacts as a partner
in the international practice group at
Davis Wright and Tremaine in Seattle.
His diligent efforts were rewarded in
July 2006 when he was granted a rare
private meeting with Chinese Premier
Wen Jibao in Beijing, and again
that same year when he convinced
Chinese President Hu Jintao to begin
his U.S. tour in Washington state.
Locke’s stunning career trajectory
took another leap forward in March
when President Barack Obama
chose him to become the 36th U.S.
secretary of commerce, entrusting
him with a key role in guiding the
nation’s economic recovery.
The magnitude of Locke’s journey
was driven home to him soon after he
“
I loved BU Law. It was intellectually
stimulating and I had some great professors.
I always tell people that even if you never
practice law, a legal education sharpens
your analytical skills and critical thinking.
”
was elected governor, when his family
made a pilgrimage to their ancestral
village of Jilong in southern China.
“It was like stepping back into the
1800s,” said Locke. “We took the
hydrofoil from Hong Kong up the Pearl
River to our family village, and visited
the house my grandfather was born in.
My parents hadn’t been back since they
were married 50 years earlier. The house
is in a village of 150 people, which is less
than a half-mile from a city of 2 million
— and there are still no flush toilets.”
This was not the first time Locke
had experienced such a cultural
jolt. When he was 10 years old, his
father took him to Hong Kong to
visit his paternal grandmother.
“She was living in a compound that
was like a refugee camp on the hillside
of Hong Kong,” said Locke. The floors
of her six-by-six room were dirt, she
slept on a bench and had no plumbing.
“It was a complete culture shock, and
I was very homesick for the U.S.,”
he recalled. “It helped me appreciate
the incredible life I had there.”
But when Locke returned home, he
experienced another kind of culture
clash. His parents, like many immigrant
couples, wanted their children to
retain the values and traditions passed
down from their ancestors. But this
was 1950s America, and cultural
conformity was the order of the day.
“We were bombarded by television
shows like ‘Father Knows Best’ and ‘The
Donna Reed Show,’ where mothers
vacuumed the house in high heels
and pearls. I had a third-grade teacher
who would ask every student what
we had for breakfast, and if it wasn’t
a traditional American breakfast, we
got our hands slapped with a ruler.
[Our family] usually ate a kind of
rice porridge with fish and vegetables,
so I got my hands slapped a lot.”
As a result, Locke grew up believing he
had to choose between being Chinese
and being American. It was not until
the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s
that he learned to reconcile the two.
In spite of his adolescent struggles,
Locke ultimately fulfilled his parents’
dreams, attending Yale University on
scholarship and later graduating from
Boston University School of Law. He
chose law as a career path believing
he would probably work in Asian-
American legal services after graduation.
“I was in college during the Civil
Rights Movement and the Vietnam
War protests, and decided that the best
way to make change was by using the
law rather than burning buildings,”
he said. “I loved BU Law. It was
intellectually stimulating and I had
some great professors. I always tell
people that even if you never practice
law, a legal education sharpens your
analytical skills and critical thinking.”
Locke’s initial plans for his legal career
took an unexpected turn after his
second year of law school when he won
a Rule 9 internship, a Washington state
program that allows law students to
represent misdemeanor cases. A year
later, he landed a job in the Washington
District Attorney’s office prosecuting
major felonies, including capital murder
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