A teen-aged Kim Chan came to New York from China in 1928, where he worked in his father's famous Manhattan restaurant, The House of Chan. During the 1940's, he started getting parts as Japanese soldier "extras" through the show business contacts he made in his restaurant work. He decided to try to go into acting full-time when he realized that the smallest of walk-on parts netted him more money than one week in his job as House of Chan's maitre d'; however, he periodically had to do restaurant work until his career started to take off. He has worked steadily in the acting field since 1980. The rest, as they say, is history.
photo by Wai Ng