JANUARY L ¿2g?. ju.StjOUt¡23
Deep Roots
“The McDonalds I worked at is still there, at Northeast
122nd and Glisan,” Jeung says. In the beginning he barely spoke
any English, and unemployment was so bad in the early ’80s that
it was extremely hard to get even a fast food job.
“Every single day I would go to McDonald’s and ask for a job,”
Jeung recalls of his humble beginnings. “I was very persistent,
because 1 needed to support myself and had no other way to do
it. The manager there finally hired me, even with no position.
He basically made up work for me to do, because he saw how
badly I needed it and felt sorry for me." From there, he worked
his way up through the kitchen to a swing manager position.
Some peiiple who were born in this country with more of a
sense of entitlement might be embarrassed by the fact that their
first job was at McDonald’s and might make an effort to obliter
ate it from their résumés. But Jeung isn’t embarrassed; he’s proud
of how far he’s come, through no other agency than his own hard
work and integrity. He even has a businessman’s respect for the
efficiency of the oft-maligned world of fast food.
“Fast food is super organized,” he says. “There’s a lot to learn
from it. You value the money you make because you work so hard
for it. It’s so un-PC, you know, here in Portland, to support
corporations, but they know what they’re doirtg.”
After McDonald’s, and while still attending high school, Jeung
worked as a recmiter for a berry farm. “You got paid by the head,”
he recalls. “1 mean, for a high schixil kid whose last job was
working at McDonald’s, to now be earning $200 a day in
cash...you know? But it was really hard work. You got up at 3 a.m.,
the bus driver picked you up and you worked until 4 p.m. And the
job didn’t end with recruiting. You had to make sure people picked
the right berry, or you got yelled at by the guy who owned the farm.
And some of these workers were elderly refugees from Southeast
Asia who couldn’t carry heavy loads. It’s a very physically inten
sive job.” He pauses. “It helps me look at all jobs in a positive light
today.”
I ni Going to be an Actor! (Maybe.)
After graduating from high school, Jeung worked at a cloth
ing store in the mall. “It was the coolest thing to work in the
mall,” he says. “I’m pretty persistent, and 1 excelled as a salesman.
The store 1 worked at was cheap but hip. They sold the hip
clothes, like Michael Jackson zipper pants. It was called Chess
King.” (The corporation that owned Chess King, Merry-Go-
Round Enterprises, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 1994, and
all stores were closed the following year.) Jeung worked in the
mall for one year, then decided he wanted to be an actor and
transferred to Los Angeles.
"1 became a waiter and got an agent within three months,
a pretty reputable agent. But it wasn’t exactly easy being an
Asian person looking for an acting job in L.A. in the ’80s. You
pretty much had to know karate. So I did a lot of extra work.
I’m really glad 1 did it, knowing there aren’t that many Asian
actors around.”
At this point, Jeung breaks off to reminisce about one of his
first acting gigs: a high school production of West Side Story. “1
played a Shark, of course,” he smiles. “A Puerto Rican gang
member. It was very high quality for a high school production.”
The school of which he speaks is Portland’s own David
Douglas High on Southeast 135th Avenue and Stark Street.
“Lindsay Wagner, the Bionic Woman, went to my school,” Jeung
says proudly. “So did Sam Elliott, the famous cowboy actor."
Like many before him, however, Jeung’s acting adventure in
L.A. didn’t pan out, and he returned to Portland after a year, desti
tute but not defeated. With the help of his older sister, he opened a
Thai restaurant in the Gateway area of Northeast Portland.
“It was very hard to have my older sister as a business part
ner,” Jeung confesses. “She was older than me, but I had more
business experience. It’s a cultural thing. In the Asian culture
I come from, the older sibling has the authority. So we
clashed.”
After a year he bought out her half of the business and did
five more years alone. “By then 1 was burned out. I’d been
working lunch and dinner most days for most of that time, and
1 needed a break.”
He sold the restaurant but kept the building. That was 13 1/2
years ago. “It’s still a restaurant tixlay, a breakfast place now called
the Gateway Breakfast House,” Jeung says. “I helped name it.”
Continued on Page 24
Jeung with guests at Chameleon's Halloween 2003 party.
*
“Peaches" the firedancer performs at a Chameleon Halloween bash.
Jeung dines on a Hungarian dish—chicken with paprika sauce—in
September 2006 in Budapest.
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