by Richard Prior
Staff Writer
Of course you can go home again. Happily.
Jacksonville native Albert Chin left town to spend four years at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. He later went to law school at Washington University in St. Louis.
In between, he took a year off, traveling throughout Asia. He made stops in Taipei, Taiwan; Hong Kong; and Thailand, backpacking, teaching English, studying Chinese.
He didn’t go to mainland China, but traveled by bus and train throughout the island of Taiwan, where his parents grew up. His mother was born in Shanghai, and his father was born in Malaysia.
“I went back there because I wanted to see where my family was from,” said Chin. “I went to their old house, to their schools. I just wanted to see where my mom and dad were from. Where I’m from.
“It was a really good feeling.”
The journey made some indelible impressions on Chin, who has been an attorney with Holland & Knight for the past year.
“Hong Kong is one of the busiest places I’ve ever seen,” he said. “Everything is built on top of each other. There’s no room, and it’s very expensive.
“I didn’t stay there too long, but it was fun.”
He visited the Takoro Gorge, a “miniature Grand Canyon” with spectacular views and rock formations, on the east side of Taiwan. He climbed one of the island’s 293 mountain peaks and woke at 4 a.m to watch a breathtaking sunrise, up above the clouds.
Chin’s family fled China after the Communist takeover in 1949. His grandfather, who once owned a small bakery, left first. He fled with no money and only the barest essentials — two pairs of pants, two coats, two pairs of socks. It was three years before his wife could join him.
“I think about all the sacrifices that, not only my parents, but my grandparents and their grandparents have made,” said Chin. “They worked really hard and made something of themselves.”
He has gotten involved in “pretty general” legal issues, “mostly commercial litigation” at Holland & Knight.
“There are great people working here,” he said, savoring the panorama from the 39th floor of the Bank of America Tower. “They are a great bunch of attorneys. I’ve really enjoyed myself, and I’ve learned so much in the past year.”
Chin has been appointed his office’s coordinator for the firm’s Opening Doors for Children program and admires the work Holland & Knight does in the community.
“The attorneys and staff go out and mentor in the community; they do whatever they can,” he said. “That’s been a great experience. I’ve met a lot of people who are all about kids and the community.
“I didn’t know all that was going on until I started doing this.”
Chin hadn’t given much thought to becoming a lawyer until he took a Constitutional law course as an undergraduate at Virginia.
“I found something there I was really interested in,” he recalled. “I was drawn to this because it’s a challenge intellectually every day. Learning to solve problems. That’s a really neat thing to do.
“And it’s something different every day. How you frame it, describe it, takes creative thinking.”
Not long after being hired by the firm, Chin saw an article about the newly formed Jacksonville Asian American Bar Association and joined immediately.
“I definitely have an interest in the Asian community,” he said. “Growing up, there were not that many Asian people, much less Asian attorneys. That was something I wanted to be a part of.”
A main goal of JAABA is to educate Asians in the community about the legal system, to let them know there are remedies available for the wrongs that are done.
For the most part, Chin said, Asians tend to handle problems themselves ... or ignore them. Perhaps the reluctance of many Asians to turn to the police and the courts is the result of a language barrier, he suggested. Perhaps it’s uncertainty about how this society and the system work.
“I can’t speak for everybody, but I think there is something to be said for that [spirit of self-reliance],” he said. “Asian people are very proud. In a good way.
“To be honest, I don’t know why they haven’t been more assertive about using the system. Maybe they aren’t aware.”
As JAABA grows, more people in trouble will become more aware, realizing they have somewhere to turn, Chin said:
“That’s one of the goals of the organization. I think what they’ve been doing is getting the word out that this organization is here. I think that’s definitely going to come.
“All the officers are very passionate about it.”