Since the day in 1942 when he was expelled from high school in Yumping, China, Chen Chan Cheng, proprietor of the Peking Book House in Evanston, has been following a calling: to educate himself and the rest of the world.
“Where have you been?” Cheng asks buoyantly, trotting toward the customer and cradling her hand before the door can shut behind her. Cheng treats all his customers –most of them regulars–with the same affection.
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Every customer carries a different tale of Cheng. They come from Wisconsin and Indiana as well as Chicago, and often they venture into the store because they’ve met the owner in some other setting–Cheng the Baha’i (he was one of the first three Taiwanese Baha’is back in 1952), Cheng the traveler (he has been around the world twice), or Cheng the crooner (he’s been known to sing Chinese opera).
Part of the problem was the merchandise. Initially, Cheng could get nothing but propaganda from his China-backed, San Francisco-based supplier: red flags with yellow stars, books of Mao’s poetry, posters of smiling Chinese bounding triumphantly forward under the headline “Socialism Advances in Victory Everywhere.”
“Everybody was afraid,” recalled Cheng, his cheery face tightening slightly. “Ultimately, you either stood up and fought or went up into the mountains.”
“Some people don’t have enough money to buy books, so they use the stores as libraries,” Cheng explained. Profits are plowed back into local schools. He has also donated textbooks and encyclopedias to Yumping schools. Most recently, in 1986, Cheng taught a group of 30 Jiangxi English teachers how to use typewriters, and gave one to each of their schools.
Johnson has his own key to the store, and he often works at night, alone. Cheng lets his employee do as he pleases; the only thing he’s asked him to do in three years is change the light bulbs, Johnson says–“because he doesn’t like ladders.
