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Going with what you know
A Taiwanese student follows his dream to Bethel and a successful business career – and back, after 50 years
by Melanie Zuercher
Po Shin Chang isn’t the first successful businessman to advise those starting out to “have a dream, keep chasing it and don’t give up.”
When he says that, the words carry some weight, since that was exactly what he did.
Chang returned to Bethel this past May for the first time in 50 years, since he graduated with the class of 1958. He came to the college from Taichung, Taiwan, in 1955. He had heard about Bethel from a Mennonite missionary pastor, Glen Graber, whose Bible study Chang attended once or twice a week in order to learn English.
At that time, Chang says, “Taiwan was underdeveloped, poor. Young men dreamed of coming to the United States to study. But because the government did not want money going out of the country, if you wanted to go to college overseas, you had to have a full scholarship from the college or university – and then pass the Ministry of Education exam and serve one year in the armed forces [before you could go].”
Graber, with whom Chang had become good friends, helped him get just such a scholarship to Bethel. So Chang left Taiwan, knowing “nothing about Kansas,” he says. “All we knew about the U.S. was in the movies – musicals, happy love stories, with beautiful houses and cars. It was the Promised Land.”
Chang came to college knowing he wanted to study business administration and economics. After 50 years, he says, it’s hard to remember all his professors, but the late J. Lloyd Spaulding, professor of economics, stands out. While he was at Bethel for the class reunion, Chang took time to visit Spaulding’s widow, Blanche, in North Newton.
He also remembers Bennie Bargen, who taught accounting and business. “They were both very kind to me,” he says.
Chang – whom his Bethel classmates called “Paul” – also learned more about life in America from his roommate, Stanley Pankratz ’59, who came from “a farm family, with a big cattle and turkey farm” in Mountain Lake, Minn., as Chang remembers.
“One Saturday, he said to me, ‘Let’s go out to look for a job, to earn some money,’” says Chang. “I realized then that the wealthy kids in the States had to earn their pocket money, too.”
Chang was only allowed to take $2,400 U.S. total out of the country for his years in college. “That’s how I got initiated into part-time work,” he says. While he was on campus, he cleaned residence halls and worked in the cafeteria. He was also able to get odd jobs in the community. “The people here in Newton were kind to us and helped us find work,” he says.
In the summers, he says, he would pack his car on the Friday after final exams and drive straight through to Chicago. When he got there, he says, “I would look in the want ads for an apartment to rent. I would sleep until Monday and then go out looking for work.” He always found it, although one summer, he says, he had to do “at least three or four different jobs because it was so hard to find work.”
After graduation, Chang spent 12 more years in the United States before he returned to Taiwan. He worked for an import distributor in Chicago and then went to Knoxville, Tenn., where he earned a master’s degree in the theory of international development with minors in international economics, and money and banking, and a Ph.D. in the same (though “money and banking” was by then called “monetary theory”) at the University of Tennessee.
He met and married his wife, Victoria, who is also from Taiwan, while there. Their two oldest children, Timothy and Maizie, were born in the United States. They also have two other children, a son, Terry, who accompanied his father on the visit to Bethel, and daughter Alicia, the only one who lives outside Taiwan (she is in Walnut Creek, Calif.) and the only one not involved in the family’s business ventures. By now, there are also sons- and daughters-in-law and eight grandchildren.
His formal education completed, Chang says, “I knew buying, from working for the importer in Chicago. I knew how to work with manufacturers and I knew the market, so I decided to move into supply [for housewares and gifts]. The first customer I got when I went back [to Taipei, where he currently lives] was the company I used to work for.”
Chang was in on the beginning of the Precious Moments® phenomenon, he says. “I know the artist-designer, who was from a small town in Michigan, who did the [original] greeting card. The president of the company where I used to work, Enesco, saw the cards, so we got a license for the figurines, which became a big hit and then a collectible.
“In giftware and housewares or any business, people copy,” he notes. “To be ahead, to be successful, you need to be creative and stay ahead of the crowd for at least a year. You have to know your customer and the strengths and preferences. We try to design for the customer and keep [products] exclusive as long as possible.”
The first company Chang started was called Victrado, which Terry now runs. In addition to supplying gifts and housewares to retail outlets, Victrado has also gone into electronics and children’s furniture.
“Then I put all the family assets into Yun San,” the corporation of which he is currently chairman, Chang says. “It became the holding company.” A major facet of Yun San Corp. is “a company that specializes in importing high fashions from England, France and Italy” – such as Versace, Valentino, Vivian Westwood, LaCoste sportswear, Lyle & Scott golfwear and Pentland shoes – and distributing them to more than 150 retail outlets in China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan.
“This was originally Victoria’s business and now Maizie runs it,” Chang says. “We used to carry Christian Dior, too, but we were so successful that they took it back. That’s what happens when you do well.” Son Tim is in upper management for Yun San.
Another of Chang’s involvements until recently was with the Chang Hwa Bank, which has branches all over Taiwan as well as in the world’s major finance centers. “From 1973-2000, I was an executive member of the board of directors,” he says. “In 2000, I joined the shareholders’ meeting and took control of the bank. It was approaching its 100th anniversary and it was not competitive enough – it was deteriorating.
“I became chair of the board and invited ING Group, a Dutch company, one of the largest financial conglomerates in the world, to consult. It took three years to restructure and reorganize the bank, during my first term as chairman. Then I completed a second term and [when that ended in 2006] the bank had turned around, so I thought I would quit and let a younger person run things. They begged me to take a third term, so I did but I didn’t promise to finish it. I quit in June 2007.
“I want to enjoy the rest of my life,” he says. That was part of why he decided to return to Bethel for his 50th college reunion. “Not many people live to go back to their school after 50 years.”
Driving from the airport in Wichita, he says, “the area north from Wichita looks totally different. So does Newton. The streets are wider. Some of the old buildings are gone. There used to be farmland between Bethel and Newton.”
A longtime hobby of Chang’s, which he hopes to do more of, is photography. He has traveled all over the world on photo trips, including, only a few years ago, to the beautiful natural areas in China’s Sichuan Province where devastating earthquakes struck earlier this year.
Looking back over a successful business career, he says, “I started with what I knew the best. [I would tell young people to] go into something you know well. However, the market keeps changing, so you need to have the ability to change with it. We are living in a world of changes. We are racing with the times.
“Education doesn’t end when you leave college,” he says. “Even at age 70, you have to study. I read all kinds of magazines and newspapers to enrich my business knowledge.
“You must have a dream,” he says. “Keep chasing it and don’t give up.”