Our community recently lost a wonderful soul.
Many of you have noticed that the Silver Dragon restaurant in Battle Ground has been closed recently. The closure is due to the sudden death of its owner, Alan Wan. A news story is in the works here at The Reflector about Wan’s death but I felt compelled to share my sorrow with you as well.
Each week, The Reflector is delivered to more than 29,000 households. I wonder how many of those households were touched by Alan. I have to believe it is a very large percentage. Most area residents I interact with know Alan. And, if you met Alan, you likely never forgot him.
Alan had a great spirit. I believe there was a lot of joy in Alan’s life, mostly because it was obvious that he truly loved people. But, I know from personal experience, there was also a great deal of sadness in Alan’s life, and that makes me sad as I write this.
I first met Alan some 25 years ago, about a dozen or so years after he came to the area from his native Hong Kong. After working at the Vancouver Silver Dragon restaurant, he and his wife Amanda opened a humble, nondescript little restaurant in Vancouver near Clark College. The little restaurant was on my path to work, so out of curiosity, I stopped in one day and I was immediately hooked – both to the food and the friendship.
The restaurant was very small, having maybe a half dozen tables. It sat on the corner of E. 4th Plain Blvd. and Fort Vancouver Way – a McDonald’s is at the location today. I worked a swing shift at The Columbian Newspaper in those days so I would stop and have lunch with Alan and Amanda 3-5 times a week.
During many of those visits, I was the only customer in the restaurant, which offered us the opportunity to visit. Alan loved to visit. Granted, he had a bit of a “woe is me’’ way about him. I remember he had a white chef’s hat at the time and he had handwritten on the side of the hat that the only day of the year that he didn’t work was Christmas. The other 364 days, he worked.
I don’t think there’s any question that work ethic was ingrained in him in his native Hong Kong. He shared with me that it was embedded in their culture. It was their way of life. It was at Alan’s humble little restaurant that I discovered my affinity for fried rice.
One of my many problems with food is I have a very limited palate. I can literally eat the same meal day after day after day. This drove Alan crazy. It also drove him crazy that I hated vegetables. During almost every visit to his restaurant, Alan would politely try to coax me into incorporating some vegetables into my meal. I was willing to eat corn, and he would make me a side dish of it, but he said it didn’t count as a vegetable.
Alan and Amanda’s little restaurant was only open for a couple of years. It was then that he moved out to the Silver Dragon in Battle Ground, later becoming owner. After many years of not interacting with Alan, I enjoyed reconnecting with him not long after I came to work here at The Reflector in 2007.
I ate lunch from time to time at the Silver Dragon and enjoyed seeing Alan on those occasions. He would also stop by The Reflector office from time to time. In 2012, I sat down with Alan and freelance reporter FH Browne, who was doing a story on some new menu items at the restaurant for The Reflector’s food page.
We spent a lot of time with Alan that day. It was then that I learned that Amanda had died, leaving a large hole in the lives of Alan and their two daughters. We talked about a lot that day, including his family back in Hong Kong that he hadn’t seen in far too long.
Is it fair or accurate to call a restaurant owner a simple man? Or, a modest man? I don’t know. I do feel those to be endearing qualities. I can’t say that I knew Alan well. But, I strongly feel I knew him well enough to know that he had a big heart and that he genuinely cared for other people.
“I love this restaurant,’’ Alan told FH Browne and I that day in 2012. “It’s me, and this is what I was meant to do. I love my customers, love serving people, making them happy and especially enjoy it when they like my food.’’
I was saddened to learn of his sudden death. And since I heard that news, I’ve enjoyed thinking about the man I knew both a while ago and recently. I will remember him fondly and I hope you do, too.
Ken Vance
Editor
