The Chinese dragons prancing to drum-and-gong music in San Francisco's airport were celebrating a first anniversary for Allan Fong, an honest man.
Sunday morning, passengers with time on their hands watched the show, but it didn't begin to the tell the full story.It was a year ago that Fong found $278,000 in cash, attained celebrity status, met the mayor and stopped hating yogurt.
The $278,000 was stuffed in a bright red bag, left on a stool in Yerba Buena International Restaurants on Third Street by a forgetful 82-year-old gent who didn't trust banks.
Fong was the busboy who found it. He didn't hesitate before turning the money in, an act of basic decency that earned Fong a new nickname: "Stupid."
The mayor was Art Agnos, who proclaimed Fong "truly the symbol of the honest man" and went in person to the restaurant complex to praise the 57-year-old immigrant from China.
Then Agnos urged Host International, the San Francisco International Airport's food con-ces-sion-aire, to set up Fong with his own TCBY Yogurt shop in the Southwest Terminal near Delta and Northwest airlines' gates.
Fong, who knows a good career move when he sees one, didn't mention his personal antipathy to the product he would be peddling.
"I never liked it," Fond admitted Sunday as patrons lined up for free anniversary yogurt. "But I learned to enjoy it over the past year. To tell the truth, yogurt tastes good."
On hand were Fong's wife and three children, who work with him in the business, as well as Wing Fong, the yogurt man's elderly uncle.
While Agnos brought Fong to the airport, it was Uncle Wing who summoned him to America.
"It was 1948," recalled Fong. "I was 12 or 13 years old. He brought me here from China and educated me in American ways."
Fong's career as an American has had its ups and downs. He opened his own garment shop, then was forced out of business by high rents and low income. After a stint in the import trade, Fong found himself busing tables.
Fong remembered sadly how many of his friends mocked him for turning in the money. He didn't sleep well for days, he said. He felt depressed. Reporters asked him whether he had considered keeping the money, a question Fong found insulting.
"I teach my children to always do the right thing," he said.