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A8 flosAnflrics (Times LATIMES.COM Still baking cakes in Chinatown 1 PHOENIX BAKERY was getting bank loans, owning Photographs by GABRIEL S. SCARLETT Los Angeles Times established in 1938 at a time when racist laws prevented Chinese immigrants from homes in most neighborhoods and reuniting with their families from abroad. Bakery, from Al "But you did it, because it was understood." Phoenix Bakery, one of five remaining businesses that opened when Chinatown was established, turns 80 this year. Its survival has required the collective efforts of a far-flung multi-generational Chinese American family that includes a pediatric therapist in Bel-Air, an engineer in Silver Lake, an accountant in Pa-los Verdes and a communications professional in Arcadia not to mention their sons, daughters, husbands and wives. Elsewhere in Chinatown, Phoenix Bakery's contemporaries have not been so lucky.

Ma Jen Low, established in 1878, closed awhile ago when the last remaining family member involved with the business could no longer endure the long train rides from Orange County. A group of aging brothers trade shifts to keep the gift shop KG Louie open for a few hours a week, unable to lure their children into the business. And as Chinatown and other historically ethnic communities confront gen-trification, rising rents and changing demographics, the question of who takes over the family business becomes an existential one. What happens to the neighborhood when its sons and daughters leave? Phoenix Bakery was established in 1938 at a time when racist laws and practices prevented Chinese immigrants from getting bank loans, owning homes inmost neighborhoods and reuniting with their families from abroad. Waihing suggested opening a bakery to remind people of the things they had to celebrate.

The family primarily sold Cantonese sweets such as sesame and almond cookies to chop suey restaurants and dime stores. A few years later, Lun Chan concocted the strawberry cake that would establish the bakery as a Chinatown institution by the 1960s. Lun, Fung Chow and Waihing never asked their children to take over the bakery. But the lack of discussion did not make the next generation's sense of obligation any less palpable, said Kenneth Chan, who is Fung Chow and Waihing's second-oldest son. Their parents set an example of sacrifice and work ethic that each child was expected to live up to.

"My dad has always preached this to me: Remember where you came from," said Kenneth, 66. All of the children worked as soon as they were old enough to be useful. They dipped butterfly cookies in sweet glaze and washed cake pans. "You never talked back or said it was boring. Anything that needed to be done, you just did it," Kathy said.

Fung Chow was an innovative businessman who helped launch East West Bank and Cathay Bank to serve Asian immigrants who ice cakes until dusk. If there was still daylight, he'd drive down to Malibu and do the one thing that eased the stress of honoring his father's legacy: surf until it got dark. Finally, he figured out that pumping the batter through the machinery was forcing the air from the mixture. Youlen adjusted the configuration of the machines, and one day, out of the oven came a cake that resembled his father's. Youlen's hard-won victory did not elicit a visible reaction from his father.

A World War II veteran, Lun Chan "didn't say much unless you screwed up," Youlen said. Youlen understands that his labor eventually allowed his father to retire. But up until the day he died in 2016, his father never expressed any sentiment about his son following in his footsteps, Youlen said. On a recent weekday, Kathy, her brother Kenneth and Youlen sat around a table in the bakery and reminisced about their experiences working there. Pay was 99 cents an hour.

Shifts were mandatory, and complaining was not allowed. Eventually, the subject of their parents came up. "Your dad was proud of you, though he might not have told you," Kathy told Youlen. "He told me." "Yeah, well," Youlen said. "It was the kind of thing where you knew they were happy but they never came out and said it." But as he fell silent, the corner of his mouth slowly sloped into a smile.

Fung Chow Chan died in 2001, and Lun Chan passed away in 2016. After Fung Chow's oldest son, Kellogg, died last year, the family began to seriously consider the long-term prospects of the bakery. Foot traffic in Chinatown was declining, and the bakery on North Broadway needed both renovation and innovation. "Are we going to be the generation that's known for letting our parents' legacy die?" Kenneth remembers asking. Over the years, the natural orbits of their lives had taken the family farther and farther from Chinatown and the bakery.

Demanding careers left less time to help out Youlen at the bakery. When Chinatown's premier banquet venue, Empress Pavilion, closed, the family's annual Chinese New Year's celebration moved to a dim sum restaurant in Monterey Park. Most of the second generation moved to the suburbs, seeking affordable homes and good schools for their children. Their connections to Chinese culture had also faded with time. Eric Chan, Fung Chow's grandson, elected to play sports over attending Chinese school on Saturdays.

Kathy gave birth to Andrea Purcell, the family's first mixed-race child. Spanish is spoken more commonly than Cantonese in the third generation. When the family visited China a few years ago, it was as American tourists clad in matching bright red T-shirts that read "Chan Family Tour 1991." But the third generation grew up in the ever-lengthening shadow of the bakery's legacy in Chinatown, celebrating their birthdays with its cakes and watching Chinese New Year's parades from its windows. Many of them have stepped up to help keep the bakery alive. Eric, a finance executive with Kaiser Per-manente, serves on the bakery's managing board and launched a review of its finances.

Melissa, Lun's granddaughter, runs the bakery's Facebook and In-stagram accounts. Tiffany, Fung Chow's granddaughter, helped build the website and makes marketing suggestions. And Andrea Purcell, Fung Chow's oldest granddaughter, now brings her son and daughter to help at the bakery. For Purcell, the best legacy of the bakery isn't the cake or the cookies it's the family that came together around it. "Growing up, I had this massive Chinese family that was everywhere, and we saw them all the time," she said.

"It's of greater value to me that we are a family than having this business." IT TOOK Youlen Chan nearly a year to master Phoenix Bakery's star product: his father's strawberry cake, two sponge rounds separated by a generous helping of strawberries, coated in lightly sweet cream frosting. tacted the equipment manufacturer, which sent a technician out to puzzle over the machinery. But the cake still came out flat. Youlen started coming in on weekends and his days off to bake cakes, laboring to create sponge that was as airy as the original. He began to dread seeing his father.

"It was never, 'Hey, how are you doing, how are the Youlen said. "It was always, 'How come you're baking so much? Why are you charging so much for the Each morning he would arrive at the bakery around 9 a.m., tuck his surfboardbe-hind some crates in the warehouse, then bake and locations in Lincoln Heights and Echo Park. He persuaded the family board to invest thousands of dollars in new equipment that would allow the bakery to produce far more cakes and pastries with much less work. "I wanted this place to get really, really big," Youlen said. But his new machines and college-educated production methods failed to reproduce his father's strawberry cake.

He consulted his professor at the American Institute of Baking and experimented with adding ice to the mixture to help control the temperature. He con- Ex-Health chief told to repay funds "They never pressured any of us to make the bakery our full-time life," said Doulen, Lun's oldest son. "But they never made a plan to sell the place. They never even talked about it. So we knew." Doulen studied at UCLA and became an engineer for Hughes Aircraft.

Leland, Lun's youngest son, became a medical technician. And so the apron fell to Youlen, who was at the time a "total bum" who didn't have much of an interest in school. Youlen dreamed up an ambitious commissary to rival Porto's, the local Cuban bakery chain, creating plans for a centralized baking facility with multiple satellite general's recommendations for tightening up official travel and requested details on the $341,000 that investigators said the government should recoup. A spokesperson said the agency would ask the Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel to review whether there is a legal basis to recoup the money. Nicholas Peters, a spokesman for Price, suggested in a statement that the costly travel was the result of "good faith mistakes" by staff.

Peters would not say if the former secretary will repay the taxpayer money that the inspector general says should be recouped. Senior Democrats on Capitol Hill, meanwhile, redoubled their criticism of the former Health secretary. "This report confirms Tom Price's role as the poster child for the rampant waste of taxpayer dollars that has occurred on Trump's watch all while he was pursuing dangerous policies that increase families' premiums and weaken their healthcare," said Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden, the senior Democrat on the Sen- were discriminated against by other financial institutions. He became one of Chinatown's most well-known figures, and his legacy loomed large over each of his children's lives.

So many in Chinatown relied on Fung Chow's banks for loans and celebrated their birthdays and wedding anniversaries with Lun's cakes. Guest lists at Chan family weddings and funerals ran into the thousands. And though Lun, Fung Chow and Waihing never put any pressure on any of their children to keep the bakery going, aunts and uncles lectured them on the importance of keeping the family business alive. PaulD. Ryan (R-Wis.) whom President Trump tapped to lead the health agency, was forced to resign in September after reports by Politico outlined his extensive use of charter and military aircraft for routine travel domestically and around the world.

Many of the flights were between major U.S. cities served by much cheaper commercial airlines. After the scandal broke, Price said he would repay a portion of the costs. But the Office of Inspector General recommended that the health agency recoup an additional $341,616 from Price, who is now serving on the advisory board of Atlanta-based Jackson Healthcare. The inspector general estimated that the government spent nearly $1.2 million on Price's travel during his seven months in office.

That included more than $700,000 in military flights on two foreign and two domestic trips, as well as more than $480,000 for various domestic trips by private chartered aircraft. The department agreed with most of the inspector ate Finance Committee. Wyden was among many Democrats who opposed Price's nomination, citing among other things revelations that while a congressman, Price had traded extensively in the stocks of healthcare companies that could have been affected by his votes and actions. Extravagant spending on travel and office remodeling by top officials became a running story as the Trump administration took power in Washington on a presidential promise to "drainthe swamp." Price was forced out in fall 2017 after his travel drew the ire of Trump, who was also upset over the GOP failure to repeal Obamacare. A successful orthopedic surgeon before winning a congressional seat from the Atlanta suburbs, Price rose to become one of the top GOP experts on budget and healthcare issues.

But as Health secretary, he never produced a healthcare plan to "repeal and replace" the Affordable Care Act. Among other findings from the report: Investigators ques- tioned Price's assertion that his official schedule prevented him from flying commercial. In one case a White House event cited as justification was canceled, and Price's office chose to continue with a charter flight at a cost of nearly $18,000. Even among charter flight options, Price's office did not always book the lowest-cost trip. In one case the difference between quoted options amounted to nearly $46,000.

For six trips, Price either started or ended his travel in his home state of Georgia, his most frequent charter travel destination outside of his official duty station in Washington. Health and Human Services paid more than $11,500 on commercial flights for a Price trip to China, Viet -nam and Japan. But Price ultimately flew on military transport at a cost of more than $430,000, and the agency lost track of what it spent for the commercial airline ticket until the inspector general's investigators identified the expense. noam.leveylatimes.com Tom Price, who left his post amid concern about extravagant travel, reportedly owes $341,000. By Noam N.

Levey WASHINGTON Former Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price should repay the federal government more than $341,000 for improperly using charter and military aircraft for travel for himself and his wife, a new report from the agency's independent Office of the Inspector General has concluded. "The Office of the Secretary improperly used federal funds related to former Secretary Price's government travel," said the report, released Friday. Auditors found that 20 of the 21 trips that Price took during his brief tenure as secretary in 2017 did not meet federal requirements. Price, a conservative Georgia congressman and friend of House Speaker frank, shyong latimes.com Twitter: frankshyong.