Y.H. Hui:
Growing up poor, with everyone sick, he knew he wanted a health career

At first, John Wiley & Sons thought the book was too legal for readers without a law degree, Hui said. "They sent it out to law firms to see if I knew what I was talking about," he said. "They said my English wasn't bad, but they would like it to be better."

He figured he would never be able to write another book, but, he said, "I'm difficult to stop. I thought, 'What the heck, I'll give it another try.'" From 1975 to 1983, he struggled to improve his English writing. "I have to change the sentence 10 to 12 times while others only have to do that three to four times," he said. He would take his manuscripts to friends so they could tell him what was wrong with it.

While he still finds writing the most difficult thing he has ever done, his drive to write makes him keep at it. His first college textbook, Human Nutrition and Diet Therapy, was published by Wadsworth Health Sciences in 1982. It was the first book on clinical care written by someone who was not a dietitian. It was chosen as Book of the Year by the American Nursing Association in 1984.

After the first one, John Wiley & Sons published several more of Hui's books. The last one was 1996.

Since 1984 Hui has edited, authored, and co-authored 18 more books, including Medical Terminology: Principles and Practices, in 1989; Encyclopedia of Food Science and Technology in 1991; Essential Medical Terminology, in 1996; and Introduction to the Health Professions in 1998.

In 1995, he edited the fifth edition of Wiley's Bailey's Industrial Oil and Fat Products, a five-volume, 3,500 page set, considered the most comprehensive book in the world on oils and fats. The book has been out 50 years. Hui was the only person to have ever edited the book alone. The previous editions all had multiple editors

Hui was also the first sole editor of Encyclopedia of Food Science and Technology in 1991 -- the first book of its kind in the United States. The second edition of this encyclopedia was edited by eight academicians. At $600-700 a set, the publisher (Wiley) sold nearly 2,000 sets of the first edition. John Wiley also published Hui's sole-edited three-volume set Dairy Science & Technology Handbook.

In 1993. Hui also edited Foodborne Disease Handbook, a three-volume, 2,500 page set. Marcel Dekker, another New York publisher, sold more than a 1,000 sets of this handbook. He edited a second edition of the handbook, which was scheduled to be out in the summer of 2000.

His name has been a problem all the years that Hui's been in the United States. His last name is pronounced "Huey" in the States but it's hard for Westerners to get the right Cantonese inflection. His first name is problematic too --Yiu Hin. He goes by Y.H., and everybody calls him by the initials.

Hui, a member of Text and Academic Authors since the mid-1980s, believes it's in authors' best interests to join TAA: "If we put our heads together we are stronger than one person. When all authors come together, you have more people behind your interests. When you join an organization like TAA as a new author, it is mainly for your own self-interest. When you join as an experienced author, you realize that it gives you an opportunity to help others." Hui was elected to the TAA Council in 2000.

Authors are a special group of people, said Hui: "They are different from others in that they want to establish their own domain. Yes, they want to sell a product; but they want to do it in their own terms because they have something to say."

Hui received his doctoral degree in nutrition biochemistry from the University of California at Berkeley in 1970. He taught nutrition and food science at Humboldt State University from 1971 to 1987. Since then, he has devoted full time to writing, occasionally serving as a publishing consultant. From 1992 to 1995, he was appointed editor-in-chief for the United States Association for Food and Drug Officials. He now works as an author and as a publisher. He published his first hardcover book in 1998. The book, on chemical analysis, was edited by FDA officials. His company is currently planning to publish a second hardcover college textbook.

Hui said ever since he was a child, he always wanted to have a career in the health field. He grew up poor in Hong Kong where he said everyone was sick. "I grew up in the 97 percent of Hong Kong that is poor," he said. "Only about three percent of the Hong Kong population is wealthy. People died in my backyard. So, I thought, if I have to make a living, the best way is in the health field." Of course, conditions have improved a lot since 1960, said Hui.

For authors just getting started, said Hui, he wouldn't recommend authoring professional books. "There is too little money for such hard work," he said. "I know many authors who don't make a penny." However, he believes that an author writing a classroom text has a better chance of making some money.

One of Hui's coauthors, Peggy Stanfield, calls him a "consummate professional." "He has a brilliant mind, with a logical thought process and lots of patience," said Stanfield. "He thinks through a whole process to the end before he begins a project, therefore it is organized from the beginning." It is for these reasons that the two have made a good team, coauthoring a half dozen textbooks together. The two met in 1984 while writing books for the same publisher. They both had the same editor who thought they might be able to help each other. "Y.H. was struggling with a language barrier, and I was a new author, and our editor thought Y.H. could help me through the curves," she said. "He was right. Both of our books sold well."

Although they have diametrically opposite personalities -- Stanfield thinks in the abstract, and tends to add new ideas into her work as she goes along, ideas which don't always fit into the whole picture -- Hui can take her ideas, find out if they can be used and where to put them, so that in the end, she says, "we have a good product."

"This doesn't mean everything has been sweetness and light," she said. "We had many heated discussions over creative differences in the beginning, and still do occasionally, but have managed to fight about the subject and keep personalities out of it. Sixteen years later, I still would rather work with him than anyone else and we are still a good team."

Professionally, said Stanfield, Y.H. is a man of integrity. "Books he has written or edited never go to market without being scientifically accurate in content and presentation," she said. Because his books are for upper-division students and professionals in the field, much of their content is highly technical, she said. "It takes a broad knowledge of the subject matter and a world of patience to read every word of a four-volume encyclopedia, contributed by more than a hundred authors, all of whom are also Ph.D's!" said Stanfield. "Of all the authors who have written for him in different volumes, none have ever refused to write for him a second time when asked."

Over the 16 years that Stanfield has known Hui, she has gotten to know him personally. "He is a very private man and can become an 'inscrutable Chinese' quickly if one probes," she said. "I believe this is mostly because of the discrimination he has encountered in the United States, making him wary of people and their motives. However, if he trusts you, he will be a good friend to you."

Stanfield calls Hui altruistic: "Because of his poverty-stricken upbringing and his gratefulness to the priests and nuns that provided the way for he and his brother to be schooled and to emigrate to the United States, he tries to give back to those in Hong Kong still living in those circumstances."

She said he returns to Hong Kong often, and even when he is invited to lecture by the Chinese government and treated royally, she said, "he always manages to slip away and go back to the area where he was brought up. I believe he gives away practically everything he has with him while he is there, although he has never said anything to me about doing so. I know that it makes him sad to see that things have not changed much."

Hui has an understated, British-type of humor that is hilarious when you catch up to it, said Stanfield. "I have heard him speak and put in a few throw-away lines, usually self-depreciating, and crack up the audience," she said. "His Chinese accent doesn't hurt either. He laughs with you, not at you, and many times at his own foibles."

Hui lives in West Sacramento, California. He enjoys reading suspense novels, traveling and visiting his home town of Hong Kong.

— reported by Kim Pawlak, 2000