The opening of San Francisco’s Alice Fong Yu Alternative School (AFY) in 1995 “was a victory for the whole community,” according to its firebrand founding principal, Liana Szeto—even when the hate calls and letters started coming and eggs were thrown at the door of the dilapidated old brick building in the Inner Sunset District. Before opening the first Chinese immersion public school in the country, Liana had already been through something similar at West Portal Elementary School, where she was the first teacher for a Chinese immersion program.
With her vivacity and contagious enthusiasm, she was destined to make AFY a success. It has since become a model for other immersion schools across the city and the nation. In her leadership role, Liana has spoken across California, at the Asia Society in New York City, in Utah, and in Minnesota—“where Governor Walz has been a great champion of Chinese and American cultural exchange.”
A first-generation Chinese American, born and raised mainly in Hong Kong, Liana considers herself “a real San Franciscan.” Thrown into English language classes at age 14 with no preparation, she had to fend for herself. At Marina Junior High School, Chinese American teacher Ted Wong taught a unit on Asian American Studies that sparked a sense of social justice in her. He became a role model, along with some of the teachers she remembered from Hong Kong.
By far the youngest of six children, she says she was “a little like an only child.” To her parents’ dismay, she would line up chairs and pretend to have a class of students, writing in chalk on the family cupboards. It was clear she would become a teacher.
But after graduating from the University of California, Berkeley, she gave in to her parents and helped run their fish-and-chips shop. She was miserable until a friend led her to a bilingual paraeducator job at Commodore Stockton School (now known as Gordon J. Lau), a K–5 elementary school where English, Cantonese, Mandarin, Thai, and other languages were spoken.
In her 20s, she met and married Raymond Szeto, a Chinese American in the real estate business. Later, they had a son and daughter, now in their 30s and working in the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD).
Liana remembers reading Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club around that time and says, “It was revolutionary. The story wasn’t unusual, but it was unusual for a young Chinese woman to see her story in print.”
Her teaching career began at West Portal in 1984 when she became the founding teacher of the first Chinese immersion program. “We had to build everything from scratch, including the curriculum,” she says almost with relish. “The kids were bullied on the bus, called racial slurs, and mimicked in fake Chinese.” She was always their champion. She adds, “I learned that teaching in two languages is an act of social justice.”
In 1990, she became program resource teacher for West Portal, developing curriculum, providing professional development, and coordinating a trip to China for fifth graders.
That trip was a precursor to the Cultural Exchange Program (CEP) she would launch in 2000 at Alice Fong Yu Alternative School, connecting students and families across the globe, spreading the idea that even though they were from “two different countries in different systems, they can find common ground.”
But first she began recruiting for the launch of AFY, the nation’s first Chinese immersion school—despite community opposition, accusations of favoritism toward the Chinese community, and angry letters to the editor in local papers.
Today, Alice Fong Yu Alternative School has seen enrollment soar from 125 to 600 students and has added a middle school. Both Cantonese and Mandarin are taught there. AFY has been recognized as a National Blue Ribbon School, a California Distinguished School, and a Gold Ribbon School.
“It is one of the highest-performing and most desirable schools in the San Francisco Unified School District,” says Anna Klafter, president of AFSA, USAF Local 3, where Liana has been a very active member. “It’s no wonder that the San Francisco Board of Supervisors passed a resolution commending Liana Szeto on her retirement from Alice Fong Yu Alternative School and declaring May 18, 2025, as ‘Liana Szeto Day.’”
“Honestly, it will take years to get this job out of my system,” Liana admits. She confesses that she will help open a new K–8 Mandarin immersion school and continue with the Cultural Exchange Program (CEP) in retirement.
“We started taking students to China in 2000–01. We paused for a year during the SARS outbreak and of course could not travel during the COVID-19 global pandemic. But in spring 2026, we’ll be traveling to China again,” she says.
According to Liana, most people don’t know that as part of the exchange program, there is a homestay component in which both Chinese and American children stay with host families in their respective countries: “This is really important, and we want to keep nurturing those people-to-people connections.”
It hasn’t always been easy, as the U.S. hesitated to grant visas out of fear that Chinese students wouldn’t want to return home—which was not true at all. In addition, Beijing was “unbelievably bureaucratic and top down.”
Today, SFUSD also sponsors programs with Xi’an and Taiwan. In addition, students have participated in summer camps in Shanghai sponsored by the San Francisco–Shanghai Sister City Commission.
“It’s very exciting,” she says. “We are the two most powerful countries in the world.”
As for Liana Szeto, now that she has a modicum of freedom and doesn’t have to adhere to a strict calendar, she is going to China for all of November—just for fun.
