Lee violated the law by taking a part-time job, in Los Angeles, for the San Francisco daily newspaper, Chinese World, originally established in 1892,[5] as the Mon Hing Yat Bo,[6][7] jeopardizing his immigration status.

[11][2] By the 1950s, Lee was making a living writing short stories and working as a Chinese teacher, translator and journalist for San Francisco Chinatown newspapers.

[12] He had hoped to break into playwriting, but instead wrote a novel about Chinatown, The Flower Drum Song (originally titled Grant Avenue, expanded from a short story to a novel), written while living above a Filipino night club on Kearny Street.

[13][14] The novel, about generational conflict within an Asian American family over an arranged marriage in San Francisco's Chinatown, was adapted into the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Flower Drum Song, opening in 1958.

The 1961 film jump-started the careers of the first generation of Asian American actors, including Nancy Kwan, James Shigeta, and Jack Soo.

On October 2, 2001, the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles premiered David Henry Hwang's adaptation of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Flower Drum Song to glowing reviews, in the first major theatrical production that had an all-Asian cast of actors and voices.