Victor Jih

Victor Hao-jan Jih (Chinese: 季浩然; pinyin: Jì Hàorán) is an American lawyer and contestant on the 14th season of The Amazing Race, a reality television game show produced by CBS. He and his sister, Tammy Jih, were the winners of the competition and one million dollar grand prize.

In 2011, Jih was honoured by the National Law Journal as one of the "Minority 40 Under 40" lawyers.

Early and personal life

Victor Jih was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area along with two younger siblings. He graduated from Leigh High School, Stanford University with a B.A. in Political Science in 1993, and Harvard Law School in 1996.

Fluent in Mandarin Chinese, he is the eldest of three children born to immigrant parents from Taipei, Taiwan.

Jih's father came to the U.S. as a full scholarship student at The University of California, Berkeley. After receiving his Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering, Dr. Jih began his career in IBM as a Staff Engineer and rose to become an Account Executive for marketing & sales of IT solution services to the semiconductor industry. In 1997, Jih's parents returned to their home, Taiwan, to further their career.

Jih currently resides in Los Angeles, California.

On October 20, 2013 Victor participated in The Amazing Los Angeles Race Disneyland edition.

The Amazing Race

Victor and his sister, Tammy, were selected for the race after she had pushed for them to apply, although he had been the longer fan of the show. According to Victor, the siblings had led a very structured life growing up. Their parents taught them to do everything to the best of their ability and to obey all rules in an orderly manner. As a result, the siblings studied hard at school, obtained good grades, and graduated from the world's top universities with law degrees. Even after graduation, they took no break and immediately ventured into the workforce. It was because of such a structured upbringing and the fact that both of them had not taken any major risks in life that made them decide to apply for the show. They wanted to step outside of their normal routine as lawyers and take an adventure of a lifetime. After twelve grueling legs spanning 40,000 miles, they were declared the winners of the race after narrowly avoiding elimination during the third leg in Romania. As a result, they made history by becoming the first Asian-American team to win the competition. Jih has written blogs and commentaries for further seasons of the show.^[1]

A writer for the Chinese language newspaper, World Journal, based in North America, praised the team as "Glory of Taiwan", "famous product of Taiwan" 台灣之光 台灣名產 for representing Taiwanese Americans in the media spotlight.^[2] They were portrayed as humble, gracious and friendly, but also extremely competitive.

As three legs of the second half of the race were spent in China, where the siblings could speak the local language, a blogger for the Chicago Sun Times and many detractors questioned whether the team had an unfair advantage. Both of them disagreed and Victor explained that every team brings to the game different skills and strengths, and their ability to speak Mandarin balances out against other teams' advantages e.g. choreography, athleticism, swimming, physical strength, life experiences, et cetera. They explained how their mother would fight with them to get them to attend Chinese school and force them to speak the language at home. Both were extremely thankful for their parents' good intentions and not giving up on them when they were young. In previous seasons of the race, there were also teams that spoke the local language of the countries they visited.

Career

Jih was a partner at the Century City office of O'Melveny & Myers LLP, specializing in entertainment and media litigation until May 2015.^[3] Now, he is a partner at the Los Angeles office of Irell & Manella.^[4]

An avid debater since high school, Jih holds the position of debating coach at Brentwood School, and is the founder of Victory Briefs, a high school debate company, which he sold in 2014.^[5]

He currently co-teaches the Ninth Circuit Appellate Practice Clinic at UCLA.^[6]

References