But now, nearly 50 years after it was founded, the local club is altering direction a bit. In keeping with the city's changing demographics, many of its service projects are taking on a more Asian flavor. As a result of this shift, the Cupertino Rotary is seeing more interest in some of its biggest fundraisers--and trying to advocate for social change in the process.

"As the population [in Cupertino] has shifted, we've been working on changing the club to reflect that," says Orrin Mahoney, director of international service. The program that Mahoney heads has taken members of the Rotary to places like Ghana, Estonia and Mexico to help local populations there. Those trips are funded in part by grants from the Rotary Foundation, and the rest of the money comes from local efforts, especially the Rotary's annual Western Elegance dinner.

But for this year's event, held on Sept. 12, the dinner's theme changed from the "Old West" to the "Far East."

"Instead of having a corral and a Western theme, we had a Chinese menu theme," Mahoney says. "And many more people came--probably 30 percent more than last year."

Don Allen, a past president and co-committee chairman for the Eastern Elegance dinner, attributes those inflated numbers to Steve Ting, who extensively advertised the Eastern Elegance dinner in the Asian community. A former vice president for Nortel Networks, Ting joined the Cupertino Rotary about two years ago after he retired.

"We hope to take this to a higher level--we're trying to bring that volunteerism and that giving spirit into China," a place where the Communist government outlaws private Rotary clubs, Ting says. "China has one-fifth of the world's population--if we help there, we help the world."

"I follow China from a business point of view," says Mahoney, who works as a marketing consultant. "Business there is going well, but there are two separate Chinas. There's a lot going on in the coastal cities, but there's a real need in the rural areas."

The Rotary hopes to stage a trip next spring to a rural area near Shenyang, which is close to China's border with North Korea. The target is local schools, and the Rotary will team up with the Bay Area­based Shin Shin Educational Foundation to help furnish newly remodeled and restored schools. The money raised at the Eastern Elegance dinner should help with this goal.

"Eighty-five million people there are illiterate--that's 2¹/2 times California's population," Ting says. Ting's figures come from the Asian Development Bank, a Philippines­based organization dedicated to eradicating poverty in Asia. Ting says, "Most social services in China are provided by the government, so there are very few volunteer organizations to help with these problems."

"My son just got back from China, where he hired a woman with a college education to be a tour guide, and he paid her less than $1 for six hours," Allen adds. "We're going for a new social construct--raising $1,000 will give 200 schoolkids paper and pencils and the supplies they need for a full year."

Ting has already visited the two provisional Rotary clubs permitted by the Chinese government in Shanghai and Beijing, and with their help and the rest of the Cupertino Rotary, this trip may go beyond helping out the schools. The Rotary's Rotaplast program, for example, helps repair cleft palates of disadvantaged children, and trips to foreign lands always involve extra suitcases filled with items Americans often take for granted--such as books, toys and soccer uniforms.

"We'll have lots of ancillary opportunities," Mahoney says. "We'll just go from one project to another."

Ting also hopes to get local teenagers involved in their high schools' Interact clubs into this process. As a reflection of their schools' populations, many Interact members are Asian as well. It's just part of a revolution that Ting and the Rotary hope will spread from Cupertino to locations throughout China as interest continues to spark here.

"If we're not in support of where we're from, what good are we doing?" Allen says. "One of the largest transfers of people in the world is happening between these two places right now. This is a natural, evolving thing."