Stories from the East

Stories from the East My Family’s Journey Surviving the Chinese Cultural Revolution

For My Family I have neither survived wars, nor crossed oceans for you, but this book is a manifestation of my love.

I hope I have relayed your experiences and story faithfully.

SECTION 1

SECTION 2

Wuxi

Tianjin

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Nei Menggu

Tángshān Tianjin

Yan’an

Wuxi

Significant places in my family’s narrative. Places where my family or my grandfather lived.

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My Grandfather in the year 1949.

He would have been teaching in the military school in YangAn.

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Wúxī 31.4912° N 120.3119° E My ancestral home. Where my grandfather is from, and where my great grandfather was laid to rest. China is a patriarchal society so my father’s home is my home.

learning. Part of his name means “culture” (vin hua). Part of my uncle’s name means “to work”. He was always destined to work in the fields for the family. My grandfather your great grandfather, was always a farmer.

Our entire family had been farmers, they didn’t know anything else. He didn’t know anything else.

A So lets start from the beginning, where was Grandpa [Pu] born?

D Grandpa was born in WuXi. We went there once when you were little, remember?

A Yeah, but I was like five years old right?

D Yeah. Our family is from there. Your grandfather and his brother, so my uncle, went to a Christian school there. They learned English there.

But, he was a very good farmer [My father is really great with plants. He wakes up every morning to water and tend to his gardens.]

A So Grandpa went to high school in

Wuxi. Why did he go to a Christian school?

Every year your great grandfather would harvest his rice and take it to the market to sell to pay for your grandfather’s tuition. Your great grandfather would sometimes have to carry the rice on his back to the Christian school to pay the tuition.

D So, it gets a bit complicated, my grandfather’s younger brother also went to that school. Your grandfather had four other siblings, yet your grandfather was the only one that was really interested in

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My Great Grandfather and Grandmother, taken at the family funerary plot in Wuxi.

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Your great grandfather was a Christian.

M Christian missionaries ran a lot of the schools at the time. They would come and teach and build schools.

D Because at the time, if it wasn’t a missionary school it would be a local school. These were government run elementary schools, but you needed to take a test to get into them, so a lot of the peasants and farmers couldn’t get into these schools.

A What would they teach?

D They would teach the English version of things [here they are referring to England, not America]. They would always use English textbooks.

A So did grandpa test into school, then?

D Well no, he went to a missionary school. He didn’t have to test into one of those. Your grandfather was a great student, and your great-grandfather would take the crops that he planted to pay his tuition. He went to school from elementary to high school, and they told him that he had the potential to keep going to school, but your great grandfather ran out of money. University would have been extremely expensive, especially for our family at the time.

A Were there any Chinese-run schools?

M There were, but there were very, very few. Especially in the countryside where your grandfather was from.

D Very few people could go to a missionary run school.

A Why?

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Yán’ān 36.5854° N 109.4898° E

including rent and food, and sent the rest of it home to his father. So your greatgrandfather took this money and saved it until he could start to buy land. At that time, you could get a sizable amount of land for about $50. And after a while, the war started and Japan invaded China.

Your grandfather then needed to do something. His brother was already working on the farm [taking over the family farm because he was the older son] so your grandfather decided to take the state test at the time to determine what job he would get. The top options were bank worker, railroad worker, or post office worker. They were called the gold, silver, or bronze food bowls. The railroad workers were also considered public servants. They were guaranteed to have food to eat.

A Where was Grandfather when the Japanese invaded?

D Well, the Japanese first invaded Dong Bae. They first went through Korea and then got in through those coastal cities.

A lot of the civilians fled. If you go to Beijing, you can go see the memorial and museums. A lot of people left everything behind to escape the Japanese. The war had started and the invasion and dying had begun.

A Wouldn’t being a railway worker be really physically taxing?

D Not necessarily. They made more money than the average worker who was also doing manual labor.

Your grandfather took the state issued test and got was accepted into a post office, and at the time he earned $15 a week. [currency was on a silver standard].

As more people fled farther from the Japanese invasion, they eventually came to where your grandfather was. He saw how many refugees there were and he decided that his occupation wasn’t safe or secure anymore. At the time, your great grandfather’s little brother was teaching in Shanghai and wrote a recommendation letter so that he could go to Yán’ān.

A Did he send a lot of that back home?

D Yes. At this point he had moved to a different province, An Hui, to take this job, so he spent $3 on rent living expenses, 14

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My paternal Grandparents. It is not known where or when this photo was taken, but it was after the defeat of the Kuomintang and takeover of the Communist Party.

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A lot of people left everything behind to escape the Japanese.

The war had started and the invasion and death had begun.

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1949, when my grandfather was teaching at the military school.

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This was 1937.

And he joined the Communist Party.

D No, he just taught at this college.

It was a political and military strategy school for people of higher positions in the military.

A Why is Yán’ān so important?

D So the Kuomintang had almost beaten the Communist army at that point. Mao strategized that the best course of action was to try to escape the Kuomintang’s forces, so they left and the Kuomintang chased them all the way to Yán’ān where your grandfather was. This was 1937. He joined the communist party. Because he went to high school and learned English, he was considered very educated at the time. So, he was brought on to teach at Kàngrì Jūnshì Zhèngzhì Dàxué.

M It was a very trying time. Education was at a point where it was behind many other places in the world. The material was mostly to serve the party.

A Why did grandpa join the Communist

Party? No one could have known how things would end up and all the people who suffered in years to come. But, why did Grandpa join the Communist Party instead of the Kuomintang?

A So grandpa went to college too?

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Taken in either Tianjin or Inner Mongolia. My father is the taller little boy.

PREVIOUS Taken in 2001. The first time I met my grandparents.

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He was seeing refugees and people who had suffered because of the Japanese. Yet the Kuomintang weren’t doing anything. He saw the Red Army fighting, so he decided to join the party.

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Aerial view of Yan’an after Japanese bombings in 1939.

NEXT Bloody Saturday. Taken on Saturday, August 28, 1937 by HS Wong. This is a widely accepted symbol of Japanese wartime atrocities.

“I noticed my shoes were soaked in blood�

A quote from HS Wong, a Chinese photo journalist. He is most notable for this photo, Bloody Saturday, which depicts some of the wartime trauma caused by the Second Sino-Japanese War.

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A little red book. This one is similar to the one my Grandfather once had. I remember my father showing me it when I was younger.

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Well, at the time the Kuomintang wasn’t fighting. They would not defend the Chinese people from the Japanese.

D Well, at the time the Kuomintang wasn’t fighting. They wouldn’t defend the Chinese people from the Japanese.

He was frustrated. He was seeing people who had suffered at the hands of the Japanese, and yet the Kuomintang were not doing anything. He saw the Red Army fighting, so he decided to join the party.

His uncle was very far up in the ranks.

He also went to the missionary school and learned English so he served as a translator for when Edgar Snow interviewed Chairman Mao. [Based on my research and subsequent conversations with my parents, this probably happened around 1936.]

A Did his political beliefs align with the Communist Party?

I used to have Grandpa’s old communist manifesto in English. It kind of inspired me to learn English. He used to read it to me when I was a child.

D His beliefs merged later when he had already joined the party. His uncle had already been in the party for a while.

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still in China after grandpa joined the Communist Party?

A So at this point in the narrative, where are we? Where are the major characters and where is Grandpa in this?

D About 8 years.

D So the Japanese were still in China.

They eventually left in 1945 after the US had dropped the atom bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They had occupied the Philippines, Malaysia, Korea, and most of China. The Kuomintang wasn’t fighting them so they took over the large majority of China. While the Japanese was in China Grandpa had been teaching at the school.

A And he wasn’t a foot soldier. He had a higher up position, something similar to a general or officer right?

D More specifically something like a scholarly general.

A So most of his job was to teach. Did he work on strategy at all?

[Some of the facts and figures here are wrong. My parents and my grandparents grew up in a time of great trauma and a lot of restriction on information. The only things they had access to were what the government at the time told them.]

D Yes. He was a general who mostly taught and helped strategized.

A On a more global scale, WW II is happening during all these events right?

D Yes. Realistically, if the US hadn’t bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki the Japanese would still be in China and other countries. China wasn’t strong enough to drive the Japanese out.

[In 1936 the Kuomintang and Communist party formed an alliance, which involved the high up generals of the Kuomintang kidnapping the leader Chiang Kai-shek and brining him to the meeting point. This was later called the Xi’an incident. Although the ceasefire between the two political parties had been called, not much cooperation was to be had. The Red Army favored more of a guerrilla warfare style of combat that ended up being effective against the Japanese]

Another reason was the Russian army.

After they had helped defeat the Germans in Europe, they sent their army to Manchuria to help with the eastern front.

They started to fight the Japanese, and the Japanese realized that they were being attacked from all fronts, both at home and abroad. This made it so that the Japanese left.

A I’m trying to piece together the timeline. How long were the Japanese

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My grandmother and two of my father’s siblings. My father is on the right, with his little brother on the left and his oldest sister in the back.

In the front is my grandmother.

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And he did, he truly believed the Communist party would be better for the common people.

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Taken in my Grandparents retirement home. It is where I go when I visit China, so this is the only context I know them in.

PREVIOUS A family photo after my aunts joined the Red Army.

My father is the young man on the right.

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The only way you can do something like this is to truly believe that what is happening will lead to something better.

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My Grandparents in different stages of their lives. The top photo was taken years before the bottom photo.

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The civil war lasted another three years. civil and Second Sino-Japanese War. There was a lot of civil unrest and it left a lot of common people extremely unhappy with how the system was set up. Your Grandfather used to say that people felt that the current government was not doing enough to protect the people from the Japanese and that the common people were being forgotten.

A So how long did the civil war last after that?

D Another three years. So many people died. And then China became involved with the Korean war as well and the US started to bomb parts of China. Through all this your grandfather was always teaching. He was really devoted to what he was doing. The only way you can do something like this is to truly believe that what is happening will lead to something better. And he did, he truly believed the Communist party would be better for the common people.

A So, one of the core basic tenements of communism was the redistribution of wealth right?

D Yeah, they took a lot of the wealth from the rich and gave it to the poor.

In 1949, the school your grandfather was teaching at had a change of name and it became Huáběi jūnshì xuéyuàn.

This was near the end of the war, and both sides knew it. After that he was moved again.

M Equalization. Basically putting everyone on equal ground financially.

A Why was the Communist Party so successful?

D Before the civil war, a lot of the Chinese peasantry was starving. There had been a series of famines before and during the

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[In many farming areas the land and livestock used to farm was communally owned. Farmers would go out in the morning to work, using and borrowing the equipment to till communal land and when the harvest would come in this grain or product would then be taken by the government and redistributed not only to farmers but also the rest of the country.]

So many people died.

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My Grandfather is in the first row, second from the left. This was taken in the early years of his military service.

Communist government’s eyes the punishment for being wealthy was death. They would shoot you.

A You mentioned before that great

grandpa was able to own land, partially because of grandpa’s job in the city.

What happened to that land when the Communist part took over?

D A proclamation called túgai [directly translated to “land correction”. You can imagine what the actual implementation looked like] came down from the Communist Party and it did make most land owners give up their land. But, at this time Grandpa had only worked for three years, so great grandpa hadn’t had enough time to really buy a lot of land yet.

There were a couple tiers of landownership at the time. There were diju, or landowners who owned a lot of land, and funong, who had less than the diju. In the 40

Your great grandfather wasn’t able to buy too much land at that point, so he was spared the worst of it. He was considered more on the richer side of the common people. It also helped that your grandfather and great uncle had been in the party for a while, at your point your great uncle especially. He had joined very early on.

M After the Communists won the civil war, a lot changes were implemented, and a lot of those were very, very bad for the people. Túgai was awful. So many people died just because they had land.

There was no court, no hearing, nothing.

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The earliest photo I have of my mom. This was taken after most of the photos in this chapter.

If you didn’t cooperate you were shot.

Sometimes even if you did cooperate you were shot.

but there wasn’t any mention or record of her. She disappeared and that was common enough back then that that was not an isolated occurrence. Families were torn apart by this.

And then came the Cultural Revolution.

And then there was resurgence, where if you stood, not even in opposition, but in disagreement with the government, you just disappeared. Your family wouldn’t know where you went or what happened to you. You just disappeared.

Before 1949, the Communist party did a lot for China and its people. They were the only ones really looking out for and protecting the common person. But, after that, with all the politics and failed plans, the people they ended up hurting them most was the everyday person. People starved, disappeared, and were executed.

All for the sake of the one leader.

This actually happened to your paternal grandmother’s side of the family. Her aunt disappeared. One day she went out and just never returned. People said she fled to Taiwan, but when the Cultural Revolution was over and people could leave your family went to go look for her, 41

At the peak of his power, Mao became more of a god than a political leader in the eyes of the Chinese people

There was no court, no hearing, nothing. If you didn’t cooperate you were shot.

Sometimes even if you did cooperate you were shot.

The Red Guard of the Cultural Revolution waving little red books in the streets of Beijing.

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My mom when she was just entering university BOTTOM My father after my parents were married. He is on a work trip here.

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Tiānjīn 39.3434° N 117.3616° E The place where my parents met. The place my brother was born. The place were a lot of things happened.

If you did you would get retribution, and far too many times that ended in the death of yours or someone you cared. If you had your own ideas they would let you share them, but after, one after another, you would all be executed.

A A large event that defined the Cultural Revolution was a series of Five Year Plans that Mao implemented during war. How old were you guys when that happened?

D We were probably just born or very very small.

D The Cultural Revolution was just starting when we were little. It touched everyone’s lives in irreversible waves.

M There was one, and then another, and then another.

D Yeah, they are still happening now too.

A What were some of the effects or things that you had to do during the Cultural Revolution?

A Really?

M Your aunts [on your dad’s side] had to go to the rural countryside to work. They sent all the young people who received schooling and lived in the cities to the countryside to work in the fields and learn from the farmers. In the Communist regime the most celebrated person was the farmer. You were encouraged to, in a way, discard your individualism to serve the common good.

D Yes! M I still believe that a lot of the suffering and death that happened during the Cultural Revolution happened because of the dictator and totalitarian ruling structure of the time. Have you ever heard of a government where this was successful?

Their largest mistake was that they didn’t allow you to criticize or dissent from the government’s opinion.

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We, in a lot of ways, didn’t have to go through as much as your aunts did.

D After you graduated from high school they would force you to go to the fields to work.

A Did you guys have to go?

M No, they ended the program a couple years before we graduated. It ended around 1976.

D I was one of the first generations to be able to go to college. Deng Xiaoping reopened the universities and you were able to take an entrance exam that would let you go to college then. You weren’t completely able to choose what you wanted to study though. Most people studied engineering, but your mom didn’t go that route.

[My mother went to a music conservatory and studied music composition. For the time, her rise against all odds is pretty amazing.]

[Deng Xiaoping was Mao’s successor.

He’s often credited with China’s economic structure and social reform, though is main legacy is usually associated with the

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economic reforms that he put in place. He was instrumental to the economic restructuring during the Great Leap Forward, but many of his policies were at odds with Mao’s ideologies, thus putting him out of favor with the leader. When Mao passed Deng outmaneuvered Mao’s chosen successor Hua Guofeng and took over leadership of China. He’s usually associated with what the current state of Communism in China is today, which is an odd mix of “socialism with Chinese characteristics”. ]

A What was the extent of your schooling dad?

D Well, I had the equivalent of a third grade education when the tests first started being advertised. I never really went to middle school or high school and only got half way through elementary school. I, like many people of the time, had to teach ourselves to take these tests.

Education during the Cultural Revolution was hard to come by, it was looked down upon by the party, which your grandfather never agreed with.

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My aunts after they had joined the Red Army. My older aunt became a nurse and married a doctor while my younger aunt became a scholar and taught at Tianjin University and married another professor. They’re both wonderfully happy people.

BOTTOM Deng Xiaoping, Mao’s successor. His rise to power ended the Cultural Revolution. Photo taken from Encyclopedia Britanica NEXT My parents either right before or right after they were married.

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You were encouraged to, in a way, discard your individualism to serve the common good.

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Taken at some point during my parents’ courtship. They get into the story a little later.

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It ended in 1974 when Mao died.

A What was it like to grow up during the Cultural Revolution?

A What was your childhood like during the Communist rule?

M It ended in 1974 when Mao died, so we, in a lot of ways, didn’t have to go through as much as your aunts did.

M No school. No one went to school. It really started with the teachers. If there was any dissent they would pull them from the schools and you wouldn’t hear from them again, or they would make a mockery of them. They would hang signs on the teachers and let people beat them.

When Mao died, he left a power vacuum in his wake. Deng Xiaoping won that one, but every time that someone has retired or died while in power a whole slew of people have to either die or be imprisoned with them. There hasn’t really been a peaceful transfer of power in China. Before people would just die, now they just throw them in prison.

D We would just play. There was very little structure in our childhoods.

I just remember how they treated the principal of my elementary school. They paraded him around and made him run behind a truck until he couldn’t stand anymore. Then they let people beat him. All because he was asking questions.

D Well, whenever China had a dynastic change people would die. It’s not that uncommon in our history.

M But they are still censoring people.

They don’t always outright throw you in prison now, but you still don’t’ have freedom of speech.

Society was in chaos. You did whatever you wanted. It was anarchy in a lot of ways.

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They don’t always outright throw you in prison now, but you still don’t’ have freedom of speech.

D You didn’t spend money anymore.

Everything was free. Everything was communal. Your rent, your food, riding the train, everything was free.

Students would also be sent to the farmers and countryside. They didn’t want them to become like the previous intelligentsia so they made them become farmers.

M But there weren’t any doctors either.

All of them were sent to be reeducated because they were considered part of the intelligentsia. Some of them also went through what my principal did.

A So your sisters had to do this when they finished high school?

D The Cultural Revolution was really the answer to Mao’s fear that the educated masses would take control from him. The logic was that they would tear down everything he spent so much time fixing and changing, so he sent them out to become farmers or got rid of them outright.

A When you say “get rid of” what do you mean?

D Mostly taking away their power and rights. He stripped them of their titles so that they would become more like the common people.

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D No, they had to when they finished middle school. They didn’t even get to finish high school, instead they joined the army.

A Why? D They joined so they wouldn’t be sent to the countryside when they graduated middle school. But not everyone had that option. It was because your Grandfather was a general that they were able to. If you didn’t have a military connection, you didn’t have a choice.

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One of the earlier photos of my mom. She was attending Tiānjīn Yīnyuè Xuéyuàn by this time.

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Two family photos before my parents immigrated to the United States. The bottom photo was taken a couple years before the top one.

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A lot of time people would die from the programs.

A Mom, why didn’t your sister have to go to the countryside?

A When did they start supporting them?

M When the Japanese War was happening. They donated money then and from then on we were under special protection, so they didn’t have to participate in a lot of things. Often, people would die from the programs.

M It was before her time. She’s the same age as your father.

A What about your parents?

M Oh, they didn’t have to go to the countryside. They needed to not make waves and stop working. Essentially, lie low and not make a scene.

I remember when they kicked an old doctor from the top of the stairs and he fell down three flights. All because he was a doctor.

People weren’t people then, they were either being taken advantage of or had become demons.

My mother was a nurse and my father was a rail worker.

A You’ve mentioned before that when you were younger there was a major earthquake.

Can you tell me about it?

A Both of our families were all considered middle class right?

M Yes.

M It happened on July 6th, 1976. At the time it was devastating. We weren’t even completely in the epicenter. The worst of it was in Tongshan, but we were in Tianjin at the time. [both cities are very close to Beijing].

A So they were able to avoid a lot of the retribution from the party?

M My mom had special protection from the party. Her family had donated money and supported the party when they were just starting.

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Tángshān 39.6309° N 118.1802° E

It happened on July 6th, 1976. At the time it was devastating. We weren’t even in the epicenter.

The worst of it was in Tangshan, but we were in Tianjin at the time.

Relief efforts after the Tangshan earthquake.

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273,000 supposedly died. The actual number is probably a lot higher.

Onlookers watch as a man is taken away for medical attention.

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Lu Guilan, rescued by soldiers after being trapped for 13 days.

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Cracks in the earth caused by the earthquake.

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Tangshan Earthquake Memorial Hall.

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Tangshan Earthquake Memorial Hall.

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There were so many temporary housing units that there weren’t any roads.

D It was the same year that Mao died.

[My father has mentioned before that his father, my Grandfather, had been sent away very frequently on assignment for the military, which might explain when he is absent from much of this story.]

M We lived outside in tents for years.

Everything was leveled. The buildings were old and no one thought that a earthquake was possible. There wasn’t infrastructure to rebuild for a very very long time.

D I lived in a five story building at the time, and when the quake hit the building fell in half right at the third floor. None of my family died, but so many people did.

There was a really bad aftershock four months afterwards as well. After that, people were afraid to build permanent buildings after that. But, winter was coming and people needed to build real buildings or they would freeze to death.

So, your uncle and I scavenged some bricks to build something close to a permanent building for the winter. We lived in tents along the streets and fields, but needed to build more permanent housing.

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The epicenter was in Tangshan. 273,000 supposedly died. The actual number is probably a lot higher. At the time, China refused outside aid and wouldn’t let anyone else help with the relief effort.

The red army was deployed to help the people. But it really wasn’t enough.

At first you weren’t allowed to use tools at first so you wouldn’t hurt the people that were buried alive. I was 22, your mom was 20.

There were so many temporary housing units that there weren’t any roads, so the government decided to help rebuild the housing units.

We were very lucky. A lot of people died, but our family survived.

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My parents after they were married, but before my brother was born.

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Nanjing Road after the earthquake.

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Damaged bridge.

The aftermath of the earthquake.

Many people lost more than their homes that day.

The Chairman’s death and the Tangshan Earthquake happened within two months of each other.

The government did not have the infrastructure to handle the aftermath of the earthquake. That and the death of Mao plunged the

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My parents after not long after they were married. Taken in Nanjing while my father was on a business trip.

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Grandpa retired in 1979, Dad wasn’t able to graduate until 1982.

D True. It was also because your Grandmother’s father taught at an acclaimed Kuomintang military school, the Huángbù jūnxiào, so your grandfather couldn’t be promoted more than a certain rank.

A Where were all these people buried?

D There’s a communal grave in Tangshan for all the people. A mass grave.

A You mentioned before that Grandpa was absent for a large part of your childhood, could you explain some of that?

A When was he assigned to Inner Mongolia?

D He was a secretary for a very high-up genera. He then got promoted and started working in Nán xìng jūnshì xuéyuàn.

D It was 1964. I was eight then. Your grandmother, grandfather, uncle, and I went with your grandfather, but your aunts stayed in Beijing to go to school.

They wanted to finish middle school; after they finished middle school they joined the army because the Cultural Revolution had started by then.

A You once mentioned he was lowered

A When did you leave Inner Mongolia?

D Yeah, he went to Inner Mongolia (Nèi Měng) on assignment.

A What position did he have in the army?

in rank at one point in his career right?

D Towards the end of the Cultural Revolution. The government was spiraling out of control and Mao had sent out the order that the army should start exercising more control over areas, so we moved to Tianjin. The army controlled everything from manufacturing plants to hospitals to farms.

D Yeah, he lost an important secret document, so they demoted him and sent him to Inner Mongolia.

M Another important reason was that your grandmother had a sister that defected to Taiwan, too.

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The only photo I’ve seen of my grandmother on my mother’s side. She died before I was born.

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People were forced to build buildings and work everyday in back breaking conditions. Your uncle had to work in the furnaces.

M When I finished middle school I had to work in a factory.

They moved to Tianjin and lived in government housing for a year, but after they moved to their permanent home.

D Your mom was able to go to the factory and work and didn’t have to go to the farmlands because of the earthquake. The earthquake destroyed a lot of infrastructure and factories so they needed a lot of industrial workers to help build things again.

Grandpa retired in 1979, Dad wasn’t able to graduate until 1982.

M He was sent to Tianjin to manage the education system there, especially the military schools. He was in charge of all the colleges in the country.

A What did you do in the factories?

A You mentioned before that you never went to high school, but you went to middle school. Why?

M I made a lot of metal parts for machinery or cars. It was considered a really good factory job. I didn’t have to do hard manual labor and didn’t have to be exposed to the elements. My biggest worry back then was that I would have to do something that might hurt my hands.

D I went to a technical school. Specifically for machinery. [My father got a degree in the equivalent of mechanical engineering.]

M Basically a trade school.

[My mom is an extremely talented pianist.

For her, especially in this time of her life before she got into conservatory, her hands were her only livelihood. If she couldn’t play music she couldn’t live.]

A And you mom?

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My parents after they were married.

M I started work in 1976 and got into conservatory in 1981. I worked in the factory for five years and then went to the conservatory for five years.

A Did you have friends who had to do harder manual labor?

M Of course! People were forced to build buildings and work everyday in back breaking conditions. Your uncle had to work in the furnaces that powered a lot of the machinery at the time.

A How did you guys meet?

D Your mom’s studio was next to my office.

A How long did you work in the factories?

M I worked for five years and then was able to get into the music conservatory.

D I worked for two years.

A When did you guys start?

D The earthquake happened in 1976, and that’s when I had to quit school and start working. I got into university in 1978.

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She was 24, and I was 26 when they met.

We would talk every once in a while, but we didn’t immediately start dating.

At the time we were both in relationships, but we were set up by a colleague when we were out of relationships. We were both going to get our masters degrees, but I couldn’t get into an institution and your mom didn’t want to anymore. We met in 1983, got married in 1986, and had your brother in 1988.

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My mom and brother in front of TIananmin Square.

BOTTOM My mom and brother in the apartment they lived in Tianjin.

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From a trip my parents and brother took to San Francisco.

TOP Golden Gate Bridge.

BOTTOM My family and a family friend. Palace of Fine Arts.

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A You became a professor after you graduated right mom?

A How long did you work there?

D I worked there for two years and then went to work at a medical school. There I was in charge of the instruments’ upkeep.

Then I went to Sweden for about three weeks every couple months to study and get training to be able to fix the instruments the Swedish sold to the Chinese. I had to go all over China to fix medical instruments.

M Yes. I taught at the conservatory for seven years. And then we moved to the United States.

D My first job after college was to fix machinery in the music conservatory.

That’s how your mom and I met.

A Why did you work in the conservatory?

A How did you and mom immigrate to the United States?

D I wanted to keep going to school.

I wanted to get a masters and PhD, so I thought if I took this job I would have time to study as well as work. If I had gone to a factory to be an engineer I wouldn’t have had time to study. I was in charge of the audio system in the conservatory. I had studied to be a mechanical and electrical engineer, but they didn’t have those positions at the conservatory, so they put me in charge of the audio systems.

D I first started by doing research in the medical school’s library of what types of jobs I could get in other countries. Originally I sent applications to go to Sweden, Norway, Finland, or Spain to go to school, but I got rejected from all of them.

M He applied to ten places in the United States, and when he got rejected from nine of them I said “there’s no hope.”

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“ He applied to ten

places in the United States, and when he got rejected from nine of them I said there’s no hope. ”

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D I applied to USC, University of Pennsylvania, University of Washington, in total I sent out ten applications, and Miao, a researcher at USC, decided to sponsor me. I put a traditional cut paper piece in each application hoping it would foster some good will and make them read my letter.

At the time Miao needed a research assistant so he sponsored me.

I ended up staying at USC for three years.

I had basically finished up my degree at that point, but needed to apply to graduate, but at that point Miao’s grant had run out and he couldn’t pay me anymore. So I had to leave. I ended up getting a job at ACX and worked there for seven years. We got our green card by then and I switched jobs to Alza.

A How long did it take you guys to get your green cards?

A So you didn’t have to enter the lottery system?

D No, I was considered a visiting scholar.

I eventually became a student and pursued a PhD at USC. I ended taking class there because it was free because I worked for them. He originally promised to pay me $2200 a month, but when I actually got here he cut my salary. There was a English research assistant that needed to split the grant that he got, so I ended up with $1,200 because I had a family. We used to work really really late, and he would drive me home sometimes.

We used to live in really poor conditions.

We shared a two-bedroom apartment with two other families and the pipes would constantly leak so it wasted a lot of water and made the utilities super expensive.

Miao saw our living conditions and felt really bad for us and game me a raise.

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D About 10 years. For our time 10 years was considered pretty slow, but I know now it can take even longer. It was tough because Miao’s specialty was medial physics, so he couldn’t give masters only PhDs. So he said that if I wanted to get a masters degree I would have to go and get an evaluation, and if I passed I would receive an equivalent of a masters degree.

I needed a recommendation letter from Miao and a recommendation letter from the Department of Radiation and Oncology at USC to finish up my degree. I landed the ACX job because the boss was an USC alumni.

They underpaid me by a lot, but because I was trying to get my citizenship and green card at the time I had to stay. I needed to get the Department of Labor’s approval that I wasn’t taking a job away from an American, and then get the Immigration Department’s approval to get my H1 visa.

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My parents in their first apartment in the the United States.

BOTTOM: My family on a outing.

I’m not sure they were able to go into the park at that point.

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They underpaid me by a lot, but because I was trying to get my green card at the time I had to stay.

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We shared a two-bedroom apartment with two other families and the pipes would constantly leak.

After that we filed for our green card.

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I don’t have many memories of my grandfather anymore.

I have only met him a handful of times, but he always seemed so wise and kind to me, even when I was five. It was hard to communicate since I was so small and had the language gap, but the one thing that he always instilled in me was his love of learning. He always told me to study hard because that was the only way to really get ahead in life. His words now have more meaning. At the time I just brushed it off. I was five and that’s what grown ups always tell you. But now, his words have more meaning. His words reflect a lifetime of hardship and anguish. He saw people die and political power change too many hands and the everyday person pay the price for that. I don’t blame him or judge him for any of the decision he made throughout his life. I will never be able to truly understand what he or my parents went through nor the decisions they made and that is a gift that they have given me. The only thing I can do now is to honor their sacrifices and lives. To learn and remember them to not only understand who they are, but also to understand where I come from. Because memory is fluid. It chases you throughout your life, even if, like my mother, you don’t want them. Memory does not just affect you, but it bleeds into the lives of those around you and those that come after you. I don’t remember much of my grandfather, I remember his hands, crinkled and wrinkled from time and tan from his time in the sun. I remember him pruning and taking care of his garden every morning. I remember those key phrases he drilled into me even when I was a five-year-old child. Always keep learning. Knowledge is the key. And eat your breakfast.

Taken in 2001 on my first visit to China. I stayed for three months and forgot how to speak English.

My parents a few years after they were married.

My parents a few years ago.

My dad still wears that shirt.

Photo Citations All family photos have been taken by various family members or random strangers we have corralled to take photos of us.

23. Chongqing Morning Post

62. en.people.cn

24. Wikipedia.

63. en.people.cn

26. aliexpress.com

64. Flickr

42. South China Morning Post

65. Trip Advisor

44. asiasociety.org

68. bestchinanews.com

48. britannica.com

69. china-underground.com

59. people.com.cn

70. telegraph.co.uk

61. China Daily.

72. asiasociety.org

Taken by HS Wong.

Taken by Wang Wenlan, 1976.

Taken by Wang Wenlan, 1976.

Taken by Wang Wenlan, 1976.

Taken by Wang Wenlan, 1976.

The typefaces used in this book are Lyon Text and Source Sans Pro. Printed on 80lb text paper. Binding is coptic stitch.

Designed by Angela Pu for Senior Capstone Spring 2018.

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