Fifteen Years in America — An Introduction

My dad started a blog on Yahoo China around the same time as I started The Baglady and wrote about our life in America for the past fifteen years. The series got extremely popular and he has gathered many readers in China. Recently he started a blog for our family on Yahoo China’s Global Channel. He keeps calling me and asking me to submit articles for him in Chinese and English and I tried to do a few, but I write Chinese very slowly. So I proposed that we trade articles and I can translate his articles for The Baglady and he can either post my articles in English or translate them as he pleases. So here is the first chapter in this real story written by my dad where a family came from Communist China with absolutely nothing, and chased the American Dream with hard work and determination. I am a witness to his words because I lived through it, too. He has written about ten or so chapters so far and it has been quite entertaining.

Fifteen Years in America by Jian — Introduction

The day after tomorrow is August 15th, and that is the 15th anniversary of my arrival in America. I have been through many storms and felt complex mixtures of emotions in these fifteen years, and only those who have walked my path can taste what I have experienced. My friends, including some of my American friends suggested that I should write down my story. However, I always thought that my life in America is very unremarkable and I have not accomplished anything truly great. I guess there really is a limit to how many extraordinary people there are and the world is really composed of countless common and plain people. In my early years I learned Marx’s theory of “historic materialism”, and I still remember Chairman Mao’s words, “People, only people are the power behind the creation of world history”. I still believe that real history is truly created by common people like you and me. The crux is that most people like us did not record the roads we have traveled.

Recently, a couple events that prompted me to write down my experience in America are the encouragement of my online friends and the request from an ex-coworker . My ex-coworker’s daughter Wenjing is current living in my home because she is interning in a San Francisco accounting firm. I spoke to Wenjing about my life here in America and she also thinks that I should write it all down so that young people like her can objectively and truly learn about American society.

I remember before I left China fifteen years ago I read an article in the newspaper entitled “Ten Situations Where You Should Not Go To America”. Even now I can remember the top three items in the article. They were:

1. If you’re old, don’t go to America. “America is the battleground of the young and the purgatory of the old”.
2. If your English is shabby, don’t go to America. If you go you will be deaf and mute.
3. If you studied humanities, don’t go to America. You will not find a job.

I qualified for all three of these conditions. First of all, if we talk about age, I was already 37 years old. I joined the workforce when I was fifteen and I have had more than ten years of work experience. I see a lot young undergraduate international students here and I was more than twice their age. Second, if we talk about English skills, my background was very poor. Because of the Cultural Revolution, I lost the ability to go to school at a young age. I started learning the ABCs in my twenties when I attended college. Later on because I was a professor in a university I was able to learn more English, but when I came to America I really felt deaf and mute. Third, when it comes to my college major, I graduated with a degree in agricultural management. I also had courses in history and legal studies, but they were all humanities. At that time I already had a good career in China. At the end of the 80s I was already promoted to be the university’s youngest department head and had a good track record at my job. Because of these reasons, my wife gave me repeated advice in her letters that if I want to independently go to America I would face many obstacles and I would need to prepare for the ordeals mentally. At that time I figured I have already experienced the Cultural Revolution and America cannot compare to that ordeal. During that time my father was imprisoned and humiliated on the streets and I was sent to a steel factory and hauled molten steel and made steel molds. I have experienced all kinds of psychological and physical torment, and I figured the worst that can happen is that I will “eat bitterness” a second time.

It’s easy for me to say “I will endure torment a second time” right now, but to actually go through it was not easy. At that time there was a saying within the international students community about the path to take in America: first go to school and earn a degree; after receiving the degree, find a job; after finding a job, get a green card; after getting a green card the cars and houses will come, and that would be the crowning achievement. In all honesty, I did follow this path, and along the way I faced many obstacles. These obstacles include the difficulty in getting a foreign degree, the hardship in working minimum wage jobs, the roundabout craziness of getting a greencard, and my later midlife crisis. As I conquered these obstacles and accepted these battles I learned many lessons.

One thing worth mentioning is that I have met many friends from China, America, and all around the world in these fifteen years. When I was in trouble, many of these friends helped me. So as a Chinese proverb says, one should repay a droplet of kindness with a flood of goodness. I love to help people and I derive enjoyment from it. So here I will also write about the people that have helped me. Life is like a book, and time is the best teacher. Hopefully my friends everywhere can get some benefit from the lessons I learned in the past fifteen years in America.

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