Entries Tagged 'Immigration' ↓

This is a continuation of my family’s immigration story as told by my dad. In this chapter my dad goes back to college with teenagers! If you missed the previous posts please check out the series’ category here:

Fifteen Years in America

My success in Duke’s Lane strengthened my self esteem, but I knew that I couldn’t be a salesman at a souvenir shop forever. I was in America, and I was an alien. If I wanted to stay, I needed to go to school. In China I studied agricultural economics, and then changed my focus and studied economical law. My English skills were quite horrible, and law school in America required extremely high linguistic skills. I could not even understand the test to get into law school. So as I worked I tried my best to study English. I copied vocabulary words onto cards and tried my best to remember them. When I rode the bus or had extra time at work I would study vocabulary. After three months in America, I took the TOEFL and got a score of 540. This score was 10 points below the lowest requirement of the University of Hawaii’s economics department. Shortly after the test, I received a letter from the department informing that I was rejected. The letter also indicated that in addition to the TOEFL, the GRE was also required as of the spring semester of 1993.
When I read this letter, my heart sank to the floor. I thought that I have expended the effort of nine bulls and two tigers and I still didn’t qualify. Now I needed to study for the GRE, and I had no idea how long it would take for me to be able to get into graduate school. Actually, at that time I did qualify for Hawaii’s Pacific University, which is a private school that charged over $5000 per semester. There was no way I could afford the fee.

During this time, I took a day off from work. I helped Popo clean her yard and then fed the dozen or so red eared turtles in her backyard. Then I started to study. At this moment Popo’s third daughter Gloria came to visit. She is a highschool teacher and she takes turns with her siblings to take Popo out for strolls. Gloria is almost 50. She married a Japanese American many years ago, but he passed away more than ten years ago. She doesn’t have children, and so she visits quite often and is quite attentive to our family. Whenever she comes she would drive us to get groceries and sometimes she brought treats for my daughter.

This day, she saw that I was at home and asked about how I was doing. I told her that I was just rejected from UH, and I could not afford a private university. I was quite anxious and disheartened, but she told me to calm down, and told me that there is a community college named Kapi’olani Community College very close to the house, and it wouldn’t hurt for me to take a look.

I followed her directions and walked south on 16th Avenue for about ten minutes. Then I saw a beautiful campus surrounded by coconut trees and other tropical plants. When I walked into the campus I was pleasantly surprised. Due to a construction project that blocked the southern end of 16th Avenue, I didn’t see the campus when I first moved to Popo’s house. I didn’t know that there was such a beautiful place close to the house. I was mesmerized by the campus’ modern architecture, neatly landscaped gardens, and its grandiose backdrop of the ocean and Diamond Head. Nearly every building on the campus is named after a tropical plant native to Polynesia and Southeast Asia. For example, the cafeteria where I worked is named ‘Ohi’a, which is a small Hawaiian plant with bright red flowers. Another example is the art building, which is named after a very fragrant Hawaiian flower called Maile which is used in leis quite often. Basically, this college’s buildings and Hawaiian plants reflect the roots of Hawaiian culture.

If people say that Hawaii is paradise, then I would say that Kapi’olani Community College is like a small paradise inside paradise. When I first saw this beautiful campus, I fell deeply in love with the place.

To be continued! If you don’t want to miss a thing, please subscribe to the full feed!

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This is a continuation of my family’s immigration story as told by my dad. If you have missed the previous posts they are all in this category here:

Fifteen Years in America

Enjoy!

The next day, I arrived at Peter’s shop before 4pm. Peter introduced me to Meilan. Meilan is a Vietnamese born Chinese woman around 30 years old. She spoke both Mandarin and Cantonese fluently. She arrived in Hawaii in the mid 1970s with her parents as a refugee and worked with Peter for more than three years.

Peter told Meilan, “Please teach this man how to sell things here, and especially teach him how to price things and do solid business. Additionally you should teach him how to lock down the store at night. I have to go now. A few friends are waiting for me at a game of Mahjong.”

After Peter left, I learned a bit more about the marketplace from Meilan, and especially the skills involved in selling trinkets. Meilan told me that in these Waikiki stores generally the face price is ten times that of the wholesale price. If the item is a luxury item such as fine silver or gold jewelry then the markup is even higher. So even if a customer haggles, we could still sell it. However, we can’t sell our wares for too low of a price because our competitors sell similar things. People generally buy what is easy to sell, and if one store cuts the profit margin too low then the other stores would be quite angry. Additionally, Meilan told me a little bit about Peter. He was an international student from Taiwan. When he just arrived he worked at restaurants and went to school at the same time. After he got his degree, he bought this little shop in the international market place and became an entrepreneur. He and his wife also has an import and export company. In the few years prior to the recession their business was doing extremely well and they earned quite a good sum of money. Now business was not as profitable in Hawaii as years past, and Peter’s wife went back to Taiwan to find new opportunities. As a result Peter didn’t care about his little shop any longer, and he was glad to find me as a helper so he could go play Mahjong.

In the past I was just a professor of economics and only knew theoretic things about commerce. I didn’t know that in real life competition would be so fierce in a marketplace like this, and it really takes a good amount of work to be a good salesman.

To tell the truth, I manned the shop by myself on that first day, but after twelve hours of standing and hollering I did not even sell $100 worth of goods. After you take away my wage and rental fees from this bit of money, my boss Peter actually lost money. When he came to help me lock down the shop he checked out how much I sold. When he saw that I earned very little money he didn’t seem to disapprove. He said to me, “You just started! I really believe in you.”

That night, I felt a little depressed when I went home. If I couldn’t make a profit for Peter, how could I take his money? I had my heart set on being the best salesman in the entire marketplace.

When I set my heart on something, I always try to do my best. Thus I started studying other salespeople before and after my shifts. After a period of observations and experimentation, I discovered my own rules for being a good salesman. The following are some of my discoveries.

You must be direct and cordial, and call out to the customers first. The following is something I say often in Japanese, “Please take a look! We are having an 80 percent off sale right now!”

When two young Japanese ladies heard that there is an 80% off sale, they stopped in front of my shop. I really didn’t think that the little bit of Japanese I learned a long time ago could be so useful. However, if you want me to speak a lot of Japanese I would fail miserably. When the ladies came over I started to show them a selection of silver jewelry and other Hawaiian themed products.

“It is real silver, please try it on.” I picked out a silver dolphin ring and put it on one of the lady’s hands. Then I pointed to the dolphin and asked, “What do you call this in Japanese?”

The young lady looked at my sincere face and said, “Kore wa, nihongo de, iruka desu.” (This in Japanese is “iruka”) As she said this she lifted up her hand and admired the ring in the distance.

I stood behind her and started praising her, “Kawaii ne, anata wa hontoni kawaii.” (Very cute, you are really cute.)

Then I repeated what she taught me, “iruka, iruka”, and said “You are my Japanese teacher, and I am your student!”

The girl started to chuckle and said, “korewa, ikuradesuka?” (How much is this?)

Now I took the ring off her finger and checked the pricetag. It said $30, but I knew that the wholesale price was $2. So I plugged the price into my calculator and showed the lady that I took $24 dollars off, and sold it to her for $6. She was extremely excited that she got such a great deal, but actually the store still made a 200% profit. What is more important is that besides the small item she bought, she and her friend also bought some perfumes totaling over $150. My performance really surprised the Korean salesgirl across the way.

To be continued… More of my dad’s sales techniques in the next section! Stay tuned and subscribe to The Baglady if you don’t want to miss a thing.

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This is a continuation of my family’s immigration story as told by my dad. If you have missed the previous posts they are here:
Fifteen Years in America — An Introduction
Fifteen Years in America - Chapter 1: The Struggle Before the Reunion by Jian (Part 1)
Fifteen Years in America - Chapter 1: The Struggle Before the Reunion by Jian (Part 2)
Fifteen Years in America - Chapter 1: The Struggle Before the Reunion by Jian (Part 3)
Fifteen Years in America - Chapter 1: The Struggle Before the Reunion by Jian (End)
Fifteen Years in America - Chapter 2: The Professor of Duke’s Lane (Part 1)
Enjoy!

When I saw that most of the salespeople nearby were young females I became a little disheartened.  I was afraid that I went there for nothing and wasted a whole $0.75 for the bus.  After I walked past eight or nine stores I saw a middle aged man standing in front of a shop.  I figured out that he is Korean from his face shape.  So I went up to him and muttered in broken English, “Do you need a salesman?”

He looked at me as if he were startled, and then shook his head and said, “No, I don’t need a salesman.  I need a salesgirl.”

I didn’t give up, and continued to walk forward.  I asked a few more Korean managers if they wanted help, and all the responses were “NO”.  Finally I was at the middle of the lane, and I saw a 30 something storekeeper who looked Chinese.  I looked at his products, and they were mostly crystal baubles like pineapples, dolphins, volcanoes, and coconut trees.  Besides crystal products, he sells  some perfume and Hawaiian print bags.  Additionally he had some Chinese imports such as exercise balls and other random knick knacks.

When I was in front of his shop, I heard the storekeep speaking to a teenage looking salegirl in the Chinese I am familiar with, “Ah-Mei, today the business is very light!”

The girl named Ah-Mei replied, “It sure is, until now I still haven’t sold anything.  Peter, how about you?”

Peter said, “I only sold a bottle of perfume. The business is so light that I don’t want to continue working.  However Meilan just had a child and only works four and a half shifts a week now.  My wife also returned to Taiwan so I have no choice but to work here.”

When I heard their dialog, I felt that it was my chance.  Because they spoke Chinese I didn’t feel shy.

I walked up to Peter and said, “Sir, do you need help?”

Peter said to me, “Oh, do you have experience in selling things?”  This was my third day in America, and of course I didn’t have any sales experience.

I had a sudden flash of inspiration and pulled out a business card from my university.  I told Peter that in China  I was the assistant department head of the Economics department, and I was also a professor.  I told him that of course I had sales experience, because that is a skill I teach my students.  Actually, this is a half truth because even though I have students that became businessmen, I really haven’t had actual experience outside of the school.  In school everything is theory in books, and I have never actually sold a single thing before.

Peter picked up my business card and read the titles I had printed in both Chinese and English.  Then he looked at me from head to toe and saw that I was clean cut and quite energetic.  He didn’t reject me right away like all the Koreans, and seemed a little bit interested.  At this moment a Caucasian couple walked to the store and started to peruse the goods.  Peter started to talk to the customers right away.  The woman seemed interested in the perfumes, and Peter immediately brought two bottles from his shelf for the customer.  The man didn’t seem to have any interest in buying things, and looked at the various products in the store.

When Peter was working on selling to the woman, I targeted the man.  When I saw that he seemed to be curious about a pair of exercise balls with a dragon design, I walked up and picked up the balls and started to roll them in my hand.  The exercise balls had tiny bells in their centers and when you played with them they would make ringing sounds.  My performance piqued the interest of this man.

“What is this?” He asked.

“These two balls are good for your health.” I told him.

“Really?”  He seemed a bit surprised.

It seems that the man was really interested, but I didn’t know much English.  However, I have been a professor for many years and I was used to giving a performance.  So I rolled the balls in my hands more quickly and more loudly.  When I saw this man was quite mesmerized by my performance I stopped playing with them and asked him, “could you turn around?”

He turned around and I started to roll the balls on his back, and as I rolled them I asked, “very comfortable?”

He nodded his head and said, “Oh, it’s massage, good, fast, faster!”

Finally he was conquered by my performance, and asked, “How much?”

Peter was negotiating with the woman, but he was also paying attention to what I was doing.  When he saw that the man was asking for a price, he said to me in Chinese, “just give it to him for ten dollars, if he haggles, you can give him a little discount.”

Now I remembered the rule about setting prices that I learned at school.  The idea is that you should “wear a three feet tall hat and let them take a cut.”  So I said to that man, “fifteen dollars a pair, and you also get a very nice box.”

That man must have known that in a street market haggling is normal.  So he said to me, “how about eight dollars?”

I replied, “eight dollars is a little bit too low, how about ten dollars?”

That man replied, “Ok, ten dollars.”

At the same time, Peter reached an agreement with the woman, and sold a bottle of perfume for 50 dollars.  That woman told her man to pay, and the man pulled out an one hundred dollar bill and said to Peter, “the total is sixty dollars, just give me back forty.”

Peter was quite happy, and as he got change he said to them, “you guys got a very good deal.  Thanks and come back again!”

When this couple left, Peter said to me, “come back here for a moment, I have something to say to you.”  Peter didn’t want Ah-Mei from the other shop to hear what we were discussing.  At that moment I knew there was hope that I found a job.  He said to me, “how about this, you come to work at 4pm, and I will have Meilan call you.  To begin I will give you the minimum wage, and after a month I will give you an additional 3% sales commission.  The more you sell the more you will get.”

When I heard this I was truly excited.  I told peter, “many thanks for giving this opportunity.  I know a little bit of Japanese also and I can sell thing to Japanese people.  I won’t let you down!”

Thus I started my first job in America.  I was a salesman!

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This is a continuation of my family’s immigration story as told by my dad. If you have missed the previous posts they are here:
Fifteen Years in America — An Introduction
Fifteen Years in America - Chapter 1: The Struggle Before the Reunion by Jian (Part 1)
Fifteen Years in America - Chapter 1: The Struggle Before the Reunion by Jian (Part 2)
Fifteen Years in America - Chapter 1: The Struggle Before the Reunion by Jian (Part 3)
Fifteen Years in America - Chapter 1: The Struggle Before the Reunion by Jian (End)
Enjoy!

After we moved to Popo’s house, I sent my daughter to the nearby Queen Liliuokalani Elementary for school. I walked into a Chinese restaurant because I have often heard in China that Chinese students worked in restaurants. Even if my English were poor I could still wash dishes and earn a bit of money for tuition.

When I walked into the restaurant I met a Chinese host. I asked him if they needed people to help with the dishwashing. He sized me up from head to toe and knew that I was probably a student from mainland China. He said that they did not need anyone at the moment, and if I were a student I would need a work permit from the school. I was disappointed and wallowed a bit at home. I thought to myself even though our family is reunited, I did not have a job or money for school. In fact, it is hard for me to get any job at all. What should I do?

Helen has a friend who works as a saleswoman at the world renowned International Marketplace in Waikiki. She suggested that I try my luck there. So on the third day of arriving in Hawaii, I took the bus to Waikiki. Waikiki means “spouting water”, and indicates that the rivers and waterfalls flow into the ocean. It is an extremely popular white sand beach that is more than one mile long. Along the beach there are many expensive hotels such as Hilton,Sheraton, and Hyatt.

Waikiki is also surrounded by a forest of restaurants and shops. In the center of it all there is a massive attraction called the International Marketplace. This place has many small shops where tourists can buy souvenirs. Additionally there is a food court where people can taste foods from all around the world. In this marketplace there is a small lane that is approximately 150 meters, and it is known as “Duke’s Lane”. On both sides of the lane there are small shops that sold souvenirs. These souvenirs included gold and silver jewelry, crystal, wood carvings, and other random knick knacks associated with Hawaii. For example, there are little toy hula girls. Additionally there are shops that sell exclusively T-shirts or beach towels. Basically it is a market full of small time entrepreneurs.

Because Duke’s Lane is directly in the path from several large hotels to the beach, the business from tourists is usually red hot. In this lane most of the shop owners are Korean. Korean women are very diligent and outgoing and many of them spoke Japanese because Japan occupied them for a fairly long time. Besides Korean people, about 1/5 of the store owners were Chinese. Most of them were Vietnamese Chinese or Taiwanese with the exception of one mainland Chinese man who came to Hawaii in the early 80s as an international student.

I stepped off the bus and walked into this narrow lane. The Koreans on both sides thought that I was Japanese and started hollering in Japanese.

“Misetekudasai. Ima, 非常 yasui!” (Please take a look, right now it’s very cheap!) (Note: My dad wrote the Japanese part phonetically in Chinese. He took Japanese for a while in China so he understood these saleswomen. I only took Japanese for a year so I’m not sure if I transliterated it back correctly. Please correct us if you could. This is the original Chinese transliteration of the Japanese my dad wrote “米晒带,库达撒以. 以码,一持旁压始以!”)

“Umiyagi takusan arimasu” (There are a lot of souvenirs!)

These Korean girls would yell as they pulled you towards their stores. At that time I did not have the heart or money to buy any travel souvenirs. Even though I understood them I pretended that I didn’t, and kept on walking as I shook my head. A Korean girl still wanted me to go to her store, and I suddenly said in Chinese, “I don’t want to!” Now they knew that I was not a rich Japanese tourist, and stopped their yelling. That was in the early 90s, but now things have changed. Recently I heard from friends in Hawaii that now many Chinese people are spending fists full of money in Hawaii. Now I think perhaps these Korean women are learning Chinese.

To be continued!

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This is a continuation of my family’s immigration story. If you have missed the first three posts they are here:
Fifteen Years in America — An Introduction
Fifteen Years in America - Chapter 1: The Struggle Before the Reunion by Jian (Part 1)
Fifteen Years in America - Chapter 1: The Struggle Before the Reunion by Jian (Part 2)
Fifteen Years in America - Chapter 1: The Struggle Before the Reunion by Jian (Part 3)
Enjoy!

The plane landed at Tokyo International Airport for a transfer, and then flew directly to Honolulu International Airport. We left Shanghai on the morning of August 15th, but because of the time difference we landed in Honolulu in the afternoon of August 15th after flying for fourteen hours. The reunion of our family on August 15th has finally arrived! At the airport, we saw Helen, the person we have been missing day and night for over a year. She was wearing a sky blue dress decorated with large pink flowers that my old classmate An Lang’s wife made for her. Because Hawaii’s sun, she was tanned, and she seemed a bit slimmer than I last saw her, but she was quite energetic. When she saw us she hugged our daughter tight and repeated over and over, “Xin-head, mommy missed you so much! Mommy missed you so much! Do you miss mommy?” Xin nodded her head, but she was really thinking of her new Game Boy.

When we exited the airport, Helen’s landlady Lory drove our entire family onto the highway with her Mazda. For the first time I saw a highway several lanes wide with cars flying through it. It is a scene I have only seen in movies, and it finally hit me that I was in an unfamiliar country. Even though this was Hawaii, one of the famed scenic spots in the world, I did not have the appetite to enjoy the scenery. When we arrived at Lory’s home, Helen took us to a nearby McDonalds for a meal. It was Xin’s first time eating at McDonalds, and she enjoyed it very much, but I was not used to eating raw vegetables between bread. More importantly, I thought about how I had no way to go back, and I did not know what lies ahead, and I wondered how I was going to survive.

Now, I must give everyone a few basic facts about Hawaii. Hawaii is a group of islands including the four main islands of Hawaii (also known as the Big Island because it has the largest area), O’ahu, Maui, and Kauai. Additionally there are hundreds of smaller atolls and islands. Honolulu is the state capital of Hawaii, and it is on O’ahu. At that time Honolulu had over 800,000 inhabitants. Hawaii is the 50th state of the United States, and it is also the last state to enter the union in year 1959. Hawaii has three main industries in its economy: tourism, tropical agriculture, and the United States military.  When I arrived in Hawaii, it was in the midst of a serious recession.  Since the Cold War  just ended, America reduced its troops in Hawaii and that caused quite a bit of unemployment.  Additionally, because of the rising costs of agricultural wages in Hawaii and the increase supply of tropical fruits from South America, the competitiveness of Hawaiian agricultural products was drastically falling.  Even though at the beginning of the 90s Japan’s economy was weakening, the Japanese yen was still quite strong against the dollar.  Almost half of the tourists that came to Hawaii were Japanese, and thus most of Hawaii’s economy was supported by tourism.

Since our entire family arrived in Hawaii, we were not able to fit in Lory’s home.  However, a friend from school introduced Helen to another live in situation.  This time, we were to live with a 93 year old  Chinese lady.  We called her “popo”, which means grandma in Chinese.  She had a huge house near the foot of Diamond Head.  Popo came to Hawaii as a child bride in the early 1900s.  Her husband died quite early, and she worked as a housekeeper and raised five children by herself.  Two of her children are engineers, one is a shop keeper, one is a real estate agent, and another is a teacher.  Popo had a bad temper, and often yelled at her children.  Even though her children were very filial, they were also terrified by her.  Even though she had quite a full house of descendants, none of them wanted to live with her.  She gave our family a very large bedroom and did not charge us rent.  In exchange, we cleaned the house and maintained the yard.  When we cooked dinner we also shared food with her.  Thus we were able to settle down in Hawaii.

Stay tuned for chapter 2!!  

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