Entries Tagged 'Immigration' ↓

This is a continuation of my family’s immigration story originally written by my dad in Chinese. For more of my dad’s narrative see the category marked Fifteen Years in America. If you can read Chinese you can read the original at my dad’s Yahoo blog. He has just finished Chapter 8. Enjoy!

Continued from Part 2

I told Jane that I was familiar with work in the kitchen.  She asked me if I had guaranteed hours for working and I told her that I was a student at the college and I can guarantee that I would work 2 hours a day and 10 hours a week.  Later I found out that the cafeteria is extremely busy during the lunch hours and they must have people that get there on time and guarantee the smooth operation of the cafeteria.

After listening to me Jane handed me an application, and told me to fill it out and bring it back.  Additionally, she asked for a copy of my last health checkup.  I think that is because I would be handling food and they need to guarantee that I am not diseased.

The next day I brought the finished application form and a copy of my health check to Jane.  She brought me to the kitchen’s grill.  There I saw a very muscular and tanned woman grilling many pieces of hamburger meat.  As she flipped the meat the oils that seeped out sizzled on the grill.

Jane said to that woman, “Morri, I found you a student helper!  His name is Jian, and now he is yours.”  Morri is one of the cafeteria’s chefs, and she was my supervisor.  Her supervisor is named Craig, and they’re both native Hawaiians and are both tall and large.  They’re both very nice and humble people.  Later I heard that Morri is actually 1/8th Chinese.  I guess  most people in Hawaii are very mixed and a couple of her great grandparents were Chinese.  However, she didn’t look Chinese at all.

Since I kept my promise and always came to work on time no matter how busy I was, Morri liked me and treated me very well.  Even though I told Jane that I know how to cook, but I never worked in a kitchen that served hundreds to thousands of people before.

–

Part 4

After I was hired by the student cafeteria, I would work there two hours a day, and I usually served lunch so I got there at 11am.  After I finished class, I would go straight to the cafeteria.  My main job was to help Morri make hamburgers.  Even though making hamburgers looks easy, it took a bit of practice for me to make them efficiently.

For example, the tomato slices in each hamburger must be even.  It is not good to have some thick pieces and some thin pieces.  At first, I was not good at balancing the tomatoes and my hamburgers looked lopsided.  Additionally, it is important for a hamburger to be cooked to the right temperature.  At that time the cafeteria made three types of hamburgers: beef, fish, and vegetarian.  Each type required a different cooking temperature and time.  The beef needed to be cooked the longest and at the highest temperature to kill the germs in the meat.  However, you couldn’t cook for too long because if all the juices are evaporated then it would be dry and tasteless.  If it was cooked for too short a time the meat would be raw and the consumers could be seriously sick.

The fish and vegetarian burgers were different.  First, these two types didn’t ooze oil like the beef so they didn’t create big oil  flames on the grill.   They were quite easy to cook.  Finally, there was quite a bit of skill involved in wrapping these burgers after they were cooked.  At first, I wrapped them extremely slowly and my products were quite ugly and the wrappings fell off easily.  After quite a bit of practice, the hamburgers I wrapped finally had the right shape.

Each day when I went to work, I would cut up the tomatoes first, and then prepare the lettuce.  Then, while I cooked the patties, I would lay out pieces of the wrapping paper and split the buns.  On each sheet of paper I would prepare the buns and place the tomatoes and cheese.  At the same time I would flip the patties.  After the patties were done I would put them on each of the buns and start wrapping.  When the students start to come in it gets extremely busy and my hands and feet were constantly moving.

Besides making hamburgers, I would sometimes help with frying the French fries and onion rings.  The hot oil often splashed onto my hands and body and it hurt like needles.   However, this bit of oil is really small potatoes compared to the heat I experienced in the steel factory I worked for during the Cultural Revolution.  At that time, I was only 15 and I lifted molten steel measuring thousands of degrees and passed many months chanting the mantra of “defeating heat and compete for the highest production”.  In that seven years of physical labor and training, I lost a lot of time for education, but in that environment of  “thousands of hammers and hundreds of purifications” I acquired an extremely strong will.  Another slogan that the Communists often taught was that “people need a bit of spirit”.  This will or spirit is what gave me the power to conquer the trials of starting over again.

After one month, I became a hamburger making expert.   However, I really wanted to bring the real “Yangzhou Fried Rice” to the cafeteria.

To be continued! 

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This is a continuation of my family’s immigration story originally written by my dad in Chinese. For more of my dad’s narrative see the category marked Fifteen Years in America. If you can read Chinese you can read the original at my dad’s Yahoo blog. He has just finished Chapter 8. Enjoy!

When I meet students from China these days, most of them are financed by their families, and almost none of them work in restaurants now. Near my house there is a Chinese restaurant that I visit quite often. In the end of the last century I could still meet a few students from China working there, but lately there are no longer any Chinese students. Instead, all the workers are either Mexican or Chinese immigrants not here for school. When I think about this I think Chinese parents should learn from the Americans and let their children work in addition to going to school. My daughter started a blog a month after reading my blog. Her main goal is to educate her generation and popularize the idea of living beneath one’s means. In about two months she wrote about sixty blog posts and one particular post is titled, How I Saved Over $30,000 While in College and What I Did With the Money. Those of you young people who can read English might as well head over and read her post.

She wrote about how she used different methods such as working at school, contracting, selling books, and entering sweepstakes to earn money. I am very glad that she inherited the Chinese traditions of diligence and frugality. At the same time she learned a lot from the Americans. For example, she donates a good amount of her income and volunteers. I thought to myself, when we were in Hawaii we experienced quite a bit from working in America, and the hardships of that time is quite worthwhile.

In January of 1993, I became a full time student at Kapiolani, so I no longer had time to work at Duke’s Lane. On my first day at school, I went to the library to borrow books and I passed by the student cafeteria. At the door of the cafeteria I saw a wanted ad that read, “The cafeteria needs three student workers to help the chefs prepare lunch. The pay is $6.75 per hour and lunch is free.”

When I saw this ad I was quite happy, because I figured that I can solve my problem of losing my job and spending money for tuition. This job has fairly flexible hours and I can work there for two hours after my morning classes and also get a free meal. I no longer needed to pack lunch, and this was awesome. Packing lunch may seem like a joke to modern day international students, but at that time I remember we would always spend three dollars to buy a 10 pound pack of chicken drumsticks. After we cook it with soy sauce, we would make chicken sandwiches with some bread and tomatoes. We ate like this for several years. After that, I didn’t want to touch chicken drumsticks anymore because I have eaten way too many of them.

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This is a continuation of my family’s immigration story originally written by my dad in Chinese. For more of my dad’s narrative see the category marked Fifteen Years in America. Enjoy!

—

When I started college, the most unfortunate thing that happened was that Popo passed away. When we lived with Popo, we did not need to pay rent, and that lifted a gigantic financial burden from our lives. As an exchange, we cleaned the house and yard and often cooked for her. Popo really loved to eat my stewed pork. Even though she was over 90 years old, whenever I cooked some of my stewed pork she would eat a bit more than usual.

After we returned from our Disneyland trip, one of Popo’s daughter told us that Popo contracted pneumonia and had a high fever. Her children sent her to the hospital. We visited her in the hospital but she already slipped in a coma. After a few days, she passed away at the ripe age of 94. We lived with her for a little over 4 months. Even though her children did not want to live with her, all of her descendants were quite filial to her. Every day a different member of the family came to see her and give her food and sometimes gave us things to eat. Now Popo left us, and we had to move.

Right before I started college, my whole family moved to a studio on Young Street. It was just a room around 200 square feet with a tiny bathroom and a small kitchen. The rent and utilities cost around $500 a month, but this was the cheapest place we could find. Right in front of the door there was a gigantic mango tree that bore enough fruit to last us for years. Helen actually dried the mango in the oven and preserved it. I remember during the Cultural Revolution, there was a headline that stated Chairman Mao donated some mangoes he received from African diplomats to a labor team. At that time, I really didn’t know what kind of magical fruit a mango was. Then in Hawaii we had an endless stream of mangoes to eat, and my former fascination with the mysterious fruit was gone. We lived in the tiny studio for more than four years, until I received my Masters degree and we left Hawaii.

January 18th, 1993 is a date I could not forget. On this day, I became a freshman at Kapiolani Community College and began my life as a working student. In the first semester I selected four courses totaling 12 units. The courses were English, Mathematics for Economics, American Business, and Basic Accounting.

The first day I went to class, I sat down in the classroom and saw many teenaged American classmates around me. I thought to myself that in China I have been teaching kids like these for many years, but now I am once again in the student’s seat. Sometimes life is just really unpredictable. Going to school is tough, but this was the only path I could take since I left my homeland. However, going to school is also a luxury. If I didn’t have the time or the money then there is no way I would be studying in a foreign country. If I didn’t leave my homeland, there was no need for me to repeat college. So from this point of view, I feel that I was quite fortunate. Since I felt that I had no choice but to go to school again, I gained a new experience, and also obtained more options and excitement in the process.

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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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