Social study interview on post-Mao Chinese immigration to America

1. Why did you and Mom choose to leave your homeland over 20 years ago?

Well, in the beginning, it was more of a trend we followed rather than an educated choice. Our childhood and teenager time were in Mao's totalitarian government very much like today's North Korea. No one was permitted to go out of the country (those who dare including my English professor Miss Wang, once found, were sent to prison). We were brain-washed to believe that our homeland was the best in the world and the rest of the world with the 2/3 population of mankind was a living hell where the poor people were struggling everyday waiting for us to liberate them one day. Mao's era ended in 1976 when he died and when we graduated from high school.

Shortly after Mao died, a great man named Deng Xiaoping took power. He opened the door of China to the world and started his reform and open-door campaign that fundamentally changed China. Although China was still under the highly controlled government and speech and press were still censored, the reform led China into a market economy and developed China into a strong country at an unprecedented development speed.

We benefited a lot from his reform. After Deng reopened universities which Mao shut down for 10 years (1966-1976) during his Cultural Revolution, we were able to attend colleges through very tough college entrance examinations, only 4% of the candidates were selected. So we were the lucky few to get the high education at that time and the government assigned jobs to everyone of us upon graduation. I was even luckier in getting into the top academy in China for my master's program in Machine Translation research in 1983. With the master degree in hands, I got the job of assistant researcher in this academy and my career was smooth and the future was bright. There was really no need or pressure to change the status-quo. Life was good.

However, there was a stronger and stronger wave of "going abroad for study" at the time. The Chinese people were shocked at observing the huge gaps between the prosperity of the West and the poverty of the then-China. Almost all young people were pursuing this dream of going abroad after China opened the door.  We had been closed for too long and we wanted to see the outside world. The dream became even more attractive and valuable as the visa was so difficult to get. Unless you are exceptionally good to be able to get full scholarships, your chances of getting the visa to study abroad were very slim. So my schoolmates seemed all working very hard on GRE and TOFEL in order to achieve perfect scores to help with the scholarships they needed. I was fairly late in considering this path but most of my schoolmates with decent English went abroad, most to the US, one after another. This gave me more and more self-inflicted pressure and anxiety. At least, I should go out to see the world, like my schoolmates.

There was one historical event that greatly changed this Chinese immigration wave, that is the Tiananmen Event in 1989. Until that event occurred, the majority of Chinese students and scholars who studied abroad then still had two options before them: some who could land on a job most probably would continue their journey of living abroad until being naturalized in time; others, especially those on J1 visa who were sponsored by the Chinese government, would go back to serve China as required by the laws or regulations of both the US and Chinese governments. But the 1989 event changed everything.  As a response to this event for which the US condemned the Chinese government for violating the basic human rights, the US congress soon passed a special immigration law to allow Chinese students and scholars in the US to obtain green cards. The landscape of this wave of Chinese immigration has been fundamentally affected, with this pool of highly educated and skilled Chinese new immigrants finally settling down in the US for good. 1989 marked the point of no return for many overseas Chinese in the US.

We were a bit later than others in coming out of the country in 1991, first to the UK for one year, then immigrated to Canada where you were born and ended up in moving to the US 16 years ago for career development after I got PhD. Nevertheless, the 1989 event definitely had a considerable impact on our decision to pursue immigration to Canada. We love our homeland where we were born and brought up, with so many connections including family and friends, but we would not want to go back. More importantly, during the long journey in pursuing the American Dream in the new land, we have always been motivated by the desire to pursue a better environment for our child (you) to grow.

So we "chose" to leave our home country (i.e. emigration) not because we were not doing well in China, but because we wanted to see the world as the initial motivation.  The decision for pursuing immigration in North America was triggered by the historical event and your birth.  It does not make sense to bring you back to a society that restricts basic freedom. This is very different from earlier generations of immigrants who left home country mainly due to the poor living situations, or religious or political prosecution.

2. What are pros and cons of immigration to America?

The biggest pro is to see you grow well in this land from childhood to college, enjoying the freedom we were deprived of when young and knowing that opportunities are all opened up for you. We were also very thankful to the US who provided me with an opportunity in using my skills and experiences for career development. In a new land with no connections, purely based on my own talents and abilities, I was able to quickly develop myself into the key role of tech lead and senior management (VP for R&D for my first company and Chief Scientist for my second company), acting as Principal Investigator for 17 government projects totaling 9 million dollars and successfully transferred my technology into real world products distributed globally to the business clients of Fortune 500. All these achievements demonstrate that the US is a mature and fair society for new talents from around the world. We have been working extra hard for sure, but the reward has also been great. We love the new land despite its own social problems.

The cons include the tremendous pains and hardships we came across along the way, from the initial cultural shock and deep depression we experienced as we had to cut off the old ties and started everything from grand zero with no connections and support from family and friends as we had in China. I think this is a common pain for all first generation immigrants who are struggling to adapt to an entirely new environment in a new land. It was a price we had to pay once we are on the road of immigration.

3. Did you ever regret your decision?

No, there has never been regret in the decision although by choosing to come out, we did miss a historical opportunity of China's economic boom in the last 2 decades. The huge change in China was accompanied with more opportunities with bigger platforms for talents. Friends of mine with similar background and education who did not come out have been doing exceptionally well, playing bigger roles in the society and organizations. So most probably if I had stayed in China, there would have been a bigger role for me to impact the society. But there is no "if" in one's life and we are happy where we are. We have nothing to complain, especially when we see you grow here, free and healthy, as a second generation immigrant. This land is our third home (second home is Canada), but it is your homeland with all your schoolmates and friends. We appreciate living here as much as you do as a native.

[Related]

Is Deng called Chairman Deng? 

Interview on post-Mao Chinese Immigrants in US (Part 2) 2014-12-06

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