After my application for sitting in the graduate admission test was denied by the school principal, I wanted to move back to the southern part of the province where I am from. The weather in the south is friendlier in winter, although it is hot and muggy in summer. I still loved teaching and wanted to secure a job I was trained to do: teaching math. But, nothing was easy in the web of bureaucracy in a tightly controlled society. The school principal had already rejected my application for graduate school tests. He could reject me again on the whims of the day he had. He chose not, but green lighted my request. The receiving school had more new hires and transfer requests than available positions. It was another battle to fight and took me a year to complete the job transfer.
The new school is in a city on the bank of Yangtze River, the longest river in Asia. The River originates in Tibet and runs almost 4,000 miles before it drains into the East China Sea at Shanghai. My eldest sister and her husband lived in the city. They have a four year old daughter. On most weekends, I would go to their apartment to enjoy their family meals after a week of tasteless food from the school cafeteria. I love kids and spent a lot of time with my niece. In the snowy winter, I would take my niece to a concrete slope near their home for snow tubing. The spring season is the best time for this region. The hills along the River brim with dense shrubs and are splashed with red azaleas of various shades as far as eyes can see. Whenever I got a chance, I grabbed my niece and took her on the many trails for hours to identify the flowers I know and catch butterflies. Once we strayed away from the main road so far that I did not remember how to get back. We sat on the ground hopelessly for some miracle to happen. My niece got scared and I tried to comfort her even though I was probably more scared than she was. Then, suddenly I heard the sound of a tractor passing by. The main road was not paved and was for the villagers in this remote area. There were rarely any small and light vehicles. The tractor saved us. We followed its sound and got back on the main road.
I love the new school. It was in a valley on the edge of the city. In spring and cooler summer evenings, my coworkers and I would usually walk out of the campus after dinner. There were farmers houses, their vegetable gardens and foothills where we could pick mushrooms in spring. At the end of my first semester, an English teacher left without an immediate replacement. I suddenly thought that I might switch from teaching math to teaching English. When I told this to the vice Principal for teaching at the school, her jaw almost dropped. I had never officially taken any English class in college. There was nothing on my transcripts that were remotely related to English. I convinced her to let me mock teach a class. She finally caved in.
In the next semester, I became an English teacher. I taught the beginners in the first year of middle school. I taught English in a different way from most other teachers. Drawing from my own experience, I believe that a language is supposed to be spoken first. So, I prioritized repeated listening over spelling and grammar and encouraged my students to learn to speak. By the end of the first semester, my students could be engaged in short conversations in English. Students loved my class and often tried to converse with me in English when I saw me in the hall. But, the school, like all other schools kept students' grades, based on the scores on spelling and grammar. I had to try to strike a balance.
In the mid 1980s. life for average Chinese had improved significantly after years of free-market economic reform in agriculture and consumer products industries. Farmers could decide what crops to plant after the collective farming was dissolved. They kept what they harvested after they paid the capped tributes to the government. They could take their poultry they raised and produce they picked from the field to the free markets. Their income quickly increased, as did their demands for consumer goods. Consumer products companies started operating like real businesses, too. They were allowed to plan production based on market needs and could decide the price points to sell their products. After they paid taxes and the agreed upon profit-sharing to the government( Government still retained ownership of their companies), the companies kept the rest of the profit. Productivity rose rapidly. Not only shortages of daily necessities were gradually eliminated, but now products were also constantly put on the markets. The retained profit was used to reward their workers and management. So, income for factory employees increased, too. That drove more demand for the economy to grow.
Schools returned to normalcy and became vibrant communities for students as well as for teachers. But the CCP still kept tight control of all aspects of social life, a civil society based on the rule of law was not in its infancy. The conflicts outside of campus got spilled in the classroom. One day, a few students burst into my office and told me a gang of youth invaded the classroom and harassed my students. I rushed to the classroom to confront them. I ordered them to leave the campus immediately. I threatened them I would call the local police if they came again.
For the next few weeks, they never showed up on campus. But they ambushed me on the narrow alley I had to pass on my way to the bus stop. They threw big stones at me and almost hit me. I had to change my schedule to go to the bus stop at various times, a pattern that could not be easily observed.
A few months later, I went to the nearby hospital with a few friends to see a co-worker who was hospitalized. On our way out of the hospital, a group of kids carried a young man on their shoulders toward the hospital entrance. Blood was streaming down the face of the young man. He was clearly in agony of pain and humiliation as he must have lost a fight against other gangs. As he raised his head toward the stairs, he looked familiar to me. I did not have time to think more about who he was. I quickly pointed the emergence room to the kids and grabbed a nurse to help them. I also forgot about this in the following weeks. One day, a young man showed up at my office door. He called me Mr. Wang and told me he was here to apologize for what he had done to my students and myself. I suddenly remembered he was the injured young man at the hospital. He said that the kids with him that day told him what I did for him. I replied that I did not really do anything. He said that I did not gloat over his misfortune. That was enough for him to repent. Wow, a little kindness was a pretty powerful remedy.
As the government started investing in education, various teachers' training and professional development opportunities came up. The Normal University of the province started a new program to raise the level of education for teachers to a new level. It admitted current teachers who already had two year college education, to have two more years of upper classes for a bachelor's degree. As always, the admission was based on test scores. I had learned English by myself all these years, but had never taken any tests to gauge my proficiency in the language. I applied to sit for the tests and was one of the 25 students in the cohort of 1986 among 600 candidates that year.
In the fall of 1986, I went to the capital city to pursue my bachelor's degree. I started many of my first times. It was the first time I sat in the classroom as an English student. It was the first time I met English native speakers, mostly Americans. It was my first time using headphones and watching movies in English, etc.
Jeff and Beth were a young American couple from Colorado. Beth taught conversational English. On the first day, she asked us to pick an English name so that we could completely immerse ourselves in an English environment. That was how I got my English name. Jeff taught English reading in classic literature. Tess of the D'urbervilles, a late nineteenth century British novel was the required reading. It was so hard for us to read that we had to look up the dictionary multiple times before finishing reading a single page.
Out of the classroom, American teachers became our friends. We took them out to taste the street food and local desserts, etc. We also traveled together to the tourist spots in the surrounding area. They invited us to their apartment to hang out on weekends. We asked about their families, college life, places they had visited, elections etc. They also taught us some popular songs in English. As some of us got closer to Jeff and Beth, we joined them to read the Bible. It was the first time, I saw the Bible. Even with so many questions asked about America, studying in the US or even visiting was a distant opportunity none of us had ever dreamed of.
In late November of 1986, something happened just a few miles away from our campus that later shocked the world. Students from the prestigious National University of Science & Technology and a few other universities took to the street to protest a local election. The CCP had played the election games for decades, if they ever held any. The CCP Party chiefs hand-picked only one candidate, and banned other parties from nominating their candidate. People only had one candidate on the ballot to vote for. The students could not take it any longer and nominated their own candidate. But, the candidate was banned from campaign or even threatened to end his candidacy. That trigger the widespread protest that only lasted two days. But, the reform-minded General Secretary of CCP, the Party Chief was pushed aside by the hardliners. The short-lived protest was the precursor to the 1989 student democratic movement that finally led to the massacre on Tiananmen Square in Beijing.
I quickly made friends with some of my classmates, based on shared goals. We all harbored a strong desire to go to graduate schools. With like-minded people, I put my plan to get graduate education in business into action. I dusted off the economics and business books I bought years ago. Just as I was crazy about learning English when I was a math student, I was as crazy about economics and business when I was an English student. In the spring of 1988, I sat for and passed the admission test for Southwestern University of Finance & Economics (SUFE) in Chengdu, Sichuan Province. In August, I chose to travel on the waterway over the railway. I boarded a huge passenger ship for a five-day journey upstream in the Yangtze River to Chengdu. This was the first time I left my home province. It was very interesting to meet people of all walks of life and from different parts of the country. Their stories reflected tumultuous times we had lived through in the past decades. Their hopes and dreams were inspiring and uplifting. I got to see some of the most stunning views and learned about the numerous cultural sites and heard the legendary stories about the people along the river.
The Yangtze River, like other rivers across the country was not polluted then. Restaurants on the ship received local vegetables and fresh catches from the river every time it docked at stops along the way. I ordered the steam fish for dinner one night. It was the most tasty fish I had ever had. Even the fish tone was so soft that I chewed it to add more calcium to my diet
In the fall semester of 1988, I started my graduate study at Southwestern University of Finance & Economics, majoring in public finance and taxation Policy. Graduate school opened up opportunities to meet all kinds of people around the world. Western scholars were often invited to give me speeches or hold seminars on campus for everyone to attend. Different schools of economic thought were introduced, discussed and debated. The professors in Monetary Economics Department were able to invite a member of the US Federal Reserve to introduce US monetary system to us. Domestic economists pointed to the successes in agriculture and consumer industries to advocate for more reforms to the bone of the Chinese economy, namely steel industry, transportation, energy, heavy machinery and the banking industry, etc.
The Chinese Communist Party was relatively tolerant of free speech, and economic theories that deviated from socialist doctrine. Probably too tolerant in the eyes of the Marxist fundamentalists. That planted the seed for the demands for more reforms of the economic and political systems on one hand, and for signals of a crackdown on the other.
The campus was the confluence of cultures too. A French couple came to our school to promote Esperanto, the constructed international auxiliary language. They had traveled to many parts of the world. I heard that French, with financial support from the French government, had been fighting English for dominance in the world of internationally spoken languages. I did not know if their efforts were funded by their government. But it was fun to hear from them about the need to learn Esperanto.
In addition to western economic scholars on campus, the University had hired a team of language teachers from the United States, New Zealand and Europe. Pat and Wallace Nave were among them. They were retired administrators from Western Kentucky University. They visited China before around 1985. Now they were the second wave of American educators who volunteered to teach in Chinese in Colleges and Universities.
Pat and Wallace taught English to undergraduate students. I came across them on campus when they were trying to get to the library. I walked with them for a few minutes and then pointed to the library building. A few days later, they were in the cafeteria, wondering what to buy. I recommended some dishes to them. Back and forth, we became very close. Living in another country with huge cultural difference was not easy. I felt even more strongly when I had the chance to leave my family and friends behind to do so. I tried everything I could to help them, particularly in dealing with the University authority. Pat did not like the textbook she was given because it did not reflect cultural and social realities of English-speaking countries. Maybe she was appalled by socialist ideology, the praise of communism and Mao's thought. She wanted to supplement her teaching with scriptures from the Bible. She asked me how to proceed. I told her to speak with the University authority. She went to assure the Vice President of International Study university that she was not on a mission to spread gospel. She just want to use the scriptures as a literature to better teach English. Her request was flatly rejected.
I read some scriptures with Jeff and Beth when I was in my undergraduate program. I was mesmerised by the sheer beauty and simplicity of the language in the New Testament. Some of the teachings reflect the religious beliefs of my culture and the wisdom of ancient scholars, too. But, I did not have the time to explore it as I was trying to get into graduate school. Jeff and Beth did not have extra copies of the Bible.
Now, Pat and Wallace could make photo copies of the scriptures we studied. Later, when they travelled to Hong Kong to take care of some business back home, they took back a copy of the bible in both English and Chinese as a gift to me. We could have regular Bible study sessions. I invited more friends to join us. Nora was one of them. We later fell in love and got married right after I graduated.
After Pat asked for permission to include Bible Scriptures in her teaching, she got the attention of the CCP loyalists on campus. They monitored her contact with students and young Chinese Faculty. She even received a few unwanted visits to her class.
We went to their apartment mostly on weekends to for regular Bible study. We started with the New Testament because it was much easier to read. The Book John is my personal favorite. After they brought a cassette recorder from Hong Kong in the fall, Pat played Christian songs to us for every Bible study. These song were so fresh and so invigorating to us. The giant step in my Christian faith journey is to learn to pray. It enable me to build a personal relation with God to be able to have a direct conversation with Him for guidance and wisdom. It is an opportunity for me to ask for forgiveness and express gratitude for the blessings I receive in life. If what I want is not in His Plan, I find peace with myself. If it is his plan, I will work my tail off to achieve it.
In order to conceal what we were doing, we often carried groceries to their apartment to appear that we were just getting together to cook Chinese food. The University finally became suspicious why we stopped by so often. They eventually put up a security post at the entrance of the apartment buildings for expatriates as they were often called. The security guard recorded each individual who entered the building by the time of entrance and departures. They threatened to report us to our academic advisors. That might become part of our personnel records that would go no matter who we worked for. The immediate danger would be negative impact on our chance of graduation. That did not stop us. We some moved our Bible study to other American families if possible.
There is a Protestant church in Chengdu, built more than a hundred years ago by early missionaries. During the Cultural Revolution, it was severely damaged. After the United States set up a Consulate in Chengdu, more and more American came to the city for business, work or even study. So, the church was repaired and opened to believers. But it was not for Chinese believers. I went to the church with Pat and Wallace several times. But, before I could get closer to the entrance, I was singled out for check of my identity. Without a foreign passport, every time I was turned back. We were not treated the worst way. Persecutions of believers who attend family churches in remote areas were never reported. Some of the attacks on them were very violent.
As the ominous 1989 rolled in, I entered the second semester of my graduate school. I was supposed to be in the thick of my increasingly intense graduate study. On April 15, 1989, the death of the former CCP Chief triggered a national mourning for him. He was the reform-minded CCP General Secretary who was booted out of the leadership due to the student protest I witnessed two years earlier. Soon, the mourning turned into demonstrations in Beijing and soon spiraled out of control and spread to other major cities.
The political appeal initially was to contain the rising inflation and to root out widespread corruptions in government and state-owned corporations. As the economic reform stalled in, government-controlled industries such as steel, energy, transportation and the banking still operated under the system of price control and central planing. Officials in government and these industries controlled the distribution of their products and services which were in high demand. They could get quota or purchase contracts and turned around to sell at much higher prices and pocketed the differences.
As more and more people were drawn into the movement, democratic reforms, such as free local election, free press and basic human rights were demanded, too. The CCP leadership did not yield an inch and called the demonstrators riots.
On the eve May 18, 1989. martial law was declared in Beijing by then Prime Minister Li Pen. Such move angered not only students, but regular citizens, too. We did not finish watch the speech and took to the street, bracing the pouring rain minutes before midnight. We marched toward the Provincial government building in downtown. It was a five mile walk. We were all soaked when we returned to our dorm next morning. I completely lost my voice for over two weeks.
From then on, state media stopped reporting the events in Beining and other parts of the country under the intense pressure of the Party. But VOA journalists were on still on the ground and sent reports to be aired. I listened to these reports and wrote in posts to put on the bulletin board on a huge wall which we later called the “Wall of Democracy”. For days, I provided updates on the demonstrations around the country and international responses to keep the momentum on campus.
Another American teacher, a close friend of mine Alfred came to my dorm. He was deeply moved by the courage of students who went on hunger strike. He sympathized with students and the movement He told me that he had been warned by the university authority not to get involved any way. He was even followed when he stepped out of the campus. He took out a $50 bill from his pocket and said he did not know how to help. He gave me the $50 bill. I did not know money could help. He insisted that I take the money and figure out how to use it. The only way I could think of was to put the money for future demonstrations.
My friends and I went to the department store to buy a 20-yard white cloth to make a huge banner to direct our anger at then prime minister who made the announcement for martial law. His parents were killed in the civil war between communist and the nationalist parties in 1930s. So, the communist party and the people adopted and raised him. The banner said: “we the Chinese people once adopted you, we will soon dump you!”
May 26, 1989, the larges anti-communist demonstration that was ever staged broke out across the country. My banner was prominently featured on TV screens and national newspaper. It became an outcry to push the communist hardliners such as Li Pen out of the CCP leadership. The new CCP General Secretary sympathized with the students too. There was a clear split between the party hardliners and reformers within the top leadership. The hardliners won the debate. Finally on the eve of June 4, 1989, tanks rolled in from four corners of Beijing to brutally crack down the demonstrators, causing the losses of thousands of the most promising lives. The United States and other democratic countries in the west swiftly imposed economic sanctions against Communist China.
I was devastated as I genuinely believed that we could push for some meaningful economic reforms to safeguard private ownership, free market economy and to ensure basic human rights, such as freedom of speech, freedom of religion and free local elections. The authority was not able to trace the banner that attracted so much attention to me and my friends. So, we did face any prosecution. I lied low for the next year and half, determined to leave the country. I prepared for the necessary tests: Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) and the Graduate Management Admission Test(GMAT) as required by US universities. I took these tests in the spring of 1990 and scored satisfactorily on both on first trial. Even with good scores, it still seemed insurmountable to finish the application process and secure the financial resources. I applied from outside of country and the communication was both costly and inconvenient due to time differences.
I spent the next 8 months to write my graduate thesis to get me over to the finishing line. After I graduated, I did not accept a rather cushy government job and went to the southern city of Shenzhen across the river from Hong Kong. The city was an innovative and vibrant community of people who wanted to have a better life for themselves through hard work and creativity. The city was also a policy lab that it adopted market-based economic reforms that can be duplicated to other parts of the country. The city saw China’s first stock exchange under the Communist rule since 1949. At first, only six companies listed their stocks on the exchange. I landed a job in one of them.
In December 1993, another turn of the event revived my dream to study in the United States. I bumped into Pat and Wallace on the farmers’ market in Shenzhen. We were so excited to see each other after they left China abruptly in the aftermath of 1989 massacre. They told me that they moved to Florida after they returned to the US. Now, they came to Shenzhen to teach for the third time.
They told me that Western Kentucky University just started a new graduate program: Master of Professional Accountancy. They would not pull any string for me, but they could put me in contact with the Dean’s secretary to the business school. The program welcomed applicants with different background. But my test scores had expired or would expire very soon.
I had to retake these tests. I must secure financial sponsorship, too. The business school would not provide scholarship to international students, only teaching assistantship. Financial sponsorship is a visa requirement to prevent foreign students from ending up having taxpayers money to fool their education bills. The financial sponsorship must come from individuals within the United States who can provide proof of assets in the bank to cover the tuition and living expenses if the foreign student could not pay. Through a web of family connections, I finally landed somebody in New York who was willing to sign the dotted line. It was a priceless help. In July 1994, I received the I-20 Form from Donna, the Director of International Education at Western Kentucky University. Five years after I decided to leave China, in the summer of 1994 I finally had all I needed in my hand to walk into the US Consulate in Guangzhou to apply for my F-1 student visa.
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