As the plane descended into the airspace of the San Francisco airport, I pressed my forehead against the oval window. The deep blue Pacific Ocean below me stretched and curved toward the horizon until it disappeared into a pale haze. Northern California’s dark-green hills rolled outward into an ever-increasing expanse of land. I had never seen so much green in all my life, nor so many cars! I looked down at thousands of vehicles streaming through highways, and I couldn’t believe I was finally about to step onto American soil. Tchaikovsky’s symphony, Romeo and Juliet, wafted through my headset, a soundtrack to the scene I was beholding. If I could have gathered all my hopes and dreams for my new life in America, the glittering sea below me could not have contained them all.
Our route across the globe took us from Shanghai to San Francisco to New York City before we reached our final destination. I arrived in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday, February 3, 1982 with my USTC classmates, Jason and Ji-hong. It’s a date I will never forget as long as I live. I was twenty-one-years-old. Everything I owned at that point I carried in my two hands, including two suitcases of clothing, a well-worn Chinese-English dictionary, and fifty dollars in cash.
We hailed a cab at the airport, excited and exhausted at the same time. The drive from Washington National Airport to the University of Maryland at College Park took us across the Potomac River and along the outskirts of the capital city. The three of us were crammed into the back seat, elbowing each other and pointing at sights like the gleaming dome of the Thomas Jefferson Memorial and the sharp point of the Washington Monument jutting straight into the sky.
The cab driver was from Africa. I was intrigued to meet another immigrant, and I asked him if it was difficult to drive in America.
“No, it’s easier,” he replied, “because the roads here all have lines and lanes.”
This was true. Back in China, the roads weren’t divided nicely with painted white or yellow lines like these orderly, American streets were, so driving on them in China was basically mayhem! I couldn’t get over how immaculate the city looked with its trimmed lawns, clear sidewalks, and lack of leaves or garbage strewn throughout the streets. It was so clean that I was even attempted to just lie down and roll around on the ground. The difference between the pictures of America that I had been shown back in China and the reality I experienced from my cab window was so drastic that it left me disoriented. Nowhere did I see the widespread poverty and misery in which Americans supposedly lived. The real America wasn’t at all the dark and unhappy place I had been told it was. I let out a sigh as I realized that everything I had previously been taught was now suspect. I would have to seek out the truth now for myself.
Jason and Ji-hong were no less surprised than I was. We marveled at our surroundings for the entire fifteen-mile drive from the airport to campus. As we unloaded our luggage outside the University of Maryland at College Park, I looked around at the gently rolling grounds and the elegant, red-brick Georgian buildings with their stately, white column-lined entrances. Winter had muted the colors of the lawns and sky, which left the trees barren of any leaves, but I still reveled in the awe-inspiring beauty of our new school. Jason, Ji-hong, and I picked up our bags and made our way toward the chemistry building, occasionally asking for directions in our broken English. Each time we approached someone, the student or faculty member would stop and patiently explain the route, repeating it until we indeed knew where we were going. I was taken aback by the empathy and courtesy Americans expressed toward strangers. Such openness was foreign to me back home, and I was moved by it.
When we finally arrived at the large, boxy, brick complex, staff and faculty were trickling out the doors to head home for the day. We went inside and presented ourselves to the department secretary, who introduced herself as Marsha. She was a lovely woman in her mid-thirties who wore thick makeup—I had never seen ladies with such thick makeup in China before, and whose eyes smiled behind thick, gold-framed glasses.
“Welcome! Glad you made it safely,” Marsha said. “You can go home now and rest for a day, and we’ll see you back here on Friday.”
Her accent sounded funny to me. I hadn’t heard anyone speak English quite like that before. I stared at the abundance of red hair flowing around her face. I had also never seen that hair color previously in my life.
“But where is home?” I asked. “Where will we be staying?”
Her brow furrowed, and she looked at me curiously. “You’re actually on your own for that, but I can recommend a hotel and give you a list of nearby apartments.”
We thanked her and went back outside.
“What should we do now?” Ji-hong asked.
We didn’t have enough money for a hotel. We had just spent more than fifty dollars for the cab ride from the airport. We were accustomed to the communist system in China and assumed that our housing would have already been arranged in advance and assigned to us by the university. We weren’t prepared for this newfound independence and the responsibility that came with it.
I felt a strange, unfamiliar sensation, the first taste of freedom. For my entire life leading up to that moment, I had been told what to do. Now that I had arrived in America—the land of freedom—this new feeling of independence was refreshing, but it also left me a bit unsettled. Where would we stay?
Jason pulled out the phone number of a visiting scholar named Teacher Cai from USTC. We were relieved we were able to connect with Teacher Cai quickly, and he kindly allowed us to stay at his apartment for a few nights while we figured out our next step.
When I spoke to Professor McNesby later, he explained that graduate students were expected to manage their own affairs. “Our society is clean and civilized, as you have seen,” he said, “and we’re also highly individualistic. You have to depend on yourself to make a living. Everyone must pull their own weight here.”
Once we had arranged to stay with Teacher Cai, I turned to Jason and Ji-hong, “You guys hungry?”
“Let’s go find some food,” Jason said.
We looked for a Chinese restaurant near campus, but there wasn’t one within walking distance. We had no car, so we went somewhere close and cheap, a place a few broke students could afford. Our first meal in America was at a McDonald’s right on the edge of campus. I was so hungry that I would have eaten anything. I ordered four Big Macs, but then immediately realized there was no way I was going to be able to eat it all. The Chinese diet is generally free of dairy, and I was about to eat double cheeseburgers slathered in mayo!
I expected the worst … but I loved it, I really did! So much so that I ate at McDonald’s nearly every day, and in just three months, I had gained thirty pounds.
On Friday, Jason, Ji-hong, and I put on our best clothes. We wanted to make a good impression on our new colleagues and professors in the chemistry department. My parents had spent three months of their salaries to buy me an elegant three-piece suit, black with a white shirt and red tie. The three of us walked onto campus dressed head to toe in full formal attire … and immediately felt completely out of place.
All the other students and professors had on very casual clothes, like blue jeans, T-shirts, and polos. Some of them even wore shorts and sandals. People turned to look at us as we strolled by. We may have been nearly penniless, but we were certainly the best dressed. My face was burning with embarrassment. I had only brought two sets of casual shirts and pants. We had to go shopping as soon as possible.
Once we arrived at the chemistry department, I asked Marsha, “Can you give us some money? We need to buy some food and clothing.” Seeing us standing there in fancy three-piece suits, I wondered if she really believed me.
“Your first paycheck will be in two weeks,” she said.
“So, no money right now?” I asked.
She gave me a funny look.
I realized once again that we were on our own here in America. I had longed for independence, but now that I actually had it, I felt a bit lost. For years in college in China, I had relied on a national system of support. Being free and completely on my own in America would take a lot of getting used to.
During our graduate studies, Jason, Ji-hong, and I worked as teaching assistants to support ourselves. We hadn’t yet been assigned cubicles, so we camped out that first day in the department chairman’s conference room. My eyes felt heavy from lingering jet lag, so I leaned on the conference room table and propped my head up with my hand to keep from nodding off. But when Marsha entered the room and announced that we had to take a number of tests, I bolted upright. This was the first time since meeting her that she was not either sitting or standing behind her desk. She wore shoes with the highest heels I had ever seen in my life.
“These are subject matter tests,” she explained, “that will determine what level of graduate classes you’ll take.”
I watched her walk around the conference table, marveling that she could move with such grace and effortless balance on heels that were so high, yet had such tiny points touching the ground.
We were sequestered in that conference room for the next six hours. Our studies at USTC in China had given us a very strong foundation in science, and my written English was now good enough to understand and respond to the questions without too much trouble. The tests covered several subjects, including analytical chemistry, physical chemistry, organic chemistry, and inorganic chemistry.
Marsha came in periodically to check on us. At around five o’clock, she returned one last time to collect our exams. “You guys ready for some pizza?”
We followed her to a party down the hall. I had no idea what pizza was, but I was starving and therefore open to anything. Once again, I was faced with another odd new food. I looked at the spread of food on the table and wondered who on earth would just throw meat and vegetables on a slab of dough like this and then just bake it? It seemed so uncultured and unsophisticated. The rich assortment of toppings could be made into a variety of so many nice dishes by a Chinese chef. But yet again, I ended up loving it anyway. At the pizza party, I learned that Marsha was Irish. Another immigrant! No wonder her English sounded so funny. As I introduced myself to others at the party, I soon discovered that people had trouble pronouncing the “xu” in my name so I decided at that point to just drop it to make things easier for everyone, so my new American name became just “Ming.”
A few days later, our test scores were posted on a bulletin board in the hallway. My eyes widened when I saw the results. Analytical chemistry: 93, physical chemistry: 91, organic chemistry: 100, and inorganic chemistry: 72. These subject matter tests weren’t supposed to be easy, and a typical score was fifty out of one hundred. All three of us had received perfect scores on the organic chemistry test. We later learned that ours were the highest scores of any graduate student in the department in the past twenty years.
The news of our high scores quickly spread well beyond the chemistry department … and the University of Maryland. Back in China, newspapers across the country boasted bold headlines that read, “Three Chinese Students Stun American University.” I imagined my family back home reading the newspapers, and I was delighted knowing I had honored the Wang family name across the globe. I hoped all the teachers who had worked so hard to help me pass the nearly impossible college entrance exam at the end of the Cultural Revolution years ago would see the headlines too. They would take such immense pride in the outcome of their extraordinary efforts. And such high scores weren’t just about me; they proved to the world that China was emerging from the shroud of the Cultural Revolution, placing its students among the world’s best. I felt the pride and gratitude of an entire nation surging through my body.
“Let’s go celebrate!” I proposed to Jason and Ji-hong.
“Where?” they asked.
“Where else? McDonald’s!”
* * *
During our first weekend in College Park, we set out to find somewhere to stay for the next few months. On the list of apartments Marsha had given us, we saw the odd name “Knox Boxes.” I envisioned students living in actual boxes, and wondered how big these boxes were. In reality, the campus neighborhood was filled with small brick duplexes on a street called Knox Road. We ended up renting a windowless one-room basement apartment in a nearby house for about a hundred dollars a month, which we split among the three of us.
It turned out to be the perfect size for us. The university dorms back in China packed in thirteen students per unit, so a room with only two other people felt roomy and spacious to us. We shared the basement’s bathroom with a couple who lived in an adjacent room, and when we wanted to cook, we had to ask the upstairs renters for permission to use their kitchen. But overall, we felt right at home.
“What should we do for furniture?” one of the guys asked.
As we strolled along Knox Road, we came across a dumpster brimming with things other students had discarded. Several twin-size mattresses were piled up against the metal bin. We took three of the better ones back to our room. After finding a few chairs and a roll of used carpet, we were all set.
Jason, Ji-hong, and I bonded in our tight quarters and went everywhere together. One of the visiting Chinese scholars, Ms. Jing-yi Hong, who was an expert in world literature, called us the “Three Musketeers.”
“Like in the Alexandre Dumas novel!” I responded, recalling the literature I read back at USTC.
The name was fitting. The three of us became very close during those first two years together in a foreign land. Jason was three years older than I was, and he was the wisest and most diplomatic of our trio. If we had a conflict, Jason was the one to resolve it calmly and logically. He had been deported for several years to a poor region of western China during the Cultural Revolution, and the experience had given him his hard-earned maturity. Ji-hong was my age, and absolutely brilliant. He was the academic star of our trio. My unique quality was that I was well-rounded. I had the most diverse interests and often came up with fun things for us to do.
For the two weeks prior to our first payday, we pinched pennies in every way possible. I wore the same two or three sets of clothes over and over. We had no washer or dryer, so I washed my shirts and pants by hand in the bathroom sink. I tried to set up a laundry line outside our door—a contraption like the one my father had constructed in our window back in Hangzhou—but the homeowner here in America laughed and said, “No way.”
After our first two weeks of work, I received my first paycheck of $198, which equaled about 1,600 yuan in China. I was so happy; I was speechless. In just two weeks I had earned as much as my parents made in more than a year. But while it amounted to a lot of money back in China, it wasn’t enough to cover my living expenses in America, which were much higher than in China. So I had to take on some odd jobs like tutoring undergraduates, cleaning professors’ houses, and working night shifts at Burger King and weekend shifts at the local Best Western for $3.35 an hour. Besides paying my bills, I had to save up enough money for the eight high-priced items that the Chinese government allowed overseas graduate students to purchase and bring home without paying customs fees. For the next three years, I worked hard to be able to buy these items for my family.
As soon as we cashed our first paychecks, Jason, Ji-hong, and I headed out to shop right away. I had budgeted fifty dollars for clothes, but when we arrived at the Salvation Army store, I realized I wouldn’t need nearly that much. I spent only fifteen dollars and went home with two big trash bags full of all kinds of used clothes.
But this time, we turned even more heads than we did the day we showed up in three-piece suits. Evidently, all the clothes we had purchased at the thrift store were styles from the sixties and seventies—bell-bottom pants, brightly colored shirts, psychedelic patterns. So we had just morphed from yuppies into hippies. Our colleagues in the chemistry department were highly amused. They thought our formal attire had been strange, but now we had gone completely retro.
As a teaching assistant, part of my job was to lead evening recitation classes twice a week for undergraduate students. During these sessions, I would review material presented by the professor to ensure that the students had grasped the concepts, and help them work through difficult homework assignments. These recitation classes weren’t mandatory for students to attend, but since they were quite helpful, there was usually a great turnout. Or so I had been told.
Before my first recitation class, I studied extremely hard, as I wanted to do a good job. Since my English was very limited, I decided to actually write down everything I planned to say for the entire two-hour session, and I memorized the whole thing the night before the class.
I arrived the next day well-prepared and excited to teach my first recitation class in America. There were one hundred and twenty students enrolled in the course, so I expected that many of them would come to my class. But when I walked through the doors, my heart fell to the floor.
As the doors slammed shut behind me, I stared up at the auditorium seats in disbelief. Only two people had shown up … two out of one hundred and twenty students!
It turned out that Jason, Ji-hong, and I were among the earliest exchange students from mainland China, so we were curiosities on campus. We wore silly clothes and spoke elementary English with heavy accents. In those first few weeks at school, my friends and I were regarded more as the Three Stooges than the Three Musketeers. That reputation had apparently spread to my undergraduate recitation class. The students heard that their new teaching assistant was foreign and difficult to understand, so nobody bothered to show up for my session.
I was humbled by all the no-shows. I was disappointed because I had done so much work to prepare, but I suppressed my chagrin and began to teach. The two students who did show up were happy to get the personalized tutoring.
The embarrassment inspired my desire to do a better job as a teaching assistant and improve my English as quickly as possible. To me a semester-long English class at the university would take too long, and in order to live and communicate in this country, I needed to learn the language more quickly than that. So I resorted to the tactic Le-ping and I had used back at USTC in China. I discovered a rundown movie theater called the Biography Theatre near Wisconsin Avenue in D.C.’s Georgetown district, at which I could watch two feature films a night for just a dollar. I went there at least once a week, mostly by myself, though occasionally I would drag one of the other Musketeers with me. I saw many classic American films there, like Gone With the Wind, The Godfather, Some Like It Hot, Doctor Zhivago, On the Waterfront, and Breakfast at Tiffany’s.
The movies did help me improve not only my English, but also my understanding of American culture. My favorite movie was It’s a Wonderful Life. I watched the main character, George Bailey, nearly give up on his life when he encountered seemingly insurmountable hardship. His guardian angel showed him that his life, no matter how difficult, had in fact made a positive impact on so many people. This story represented what impressed me most about American culture. Americans, as a whole, displayed an unbridled positivity toward life. I wanted to find the same freedom and confidence, and I wanted to make my life matter.
I remembered my father’s words during the Cultural Revolution when I had lost all hope for my future. “Ming, you must always have hope,” he said. Facing all the years of deprivation and repression back in China gave me a fighting spirit and a singular focus on whatever I set out to do. I was acutely aware of how precious this opportunity to live and study in America was, and I knew how hard I would have to work to succeed. I couldn’t let the no-shows get me down, but the students weren’t the only ones who saw me differently, as I would soon find out. Being accepted and respected in this new country was something I could never take for granted. I would be forced to prove myself again and again.