Donald Trump Made Me a Proud Chinese
After an eleven year gap, I finally went back to China in June for a visit. Last time I was in China was for three days in 2008. Then I had a child, then another. The trepidation of flying for fifteen hours with two young children kept me away from China all these years. This time we spent ten days in Shanghai and Hangzhou, me, my Mom and my two children ages nine and seven.
The changes I saw were astonishing. Last time they had three subway lines in Shanghai, or maybe it was five. This time they have seventeen. I was treated to elaborate dinners and lunches by my family and junior high friends, and ate the most delicious food, authentic Shanghai cuisine. I tasted baby clams sautéed in soy and sugar with scallions and ginger, pork shoulder, salted, braised then deep fried with a crispy shell, sprinkled with salted egg yolk top, freshwater eel in a fermented rice wine sauce and seasoned vegetables that melts in your mouth, yes, I am not mistaken, vegetables that melt. General Tso’s chicken doesn’t actually exist in China but Madame Soong’s fish chowder does. We had it at the original location in Hangzhou, the same restaurant Michelle Obama dined at during G20 in 2016. I saw family, cousins, some of whom I have not met since their births. My one cousin was entering elementary school last time I went to his house and happened to be at school that day. Now he’s a thirty year old grown man with a wife and a child, who is coincidentally entering elementary school this year. The kids bonded over ipad games and cartoons even though my kids’ Chinese is very rudimentary. I take full responsibility for that. Part of my goal for this trip is to spur their interest in their heritage and learning better Chinese. Maybe it’s my middle age, but I am feeling more and more of my affinity to China even though I haven’t lived there for thirty one years.
I blame Donald Trump. Ever since his election win, and in the subsequent months, I felt this sudden pride, of being Chinese. I came here legally. The day I landed, I had a green card. But I have enormous sympathy for and affinity towards all refugees. No one wants to leave their home country. Wars often break out, families are torn apart, extreme violence ongoing, and after a treacherous journey, you land in a country full of strangers as a refugee. In our case, My Mom endured thirty five years of hardship and persecution when she finally had a chance to leave her country under communism. She had a nice, albeit somewhat neglected childhood of wealth and privilege living in glitzy but often war torn Shanghai before communism finally took control of the country in 1949 when she was nine years old.
I have been in the US for thirty-one years. When I first came at fifteen, I felt so lonely. Not only did I not speak English well, I didn’t even speak Chinese as far as local San Franciscans were concerned. I spoke Mandarin and the Shanghai dialect. Most Chinese Californians in the late 1980s spoke Cantonese. The only people I knew and could relate to were my family and a handful of my Mom’s friends. After all these years, I grew up and assimilated well into an American life. I went to college in California, then graduate school in New York. I worked in finance. I settled down in a town across the Hudson River from Manhattan. Most of my friends, according to Facebook, are white, blacks, hispanics or other Asians. My children go to a diverse urban school with every race and international birthplace you can imagine. I never spoke loudly about my Asianness. I hid the fact that I loved chicken feet. I think I was so whitewashed myself, that I thought it was embarrassing to like chicken feet. I only let it out when I am with family. When I go to dim sum with my American friends, we stayed with har gao and fried rice. To complicate my feelings of heritage, My Mom had a half English Dad and she was persecuted for that during the Cultural Revolution. So I felt it was my white side that was the superior side and my Chinese side communist and evil. I downplayed my Chineseness.
This time, China feels different. I was just so happy to see my friends in Shanghai do well. They are all grown adults now. Some are entrepreneurs who are still working hard. Some owned their businesses that made a fortune but have since retired. Some are in entertainment and produce some of the largest TV programs in China. Some are in medicine or law. Many work in finance, run a branch for a bank or work in IT. Some are stay home Moms which is a new profession since my childhood days under the old communists regime. When we got together, it was as if time had never passed. We joked, laughed and bonded across time and space continuum. We were somehow magically transported back to that crowded classroom of forty-two kids at Yu Cai Jr High where I was chatting loudly with my friends in the back, being a good student at a very good school, but very bad at the same time. We thought we were so dope back then! Such rebels. We were just being typical silly teenagers. Most importantly, we are all grown, nice, productive adults now and they care about me as a friend. I am deeply touched by the generosity and kindness they offered me, going out of their way, scheduling way in advance to take me out for a nice authentic meal. I was also amazed by the technological developments that are taking place in China. After our trip to Hangzhou, my daughter got bitten quite a bit by mosquitos. I asked on our WeChat group where I may find a pharmacy to buy some bug bite medicine. Not even an hour later, medicine was delivered to my hotel room by one of the group members who ordered it for me on an app. I couldn’t believe the efficiency. It makes Amazon look so 2002.
When I left China in the late 1980s, we came for a good life in the United States. But going back, I see my friends live a good life. I am truly, genuinely, immensely happy for them. I am sure not all of them do, but many live comfortably with more than one residences, a child, maybe two, help, a pet, and often a car. It made me think, is Communism really that bad? To explain the scale of the change, imagine in Shanghai they built a New York City’s worth of skyscrapers, probably multiple times that, in land size of Los Angeles, in those thirty one years. While the US experienced huge manufacturing job loss in those years, China created a whole new manufacturing industry and a new middle class arose. The government invested in industries and infrastructure. The highways in Shanghai are not only numerous and efficient but also flanked by rose flower boxes on both sides! Subways, buses, taxis, cars, mopeds and the good old bicycles are efficient at getting twenty five million people around. We were stuck in traffic maybe once or twice, and for no more than ten minutes each time. They follow their traffic laws to the t. When you are not allowed to let passengers off in yellow zones, no one does. We took the high speed train from Shanghai to Hangzhou. It took less than an hour to travel one hundred miles. It would be very difficult to put in a new high speed train system in the US today.
We took a night cruise on the famous Shanghai bund, touring in the Huangpu river at night, looking at building on both sides, adorned by millions of lights, creating changing scenes or words. “I heart Shanghai”. I have been on boat cruises in a lot of major cities, New York, London, Paris. This one is by far the most beautiful. Most amazing is the contrast between the old Shanghai on the west or Puxi and new Shanghai on the east or Pudong. You can’t help but marvel at what modern China is capable of building and transforming such a big city into a major development and economic hub for China, its crown jewel.
A few days later, we went on a different kind of cruise, in Xixi national wetlands preserve in Hangzhou. Xixi or West Stream is a cobweb of canals and rivers that used to be a fishing village and farm land. The government decided to relocate all the farmers and made it into a national park and preserve, dotted with hotels on the outskirts. Hangzhou also happens to be headquarter of Alibaba, a company founded by the most famed entrepreneur in China, Jack Ma. Rumor has it that the millionaires Alibaba created since the IPO invested in land and buildings and created Xixi along with the government. Our hotel which was built in traditional Jiang Nan garden style was built ten years ago. The boat is made completely out of grass and bamboo and comes with a skipper and an afternoon tea set complete the famous local Longjing (Dragon Well) tea. It was drizzling just a little, perfect for the mood it’s like we were transported back three thousand years into an old painting or a Tang dynasty poem. It was only us and one more boat on the canals that afternoon. For a populous country, the canals are unusually quiet. Only the sounds of birds, cicadas and other critters are heard. Occasionally we see a fish poking its head out of the water or an animal scurrying away. Every corner you turn, there is another scene worthy of a landscape painting. We cruised like that, slowly and serenely for two hours. It is two hours I will never forget. Even though I had never been to Hangzhou, it felt as if I was home. My Dad’s side of the family is from Zhejian Province where Hangzhou is. The gentle and lush landscape, the hills covered in tea plants, the canals, (I always loved being on a lake or living near water) remind me of home in a visceral way. Jiang Nan or south of the Yangtze River is where my history is and where my ancestors are from. At that moment, I could feel it bubbling up in my DNA, the genes passed down from thousands of years in the area, I could feel my ancestors, my people reaching out to me.
I did the trip partly to make my Mom happy. She’s been dreaming of taking my kids to China and I have been dreading the fifteen hour flight. They did very well by the way. China in my mind is dirty, crowded, chaotic and expensive based on my last few trips back. This time, it’s distinctly different. I couldn’t be more surprised of the good life they are living. You can feel it in the people. The biggest concern they all have is trash. Shanghai government is mandating separating trash into buckets based on wet or dry, recyclable or non-recyclable and it’s on everyone’s mind and mouth. If that’s your biggest problem, then you don’t have a lot of problems. I don’t see stress from low income, or soaring home price; there is worry about it falling. Jobs are largely secure and several of my friends have retired in their forties. They are worried about the trade war and EVERYONE asked me if Trump is going to get re-elected. But for the most part, my friends in Shanghai live a good life. They are comfortable, secure and happy.
I can’t help but think “is communism really that bad?” How do you transform a vast country with such enormous infrastructure and economic development in thirty years? How do you create a huge middle class with buying power living a good life? I used to be staunchly against trade war, now I can see the unfairness to American people when the entire Chinese government is behind the manufacturing sector development in China. But being confrontational and punitive in approach is not a good way to solve the trade imbalance or build relationships with China. The days of the USA being the dominating country in the world will not last much longer, if not over already. China also has a very good and competitive public secondary education system that’s creating a whole new class of skilled workers. Should we keep fighting them, or should we focus on our own infrastructure and education to build up our middle class? Provide Americans with universal health care and a public space free of mass shootings. Is that too much to ask? If communism is that bad, how do you reconcile that people’s lives have gotten so much better? What is happening to our middle class in the US and what is our government doing about it? Communism is far from ideal, don’t get me wrong. The brand of communism that exists in China today has drifted very far from that preached by Mao. The purpose of this writing is not to condone communism in any way but to illustrate the things that I saw and to question my long held assumption and that of many of my American friends which is “communism is evil”. If democracy is that great for America, then how do we end up with Donald Trump and yet another shooting? This time in my second home state of California. How is our middle class suffering with stagnant wages and not able to afford even one house? My friends in China don’t want to move to the US. It may be the case thirty years ago, but they don’t want to immigrate to the US. Their children may want to, just as my kids may want to go to Europe or Asia for a visit, it’s certainly not a necessity to make a living.
Lastly, Chinese people are not defined by communism. They love to eat, They are kind and tolerant (at least in my hometown of Shanghai, which during WWII saved 25,000 Jewish refugees), they love their families and they love to see friends and have a good time. We may do all these things a bit differently, but we are all humans whether you are an American, a Chinese or whatever else you happen to be. Today I can say with one hundred percent certainty and conviction — I can’t be more proud of my Chinese heritage and my people!
