The Sweetness of Freedom: Stories of Immigrants

I Never Believed I Would Stay in America

Minchuan Yang and His Daughter, Katie, from China I Never Believed I Would Stay in America T he first wave of Chinese immigration to the United States began in the early nineteenth century, when large numbers of Chinese came to work as laborers, particularly on railroads and in mining. While employers enjoyed the benefits of cheap labor, discrimination was rampant. Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882 based on public outcry. Other laws followed that denied citizenship and property ownership and prevented Asians from marrying Caucasians. The Chinese were effectively barred from immigration for over sixty years, until 1943. AfterWorldWarII,prejudiceagainstAsiansrelaxedsomewhat. In 1965, Congress passed the Immigration Act, which removed quotas based on national origin. The Chinese now make up the largest group of Asian immigrants in the United States. In 1966, Mao Zedong launched the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolutionandhispoliciesofrelocation,re-education,purging,and genocide. The Cultural Revolution caused widespread panic and upheaval in Chinese society. Unknown numbers of intellectuals, educators, artists, writers, and religious leaders were persecuted, imprisoned,oreliminated.WhileMaodeclaredtheCulturalRevolutiontobeoverin1969 ,theafter-effectslasteduntilhisdeathin1976. 324 | MINCHUAN AND KATIE YANG Under the guise of “re-education,” the Chinese Communist government sent Minchuan Yang along with his classmates to workonafarminaremotemountainvillageincentralChina.Yang livedinacavetherefortwoyears.Heandhisfriendsnearlystarved. In 1976, Mao Zedong died, and the repressive policies of the Cultural Revolution eased. Minchuan was allowed to study at Sichuan University. While at Sichuan he reunited with Jiajia Zheng, his former girlfriend from middle school in Beijing, and they were married. Yang came alone to Michigan in 1983 to study anthropology at MichiganStateUniversity,whereheeventuallyearnedhisPh.D.At first, the Chinese government would not let him bring his wife to America. She was pregnant with their daughter, Katie, at the time. Eventually, his wife could come to the United States. Minchuan is currently a database administrator in the health care industry. Katie Yang was born in Sichuan China in 1983. She lived with Katie celebrates her birthday with her maternal grandparents in China. She lived with them while her parents studied in Michigan. COURTESY OF THE YANG FAMILY FROM CHINA | 325 her grandparents for most of the first nine years of her life. She joined her parents in Michigan in 1992. Katie is currently a doctor in Kalamazoo. Martha Aladjem (Climo) Bloomfield interviewed Minchuan Yang and his daughter, Katie, at their home in Okemos, Michigan, on May 20 and 28, 1999. Minchuan Yang’s Story I grew up in Beijing, the capital city. When I was young I never thought about leaving China. I never thought about leaving my family to live in some other place. After I graduated from middle school the government sent us to the countryside, far away from my home in Beijing. We were sent to a remote mountain area in central China in the Shaanxi Province. China had a lot of turmoil in the 1960s and 1970s. The government criticized the Western cultural influence, and they believed that middle school and high school students needed to be reeducated by the working people. The working people had their practical knowledge and revolutionary spirit, so we were sent to a remote village in the mountainous area of Shaanxi Province. I was barely sixteen years old then. We were supposed to live like the peasants. We were told that we had to be reunited with the working class and learn from the working class. That was a big change for me in my life. I had mixed feelings. Certainly I had fears because I didn’t know what the country life would be like. I didn’t know the place because it was so remote and so poor. It was quite different from the urban life. At that time we were educated in the ideology of the government. We were called the “educated youth” when we went to the villages. We thought we could work for the peasants and we had some pride and some responsibility to go to the villages and help them. Actually, we were kind of excited in a way. We thought we could do a lot of things for these people, but then we found out 326 | MINCHUAN AND KATIE YANG that we had a lot of difficulties. The peasants were very poor and it was very hard work for us. It was a very poor place. The peasants didn’t have materials to build houses, so they lived in caves. A lot of them didn’t have enough blanket or clothes. We lived in the caves with them. Theytriedtohelpusat...