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Originally Posted by Bigtoe32067
Very interesting story. Thanks for sharing it. 50 years in a re education camp sounds brutal
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A little more trivia: My father's side of the family had a very different path. My paternal grandfather was a peasant, went to school, became an electrical engineer, was sent to the US to study American power systems, returned to China and managed powerplants. My dad remembers hiding in ditches watching Japanese planes attacking my granddad's powerplant and fighting with American planes (must have been the Flying Tigers!). As the Japanese advanced in China, millions of Chinese fled the invasion. My grandmother shepherded their four little children as they escaped from city to city, following my grandfather who was sent by the Kuomingtang army to run powerplants in the cities that had not yet fallen. She came from a wealthy rural family, as a little girl her feet had been bound and her family owned their whole village. Now she was walking, carrying her youngest children, begging rides on trucks and sleeping in fields. Once they were strafed by aircraft in the field where they had spent the night. During the war she became very ill with tuberculosis and then breast cancer, but survived and kept her children safe and healthy. My grandfather had brought a bottle of medicine back from his trip to US (penicillin?) and it saved them many times. After the Japanese war, the civil war broke out. My family fled south and managed to get on a boat to Taiwan. My grandfather had been so impressed with America during his trip in the 1930s, he decided to bring his family here. In the 1940s and 1950s, the Chinese Exclusion Act limited the number of Chinese allowed to immigrate to the US, some years to only 100 or so. Through a friend in the US, my grandfather got one of those precious visas and came to NYC with his eldest son in 1948 or so. The other kids and my grandmother followed in 1949. His Chinese degree and experience weren't recognized here, so he got a job as a junior draftsman, went to college at night to earn an American degree, and became a senior engineer again. He moved from their Manhattan apartment to a big new ranch house with a riding mower in New Jersey, became a Chevy man (funny because my dad became a Ford man), a 76ers fan, and I'm grateful every day that he took the risks and initiative that he did.