A Sentimental Journey Through China

I left my 90% illiterate and 99% malnourished home 23 years ago. The last time I heard from my mother was in 1966. It was but one sentence, "Do not try to contact us."

From then on, all I heard from Western media was one horrible story after another, one more horrible than the other.

In 1972, the American president Richard Nixon made a courageous move to visit China. He returned with the Shanghai Communiqué. No one believed it would be carried out. For me, I could not keep silent any more. I called the telephone operator in Shanghai and got hold of my brother-in-law, a research scientist from University of Chicago in the Chinese Academy of Science. The response I got was again just one sentence, "We welcome you to come back to take a look at the new China."

Nixon was in China in February 1972. My wife Vera, our 4-year-old son Teh-han and I entered China from Hong Kong in August 1972. We were prepared for the worst. We deeded our house to my close friend T.P. Lin and car to my former shipmate, Reno Chen. We carried no luggage, just backpacks. We went with three different passports, Canadian for Vera, American for Teh-han and Taiwanese for myself. We not only saw all my family members and friends but also their children.

We could not believe what we saw. It was not the China I had known, not America, nor the horrors described by America media.