A BIOGRAPHY
by KEVIN WANG
With my hands full of boxes and back carrying bags of clothes and gifts that were meant for our relatives, I, a twelve-year-old boy, landed my first step on this land of unfamiliarity on a sunny day, July of 2013 . I couldn’t recall the emotions I was feeling, but I can remember my bravery for the unknown surroundings to come and a semi-unamused expression saying, “where are the tall buildings?”
I could lie and brag that my journey in America was lonely and cruel, drowning and suffocating until I struggled long enough and adapted to the culture. But in all honesty, my experiences of adjusting to the new culture were hardly as distressing as other immigrants have documented; that is mainly because my parents did their homework and started our journey in a concentrated Chinese community. There were billboards and storefronts filled with Mandarin and Cantonese. It was even difficult to spot any non-Asian passengers on our way to our destinations. It was almost as indifferent living in America than to live in China. On top of it, I was a top student in my English class back in China. With all the tuition my parents spent on foreign tutors and classes every summer, I simply cannot pretend that I didn’t know any English. Therefore, within the first week of middle school, I could already pick up 80% of the information from the lectures.
What made my experience so unique was when my first middle school established a program called ELD (English Learning Department). It was a program specifically made for the thirty-plus foreign students in the school; and may I add that most of the students were, surprisingly, Chinese immigrants just like me. The school organized our schedules to be similar so that we could spend time with each other to adapt more to Western culture. Now that I think back, it was almost the opposite of what the school wanted. Their intention was to make it easy for the foreign students to accept Western culture, but instead we formed our own little circle and unbreakable barriers against the native English speakers. We felt no need to step out of our comfort zone and did not feel the urge to adapt to Western culture. However, it wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. The ELD program made our experiences unique and pleasant. We had our own secret language, things we all love, rules and communication. Even now when I reach out to my old friends, we can still recall the good times we had in ELD.
To me, the ELD program felt exactly like a representation of the city I used to live in. The Asian immigrants have gathered and forged their own culture and histories throughout years on this land of immigrants. It was golden. These immigrants’ cultures don’t belong to the Western culture nor the Asian culture. They own the good and the bad, their past and their struggles. And these tales are written on every Chinese billboard and storefront around my city, and in their wrinkles, including my parents’.
The reason why I moved to America with my parents was because of the suppressed environment we used to live in. We came to the U.S. for a better life. When I was young, I remember asking my mom about my great-grandfather and grandfather. She would respond with, “They’ve been through rough days,” and my mom was right, it was indeed rough. In the era of the Cultural Revolution, my great-grandfathers and great-grandmothers from both sides were innocent and highly educated people. They were the targets, the victims. They spent half of their lives living in fear and poverty. The government took away their property, burned their books and reports. They barely survived off selling the accessories they hid. My mom told me those accessories, including the wedding jewelry, were filled with memories and meaning. It was a tough decision but they had to give them up for survival. The Revolution was also the reason why my grandparents and aunts never received a proper education, but that is another story. I always believed that these stories and traumas truly shaped our family’s core beliefs, which is why we left China.
When I was writing this, I was struggling to make connections to Christianity because almost the whole perspective of the story never involved God.
Upon reflection though, it was all done by God's grace. Without this long journey from suffering and hatred, to flying across the sea, we would never be Christians or even know Christianity ever existed. I truly believe that God was behind every step of our family’s migration. God has made each and every one of us special in our own way by shaping our history, our past, and our present through joy and pain. I used to believe that pain and hatred were done by Satan or God’s insensitivity, but it is not true. These things are the gifts to define who we really are. Without the aches and scars, we would have never grown.