2
AMERICAN ODYSSEY

In January 1991, when I first set foot on American soil, I thought I'd arrived on another planet. That's because, as I deplaned at Washington, DC's Dulles International Airport and shuffled through the terminal, I spotted signs directing travelers to two different queues: "United States Citizens" and "Aliens." Even in my sleep-deprived state, I knew what the word "alien" meant. An alien is a creature from another planet-a "little green man," or one of the otherworldly critters I'd seen in Star Wars and other science fiction dramas I'd enjoyed while immersed in Western popular culture at China's version of Hogwarts. Now, as a young woman embarking on a new life in a new land, there were extraterrestrial beings waiting to receive me. Wow, I remember thinking to myself, you really can find absolutely anything in America.

As crowds of people from all over the globe swirled around me in the terminal, I considered the signs again. I wasn't a US citizen, so by process of elimination, I steered myself in the other direction. I picked up my suitcase, inhaled deeply, and prepared myself emotionally to meet the aliens. As I did so, I reflected on how harrowing the journey to America had been.

America Bound

When I resigned my post in Dalian in October 1989, the Chinese economy was in recession. Upon returning to Beijing, I began scouring job listings so I could make a living. In my spare time, I negotiated the intimidating Chinese bureaucracy, trying to secure a passport-an especially daunting task following the Tiananmen incident. Most Westerners could apply for a passport at a local post office, but Chinese citizens could only travel abroad under two special circumstances: work and family. If Chinese nationals had a business engagement or foreign meeting to attend, officials often issued them a passport that their bosses or managers kept to ensure that the holder returned to China. Barring business abroad, Chinese applicants had to demonstrate that a close family member lived overseas, and that they had a legitimate reason for visiting that relative.

I planned to take advantage of a major loophole in the system. If the government granted you a passport to visit a family member, you could visit any Western country for which you were granted a visa. One of my father's relatives lived in Canada, and so I applied to travel overseas to officially visit his family, but really to use the passport to pursue graduate studies in America. To secure this passport to Canada, I needed approval from no fewer than 10 official organizations, verifying my relationship with Dad's relative, and my former employer who arranged my work in Dalian, ensuring that I hadn't made any major mistakes during my tenure there.

Dealing with bureaucracy is frustrating at best, and sometimes dehumanizing. Many officials who lacked power in their lives asserted it here, sometimes denying people like me a fair shot for no reason. I'd stand in line for hours just to have an official reject my passport application because a single page supposedly lacked a comma, or some other trivial mistake. When I inquired about the precise sin I'd committed, they'd tell me to review the entire dossier. This was the analogue era, when no electronic documents existed, and no one corresponded over email. Sometimes, after a rejection like that, I'd have to return to several government organizations and bureaus to secure fresh, grammatically correct copies of my forms. Dejected after months of such maddening disapproval, I was ready to give up entirely, when a family friend gave me some curious advice: "Treat yourself like a cabbage."

You must understand Beijing to appreciate her wisdom. As cold descends on the city each winter, white cabbage is one of the only vegetables still in abundance. Because cabbages are easy to store and remain robust and vitamin-rich through the cold, urban residents purchase them in bulk, loading them onto their bicycles and stockpiling them in sheds outside their homes so they're shielded from direct sunlight and humidity. On winter days, you can easily take a cabbage inside the home, dust it off, peel away any wilted outer layers, and decide on one of myriad ways to prepare it. You might pair the vegetable with glass noodles in giant hot pots, use cabbage to bulk up a tofu stew, ferment it to make Korean-style kimchi, or-my personal favorite-mix it with pork as filling for dumplings. What my friend was trying to say was that for bureaucrats, I was just like this winter staple: extremely abundant, nonexotic, and at times, grudgingly endured. I realized that each time I'd been singled out and rejected, I'd reacted as if the slight were personal.

I took my friend's advice and thought about myself as a cabbage, depersonalizing the bureaucratic red tape. This made me a lot happier. Each time I thought of cabbages, I remembered how great they tasted in my mom's pork dumplings. And I thought about Chinese government clerks and began to empathize with them. After all, I was applying to embark on a life of possibility and plenty in America, while they would never be able to travel for work or pleasure.

The bicycle commute to these offices during Beijing's prolonged winter season also posed difficulties. I had to ensure my wheels remained in the grooves of snow left behind from the other bikers. I'd learned the hard way that if I veered away from those pre-worn tracks, my bike might collide with a snowbank, sending me and my belongings flying. I'd fallen from my bike many times this way, and the impact from the crash or from other bikes striking me from behind had left me bloody and my paperwork soaked in watery soot. For another six or seven months I endured this daily routine, until one day I'd managed to submit satisfactory paperwork.

That day, as I've recounted, I managed to fill my trusty plastic garbage bag full of years of savings. And yet the teller who had counted the money and stamped my application had granted me only a temporary victory. She'd eliminated the first obstacle, ensuring me a passport, but now I needed to apply for a visa to the United States. This process proved even more daunting than the passport. As I discovered, many elderly people spent their days outside Beijing's US Embassy, playing chess and watching people emerge from the building crying because their applications had been rejected. The elderly somehow delighted in this theater of misery. My spirits sagged at discovering this, and our driver for the World Bank and UNDP office, who liked to gossip about what he saw when delivering guests and documents at the American Embassy, didn't help. His car had diplomatic tags and he had high-security clearance, allowing him access to international news and the latest goings-on. He always smiled cheerfully at me and complimented my English-though he didn't speak a word of it himself-all the while sharing his observations. "I don't see many people coming back with a visa," he told me. "Yesterday 200 people entered, and maybe 40 got it. The day before, 250 entered, and maybe only 30."

By the time of my interview at the US Embassy, a full year had elapsed since I'd departed Dalian. It was December 1990 and, once again, extreme cold had descended on Beijing. I arrived early in the morning to beat the rush, armed with my hard-earned passport, financial statements detailing my family income, and a letter from the University of Maryland, College Park, granting me admission to a master's program in journalism for the 1991 spring semester.

The embassy official asked what I planned to study in America. "Mass communication," I replied.

"Why would you want to study that?" he asked. He was legitimately perplexed. Most Chinese students were STEM-focused, and applied to study math, chemistry, and physics in US universities. No one, especially in China, went to study a discipline called "journalism." I introduced the topic with genuine enthusiasm, explaining how my work at the World Bank had interested me in the topic, and that I was intrigued by how people across the world communicated with one another.

The diplomatic official complimented my English, and I told him that I'd had the good fortune of pursuing a university program focused on foreign studies in Beijing. The entire interview lasted no more than five minutes, and the only document in my dossier he was interested in seeing was my letter of admission from the University of Maryland. "Congratulations," he said. "You will now continue your studies in America." Many whose visa applications were declined told me how "exceptionally lucky" I had been to score an official as lenient and kind-hearted as he was.

Stranger in a Strange Land

John Kalbermatten, the World Bank veteran who'd helped me through my airplane-induced motion sickness years before, heard I'd secured my passport, US visa, and admission to graduate school. And when he learned I was moving to America without my family, he generously offered to sponsor the trip and host me. John bought me a one-way airline ticket, which probably cost $1,000 at the time, and he also insisted I stay with him and his wife in Washington, DC, so I could take my time to find suitable accommodations of my own.

After...