1st Gen Chinese Immigrants in America 2020 (and those other immigrants in limbo) — Where are we?

Where do we stand in 2020? How do we choose where we should be? Does it have to be one or the other? What else can we do?

2020 is like a nightmare for many Americans, but especially for Chinese Americans — Sometimes, we are confused about where we are exactly, as some of the things happening in this place we chose to settle down remind us of the things we were leaving behind or ran away from.

We were doing pretty well in school and at work if not the best in class. There was something that did not feel precisely right or “sustainable” in our lives on the other side of the Pacific; we wanted to be freer souls, and we wanted better experiences for our kids. Then we worked our butts off all along the way, and decades later, we considered that “we’d made it” when we settled down here.

But we woke up to the bizarre reality of 2020 in one late summer morning: the smoke and air pollution reminded us of the smell of our childhood summers in old grandmothers’ rural villages, the heatwave and power outages took us back to our teenage years when China’s breakneck growth outpaced its infrastructure; the Black Lives Matter movement and the debates about “cancel culture” make us unsure how and when to voice our own experiences with race because we fear that we might be labeled racist by our friends and our kids who grew up in liberal California.

Gone With the Wind, a childhood favorite, was briefly taken down along with the more permanent takedowns of statues; for those of us who grew up listening to our parents’ account of the upheavals of the 1960’s in China (both of my parents happened to be in the center of the upheavals at Peking University at the time so I grew up hearing too many colorful stories), we couldn’t help but wonder — are we headed toward a new “cultural revolution”? Where are we in history? Are we going to look back and regret our choices of moving here from one “coming collapse” to another real collapse?

And throughout it all, the pandemic that has been entirely out of control and dragged us into an extended “lockdown” or house arrest at home in this country has paralyzed us from traveling to other countries for vacations this summer, or worse still visiting family and friends in China.

As if the physical world isolations were not enough, the President of the United States is threatening to ban WeChat, our primary emotional channels of connections to our family and friends and everything China — say whatever you want about the ubiquitous censorship on WeChat, the misinformation and misleading WeChat blogs on American politics, but the truth is that WeChat is still a lifeline for many of us to maintain our connections with the part of us that are deeply China, everything from chatting and finding out about our elementary school friends, to having our parents seeing their grandchildren on video chats once a week and seeing photos and moments of kids, to sharing xiachufang in-app recipes and funny or absurd videos with our friends, to booking classes and communicating with teachers with Huohua, Wukong, Meishubao , VIP peilian and all the other Chinese education platforms that makes working parents’ life so much easier for our kids…

Those who had briefly celebrated their life as a returnee or seagull (hai ou) straddling and thriving both worlds stop have stopped bragging in US-China tech forums in this area about China (some, however, probably did go too far). They muted themselves talking about the US in the Chinese WeChat groups altogether, as dealing with China has increasingly become a sensitive national security issue that could get very serious.

From Huawei to TikTok to WeChat, it started from real national security threats, mixed with rivalry and insecurity complexes, and evolved into the resistance of anything that has to do with a rising power with different ideologies and cultures (or shall we say at least the groups of people controlling the powers in each country have very different ideologies and cultures). Now President Trump and his supporters are threatening to shut down WeChat, the messenger app that connects us and our family and friends in China in a time of isolation.

Destroying one of the few bridges left for us who simultaneously live in and make sense of the two increasingly parallel universes. It is not one or the other. We are ONE. ONE earth. ONE people. We are not that different. Destroying the bridges will only set us further apart. Until we can no longer be ONE again.

And of course, the biggest irony of all is that the VERY promise of liberty and freedom to all Americans has been misled and mismanaged to a point that Americans’ entitled sense of individual “freedom” to not wear a mask has become the biggest threat to people’s lives in this country. It is a challenging topic to address these days without getting unwanted attention and causing conflicts. But I’ll say this: if democracy depends on a foundation of a reasonably informed and educated public, a shared identity, and facts, without them, can democracy survive and thrive?

Where do we stand in 2020? How do we choose sides? Does it have to be one or the other? What else can we do?

Since January, there have been over 4.7 million COVID-19 cases and 150,000 deaths in the United States. In California today alone there were 6292 new cases in the last 24 hours, 1008 in our SF Bay area.

Even as COVID death takes hundreds of thousands lives in America, laws like Prop 16 risks having the unintended consequences of pushing people and institutions away from a “merit-based system” with certain transparent criteria established that we once believed in. It feels like the promises of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness that we were promised when becoming American were increasingly a propaganda slogan (that we were all once too familiar with).

China isn’t much more appealing either. The HK security law is making our once potential relocation destination quickly lose its charm.

What about Shanghai or Beijing or Shenzhen or Hangzhou? Let’s face it, if you are a Chinese student who just came out of Stanford or Harvard or other fancy US school wondering where you should go to make it big, and without kids you don’t mind working long hours, perhaps China is your best bet. The 996 [MOU1] culture of a socialist country practicing one of the most naked forms of capitalism (at least in specific sectors with private competition you think you have a shot) welcomes ambitious professionals when they have unique value. But watch out: soon you will be replaced a hungrier 20-something. Then you are really screwed with no place to go back to.

Not to mention you are not sure if you’d be happy with being confined in a self-sufficient and isolated internet eco-system with most other netizens having formed very different opinions from yours due to years of being immersed in a different set of facts.

Such is the world we live in Silicon Valley as a Chinese 1st gen immigrant in 2020.

I mumbled all this in a rush this morning because I am getting particularly emotional about these things now. BECAUSE I am becoming a real American tomorrow — after months of delay, I am finally going to take my parking lot open-air oath ceremony to become an American citizen tomorrow on Thursday, Aug 26, 2020.

But it appears that I am joining my fellow Americans at a low point in history. First, my citizenship interview was delayed by 5 months due to COVID. After I finally did the interview a few weeks ago, I got a call that my scheduled socially distanced parking lot oath ceremony to be held last Friday in San Jose would have to be rescheduled to this week — this time due to the air pollution from the epic wildfires in our area this week after extreme hot weather, power outages, and lightening … and it will be a “drive-through” situation, with the option to hop out for a quick oath. Since when did the citizenship ceremony become an errand to Starbucks? Not to mention that now that I become an American if in any case, my aging parents got sick, I would NOT be able to go back home visit them since China now shut out all foreign passport holders esp Americans out of its country as we in America are the epicenter of the pandemic now. I have been admiring the promise of life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness to all Americans, and this is where I choose to settle down, but this is NOT what I imagined what the moment would be like to become an American.

Like it or not, for as much as I may have tried to stay away from politics, the milestones of politics of America and between US and China happen to have defined my life the past 12 years.

My husband — a child of German ancestors from the Southern states of Georgia and South Carolina, with a middle name from a family whose most famous ancestor’s statue being just taken down by the #BLM movement, and a Stanford graduate who considers himself a moderate Democrat, someone who left his predictable hardware startup engineer job in Silicon Valley to work on climate and air pollution in China — and I watched the speeches by Obama and Biden at the Dems national convention last week. The messages of unity and empathy resonated with us; we thought this is what we need, to make Americans proud again!

That speech by Obama brought me down the memory lane to the inauguration speech of Obama 12 years ago, in a bar in Beijing, on that snowy night, it was one of the very first dates of my husband and me.

I was fascinated by the moral integrity, the sheer passion for changing the world for a better place, and warmth, the endless creativity, and energy of this American guy who became my future husband. He represented everything about America I admired and loved.

Since then our life has gone through ups and downs, changed and shaped by Obama’s presidency and the 2016 election night when we hugged and cried — for me, it was seeing the ideology my husband and his friends hold so dearly got shattered out of blue overnight, and it was seeing the possibility of moving again (the past decade we have moved across continents and cross country, from Beijing to SF, SF to DC, DC back to Bay Area). We moved back to the Bay Area the following spring.

Now we finally, after years of searching, settled down in a place we like. I am crossing my fingers that come November, we do not have to scramble to find our Plan B moving to Singapore or Geneva or wherever that is spared of hatred and fear and blind arrogance and misinformed judgments, a place of hope, a place that motivates and inspires, a place that respects knowledge, the quest for truth and rewards hard work and integrity, for our kids to grow up, and us to grow old. I still believe this could and should be the place. If not the entire America yet, but the Bay Area. But how much of America is and aspires to be a place like this? I am hopeful, but I honestly don’t know. America is a big land. Just like China. What is really the truly American experience and American identity that still unites people and binds us together today? I am curious to find out.

(The same thing can be said for China. What is really the truly Chinese experience and Chinese identity today that unite people and binds people together today? Confucianism? The China Dream- the revival of a Great Civilization? Communist ideology? Hard work ethics? The unity of heaven and man? Our general love for our diverse set of food choices that are packaged and marketed as “Chinese food”? The list goes on. The truth is, those who are behind the Great Firewall of the internet and those are not have grown apart into two different bunches. Those who had studied or lived outside China and those who have not may see things from the very different lens)

One upside is now that I am becoming an American citizen with my entitled freedom of speech, and with my unquestionable position and my intention loud and clear that every criticism is only coming from a place of LOVE and well intention, I am going to talk about some of the uncomfortable facts I’ve lived to experience, in English and in personal narratives and in thoughts derived from observations from having lived in the two increasingly parallel universes.

Because like Jared Diamond one of the wisest authors put it, to deal with “upheavals” a country like America will have to be able to acknowledge reality, identify problems, learn from other coping methods, and conduct an honest assessment on oneself, taking responsibility for one’s behaviors instead of blaming others for feeling good.

America and its people can really benefit from understanding China and its people a little better.

It’s time for us the first gen immigrants from mainland China to do something, rather than complaining. Those of us who are not just relying on WeChat Chinese posts to understand America, but live here and put our roots here and want to make this our spiritual and physical home for the rest of our lives and our children.

Shall we all share our experience, thoughts and confusion and figure out how we might do that?

But, then again, who are “we”?