Chinese immigration - Vinh Mao

Interview #1
China, in my dad’s point of view, was a horrendous place to spend a childhood when he was born in 1947. In fact, he had to move to Vietnam and experience even more strenuous handlings within, moving from Hainan to Hong Kong, and working for a living. All of that changed when he moved to the United Sates via airplane, rather than by boat. Moreover, this experience made him feel lucky in many ways. In his point of view, from when he was born until 1982, seeing the danger is better than reading about it.

Nothing good came about in China, because my family and I were in danger. The government asked for the wealth gap to close down, and one way to do that was to have the rich people give money to the poor as much as possible. We hear of people anyway that keep all the land, the money, and the assets for themselves, so they would be dragged out until they bled to death by the numerous scratches on their back. This served later as a warning for nobody to be too greedy, but it also gave poorer workers an excuse to steal money off of just about anybody. However, they would target the rich people and if they didn’t give us any money, then that’s when they drag you out.
All of us were impoverished by that time, so we had no choice but to blame the rich folks ourselves while we protected what we had.
My dad perished among this crowd, but now I just forgot whether he interfered with the desperate workers. Anyway, we were in trouble, so my mom wanted us to leave for Vietnam to a cousin of hers already in Vietnam immediately after his death in 1953. Those poor workers in Dongxing would stop at nothing to get only themselves rich. They would be killed instead if they were found out, though. How did that sound to everyone else who was between poor and rich? The same thing: fear and no peace as they hopelessly thought they would be next. That didn’t include my family; we couldn’t feed ourselves…
I just heard from my mom that Vietnam would be better and such; it wasn’t as horrible as China at that time, so we took some chances and packed up, crossing the border like there was nothing to stop us. Here I was only two to three years old, and there isn’t much I would remember about this moment. All I thought about was how we would get there without dying.
All I remember was that Vietnam was not as good as China but in fact even worse. My family still lived in poverty over at the Hon Gai ward in North Vietnam. I only worked as a fisherman, carrying fish that were heavier than me and making only 20 cents in U.S. currency, I believe. I felt like I was doing farming for only my family, enough just for them. At the same time, not everyone was willing to help each other out when the economy was still bad from the war raging even in about 1977. So how would I live here anyway? I always asked myself this question every day as I worked with effort and earned much less than I should be getting.
The big change came in 1979, when South Vietnam won and North Vietnam lost, bringing every Chinese man and woman out of the North Vietnamese territory. I knew, though, that we were welcome anytime because we were authentically Chinese who needed another route to life from the understandably harsh government. I just don’t understand what happened with the Vietnamese-Chinese people in South Vietnam; if their side won, were they still advised to get out? Either way, I had to return to my hometown; Cambodia and the other countries meant nothing to any of us. Besides, we would only feel safe if we traveled by boat to Hong Kong, not Hainan and those other poorer cities.
In Hong Kong during 1979, it felt great; the air quality matched the one in the U.S. today and businesses and schools were decent. I even reviewed Cantonese there too! I learned Cantonese when I was in Vietnam, and I learned Vietnamese there too. In addition, I learned some English to keep me updated with the world.
In 1980, I found some more opportunity because I had much more work to do and made much more money too. I began working as an architect but got bored of it later and ended up delivering goods on boats. They included iron, yellow beans, oranges, and other necessities that I strived to earn with the underpayments I was getting. Even with that, I still made less than $2 in U.S. currency per day, still not enough to take care of my mom when she was in need of it to buy food and clothing, copious around Hong Kong.
Later, I heard about the U.S., not from my Cantonese classes at school, but from my worker friends who had the same goal as me: to make a living and live with those meager wages as much as possible. Most of my friends also came from Vietnam after it shooed us away and in fact the rest of Hong Kong knew about this; if they didn’t then how did we ever make it here and why did we? None of us were intruders; we were just refugees. And now I would become a refugee in the U.S. but a legal one. I wanted to go to the U.S. because I, like other people, needed a better life and Hong Kong was still inadequate at the time.
All I had to do was petition for one from the government. Simple as that. Then I could go on an airplane without paying because as a legal refugee, I had a visa and that was all it required. Once my name was called, that was it for me in Hong Kong. I never said goodbye to any of my worker friends, who felt more helpful in supporting each other in a time of poverty, unlike back in Vietnam, but I will always remember them when I can because I would have experienced the same kind of labor back at Vietnam without them.
I could not have chosen a better time to enter into the U.S. since I knew English and the spread of my language would be the best I could give for not just the U.S., but any country if I had to go there. But I chose the U.S. mostly because of the reasons my friends gave me. One of them included the money I could get and the lifestyle I could live. I did not want to be too rich just in case I would be hated by everyone, and I don’t know if I can handle that.
When I did arrive over to the U.S., I wanted to look around. Specifically, I chose Seattle, but only back in Alabama where I worked as an oyster seller, because magazines told me of the Seattle Space Needle and the grand Downtown Seattle; those attracted me, and making $50 a day made perfect sense to go there and live a dream I wanted to see.
Today Vietnam should be much better than before. If I had the chance, I would go back there and put my past memories aside to make new happy ones.

Interview #2
In 1966, my mom was born in Vietnam, later finding out the Sino-Vietnamese War was closer to her than she thought. This involves the loss of Vietnamese-Chinese education, and the Sino-Vietnamese War, both taking deadly blows on the diversity in the world. However, China was the next best bet, and it helped her marry and come over to Seattle, Washington, safely and with ease. Today, she is 44 years old.

I learned so much as the best student there was in the class. In Vietnam, every subject that school children today have to learn was there: math, history, science, foreign language, and other classes, those I did not get to choose myself. Either I passed the class and moved onto the next level or stayed behind while everyone else jumped ahead of me. However, I have never flunked a class, and those who did, I felt sorry for them and try to help them out by studying with them.
Mostly, I learned history of the Chinese and Vietnamese in class, and I even learned both Cantonese and Vietnamese. Now, I think that it was odd for the Cantonese to make their way onto Vietnam and bring their language into these schools of another country. In fact, they did, and I learned them efficiently up to today. Therefore, I spent my 7th and 8th grade years in the best way I could: excelling in all my classes and hanging out with my Chinese and Vietnamese friends whenever I could. Plus, I didn’t have to work like some of my other classmates did, so I focused on studying and only studying.
But what I didn’t know was that that Vietnam plotted itself against the U.S. in a war, and we were all being put in danger. Actually, every Vietnamese person got very hostile on us Chinese, because of the history back then between the two of our countries; did they concern China’s conquest of the country and the Trung sisters? If so, then that’s not rational of them. But it came to me later that there was no reason why the Vietnamese wanted the Chinese out.
And so they weren’t rational, and used it as the reason for the hostility. All my Vietnamese friends ditched me and boldly ignored me while they talked bad stuff about my culture and how they lost to the Chinese. Eventually, the schools of Vietnam banned all studies of Chinese, Cantonese, and Mandarin; basically, they wanted everything Chinese swept from the eyes of the Vietnamese. Now most of my Chinese friends and I lost an education for a couple of years when the Vietnamese wanted ALL of us out of their country. But when they meant all of us, I’ve always wondered if that included the Vietnamese-Chinese back in South Vietnam, since schools only taught texts and all other subjects in Vietnamese instead of Chinese; that would have led to extreme miscommunication and loss of direction for anyone in South Vietnam. So I ran off to China with my family, who had ancestry to the Chinese and were allowed, along with me, through the borders to China. I didn’t want to see the gory deaths, if there were any, which I doubt to this day.
I never heard of the name for this war until after I made it into the U.S., and that it had a name: the Sino-Vietnamese War. I’ve always thought of this war as something similar to the Chinese Exclusion Act in the Americas.
In 1979, I ended up in Dongxing, crossing through the border by boat. After that, it was all work once I was later brought to Lingshan by my parents, just a little to the north of Dongxing. Of course, I could finally go to school there and went up until high school in the 10th grade; back then, there was no 11th or 12th grade, probably because we only had to learn so much to work in the farms. Actually, the farms consisted of planting every kind of fruit, which felt extremely tiresome; agriculture was not my thing, but I wasn’t the one working in the fields. Instead, I stayed home and played around in my new home, also learning to cook from my grandmother by simply watching her and doing it by myself. In fact, I began cooking the same dishes my mother cooked throughout the time! My classmates had to work to support their family, but my family was more decent because they worked and knew I was too young to handle the muscle work.
I still couldn’t choose my classes back in China, but I did feel relieved that there were no more restrictions on what I should know. I reviewed Cantonese and Mandarin at once and didn’t hear much Vietnamese until I came to the U.S. a decade later. Before that, I spent that decade going through school and relying on subsistence farming done by my father in the farms. I think this was the best part of the story, because I did not need too much and I did not want too little of anything. Life in China was truly better than in Vietnam.
Later, my friends told me that the U.S. felt better to them and that they wanted to move there for the lifestyle that people would dream of. Of course, they found the life in China just not enough for them. But I thought it was if you could make the most out of it. Besides, I graduated from high school and lived a free life.
My life actually felt freer, especially when I was welcomed to the U.S. by my future husband, who was already in Seattle, Washington. All I had to do to seal the marriage was to ask the government to get me the documents to fill out to go to America, and prove that I had someone related to me coming over to pick me up. I always knew this law for the government would apply if I was not born in China, but I would still be a legal refugee in America with a visa after sending in the documents. Later, I went to Hong Kong in early 1992 for the first time and met up with my future husband at the airport. He knew Hong Kong all along because he was there before I was. In fact, I had nothing to worry about.
The airport immediately accepted me for a ride on an airplane to the U.S., and I was glad. I heard that some of my friends took boats to go to the U.S., but I knew it would be dangerous and that it may get lost and possibly sink under impact of large winds.
Looking through the skies, the airplane carried me over to Seattle, and I remember seeing the Space Needle from an angle, one that made me feel taller than the structure. I would want to go there, but not after checking out American life. I was new to the U.S., but my husband was not. I just need to get used to everything that comes at me, and that makes me feel good. It was time for me to make a new start in my life and make things right!

Interview #3
She was born in 1963, hearing more about the history than what she could imagine. At that point in time, she also escaped the Sino-Vietnamese War as a refugee in 1979 but ended up in Hainan and eventually to Nanning for the purpose of farming and such. Once again, like all other immigrants, she made this switch to the U.S. way of life in order to keep her survival on track. Truly, she owes it to the fact that she could stay around Nanning and make a decent amount of money in time. However, as one of my mom’s friends, she has a similar story close to hers.

Learning too much could have been the best part of my life because I knew so much that I could fill up five books with what I knew! Vietnam’s schools taught me so much about the history of the country and China itself. I even learned Cantonese when I had the time to do so in class. It was a good thing that the schools taught it and that I could be part of it. I even remember this being taught during preschool too! At only five or six years old, I made so much progress in my life to become the smartest historian.
However, everything changed when I heard that all my Vietnamese friends would leave me in the dust and forget about me, all because the Trung sisters defied my race, committed suicide for their acts, were caught by the Chinese… I felt so confused because this is not the best reason to kick us out. They know there’s a war going on and it made perfect sense to make the people feel as if they were threatened by the war, not the fact that the Chinese made all of this happen. I guess it was because we were making up too much of the population in Vietnam; after all, I saw an equal number of my kind in school like the Vietnamese.
Being kicked out felt like the world was crushing down. First, I don’t get the full education I wanted because the government of Vietnam banned both Mandarin and Cantonese lessons, along with all translations of school subjects in those languages. I was fine with learning Vietnamese, but I wanted the best out of my education back then because I wanted to be the best student. Anyway, I really wanted to go back to Vietnam and see everyone who has denied my chance to talk them out of hating me. None of this seemed reasonable to me anymore because I wouldn’t do this to another race!
But I had to go anyway, for my own good. I already began to hear people talking about how their relatives died straight from the mouths of my Chinese and Vietnamese friends alike. I never actually got to see the deaths in any chance, and all I could do was listen to the Chinese and make the nicest comments I had; I could only watch as the Vietnamese hopelessly slandered me and my culture without considering the fact that we are all people. Therefore, I crossed the border of North Vietnam and made my way over to Hainan, a place where I was waiting to be deported to another place from.
My family was too poor to do anything expect get all of us some fruit from the trees of other people’s farms to eat. But Hainan did not have as much farming as my family and I had hoped. So I waited and waited, until my parents finally decided to walk and cross more to Nanning, a place full of farming and agriculture, and recommended by some of my mother’s friends who have already made the journey there.
I loved crossing any rivers because I knew they were safe at all costs. It seemed to me that every time I looked at a river, I would close my eyes and dream of a better life, one that is as tranquil and peaceful as the flowing water and the quietly whistling trees. I would soon hear of a place that seemed to match this description and make my dreams come true right before my eyes.
I thought that Nanning would be the most beautiful place and it was. Farmlands surrounded the farm houses that were built just near them, and unfortunately, I had to working them to support the family. This meant I lost my education and had to become a working object, a slave, if I could think of another word for it. In fact, many children like me during that time faced the same thing; they came from the time when Vietnam shooed every Chinese man and woman from the premises of their own country.
Eventually, I heard that the U.S. would be the best kind of thing there was in the world. I mean, they seemed to be exaggerating, but I heard of jobs that let people make $20 an hour, compared to a small, crumb-sized $4 an hour for working and not much profit from the fruits and veggies made. I remember that they told me that they heard all this from recently published newspapers about the development of the U.S. from the Great Depression until now. Plus, they have freedom of speech, a lack of discrimination for the Chinese ever since WWII, and a sense of pride that I would enjoy. All I had to do was get a visa. Besides, my uncle already settled into the U.S. long before I was even born, and I could use that to make my documents legal. Later, I would become a legal refugee as the government of Hong Kong called it, and I would travel alone without my parents to another country and another surrounding.
On the plane, I wondered about where I should go to. I knew of the California Gold Rush, but that was back in the 1800s or something. Then I remembered Seattle, Washington, a city that one man talked about briefly but excitedly back in China. This was because I would land in either Los Angeles, California, or Seattle. But when the airport reached Los Angeles, I just sat there, getting up and sitting back down multiple times. Then break was over, and the doors went shut. Now I knew my destination was clear…