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“Teenage angst” had a different meaning for UC Berkeley junior Victoria Hu in high school.
Most describe it as the insecurities and anxieties of adolescence. But Victoria describes teenage angst in reactive terms — a way to cope with the unthinkable when she was 16, a method to internalize the anger, confusion and sadness over her father’s disappearance.
While peers stressed about AP tests and college applications, Victoria confronted a potential future without her father. He wasn’t dead, but he was gone in other ways — absent from the dinner table and from her family’s life, trapped in legal limbo in China.
In 2008, Victoria’s father, Dr. Zhicheng Hu, a Chinese-American scientist who worked on automobile emissions, left for China in what he thought would be a short business trip. But when a former associate accused him of stealing trade secrets, he was arrested and imprisoned by the local police. He was released 17 months later, cleared of all charges without trial.
However, Dr. Hu still remains in China, living as a caged citizen. While there is no official record restricting him from leaving the country, he has been stopped every time he tries to return home.
It has been five years since the family has been together, and it’s uncertain when — or if — her father will come home.
But Victoria, a political economy major, said she will keep fighting for her father’s freedom. Back then, Victoria didn’t understand the situation, and it’s only marginally clearer to her today. But her former teenage angst has been replaced with a drive to bring her father home, by any means necessary.
“I learned pretty quickly that you choose how you act and what emotional state you will be in,” Victoria said. “I wanted to give my family emotional support. I wanted to step up to the plate and help the situation, instead of keeping the negative feelings to myself.”
Victoria now freely shares her once intensely personal, internalized struggle with the world, using social media to convey her story in hopes of inciting change. It was a bottom-up approach she tried after her mother’s letters to American politicians, asking for diplomatic interventions, remained unanswered.
“My younger brother has been forced to grow up without a father for the past four years,” she wrote on the onlinepetition posted over a year ago. “My mother spent all of her energy trying to bring my father home, and the stress has had a devastating effect on her health.”
The petition now has more than 60,000 signatures. A Facebook page entitled “Free Dr. Hu” has more than 20,000 likes.
Despite the support, little has changed. But that doesn’t discourage Victoria. When the Chinese government blocked the online petition, she wrote, “Let’s keep sailing strong!”
“My general philosophy is that failure is temporary if you’re still alive,” Victoria said. “There are people who have got it a lot worse — they’re in war or fighting. My dad isn’t dead.”
UC Berkeley lecturer Crystal Chang, who researches government and business relations in China, said that Dr. Hu’s situation illustrates that “the rule of the law is not clear in China.”
“Even if there are rules, they’re not always applied consistently, which means individuals can get caught in the ambiguities or the bureaucratic red tape,” Chang said.
Victoria said she recognizes that change will not be immediate and continues with her life as a normal college student. She is busy with her schoolwork, works at a start-up that produces online comics and draws when she can. Last semester, she drew editorial cartoons for The Daily Californian.
“Victoria is very kind, upbeat and generous. When I first met her, I never thought she would be going through something like this because she’s so positive,” said Wenqing Yan, her friend. “But she does have these moments when she does show it is always a weight on her heart.”
Her mother, Hong Li, said she is continually amazed by her daughter’s efforts. The shy 16-year-old her mother remembers has been replaced with a proactive and extroverted girl.
“When this is all over, I want to eventually sit down and thank her, because I really don’t know what made her like that,” Li said. “I can’t summarize how much she’s done besides that she tried her best and she figured it out. It’s really amazing.”
Currently, Victoria is doing what she can: keeping with her social media and trying to learn more about Chinese government and business, which she says actually makes the situation seem more complicated. But other things are clearer to Victoria, things that her formerly “angsty” self might not have understood.
“I’ve learned that everyone has a story they’re not sharing,” Victoria said. “You don’t know what they’re going through, so you shouldn’t be too harsh on them.”
And she’s even able to laugh a bit about her situation, too.
“I’m no suffering artist,” she said, with a smile. “I’ll be okay.”
Contact Sophie Ho at sho@dailycal.org.
First generation Chinese American Le Le Tong just recently retired was stricken while visiting her hometown in China. While there, she fainted and was admitted to a local hospital where they found bleeding in the brain and had emergency surgery. She is in a local ill-equipped hospital outside of a small, rural village in China. Her family is raising fund for international medical transportation. Unfortunately, her insurance does not cover any of the expenses. The cost to medi-vac Mrs. Tong back to the US for treatment is around $72,000. The family thus far has gone into debt with medical expenses paid in cash to the hospital in China.
On Feb 23, a benefit Lion Dance throughout Chinatown will be held to benefit the family. Please come down to the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association, 62 Mott St. on 2/23 to give what you can. You can also make a donation via click-through link.
Her daughter says:
We have simply run out of options. The US Embassy said they can’t help. Medicare & Medicaid does not cover the costs of repatriation. No one in any Federal, State, or local agency has been able to provide us with any information about how we can bring our Mom home.
Ultimately, the purpose of this fundraiser is to bring our mother home to get the treatment that she so desperately requires in order to recover at the most optimal speed. We believe, with a joint effort – together, we should be able to save our mother. Every little bit counts and your generosity is greatly appreciated. Hopefully, with your help – we can get her home before it’s too late.
Please help save our mother.
Please share, signal boost, and contribute if you can.
hey economist
go chug some gasoline for me ok
and then burn up all copies of your shitty magazine
and destroy every computer you have on premises
Well, you know how I feel about The Economist. Before this “Analects” revamp, they had this anti-China columnist called Banyan that posted all sorts of offensive opinions… I haven’t been back since their revamp but I doubt they have changed their spots.
(Source: yiheyuans)
11 notes (via chinesecool & yiheyuans)
My Shanghainese parents just finished high school in 1966 when the Cultural Revolution happened. They sometimes share their experience with me, even though my mom doesn’t like to talk about it. Here are some things that stuck out for me:
There’s not much I can give to back up these claims, as it’s mostly oral history. My father is willing to give more details about his experience, but the last time I asked my mother about it she started crying, so I decided not to press the issue.
- When my dad was walking to school he saw his PE teacher jump out of one of the school’s windows. According to him, the teacher’s body landed a few feet away from him.
- Because my parents were of the “enemy class,” their homes were ransacked. My mother remembers frantically hiding precious heirlooms in the walls with her closest friend helping her.
- That same friend who helped my mother was very outspoken, so the Red Guards would publicly humiliate her and her family to “break her.” She was then sent far away from Shanghai in the “Down to the Countryside” Movement. My mom never saw her again.
- My dad somehow ended up as a Red Guard; he did inventory for them. Then they found out about his class status and kicked him out.
- Both my parents were sent to farms for “Down to the Countryside.” They were sent to Changning, an island off of Shanghai. They count themselves lucky because they weren’t sent to Sichuan or a mountain village, as life there was supposedly much harder. They stayed on the farms for 3 years before getting the chance to leave.
- Both my parents hate the communist party for taking away everything they had (my great-grandfather was a successful business man pre-communist China who died with what would be $20 today in his pocket), but they actually like Chairman Mao. They blame the Cultural Revolution and the resulting chaos on the crazed mob mentality of Mao’s followers.
Thank you very much for submitting this. Oral History is important, and just as necessary as “Academic” history.
My family too.
381 notes (via asianhistory)
Let me start this by quoting the eloquent and well-articulated Mr. Whitley:
“If Uncle Sam doesn’t get a big dose of turtle blood real soon, we could be in real trouble. By we, I mean the United States. By turtle blood, I mean the secret ingredient China is using in its dastardly attempt to kick us off the top of Mount Olympus.”
In this article by AOL Sporting News (lol. AOL.) Whitley then goes on to pseudo-snarkily comment on China’s athletes and their successes while accusing them all of using drugs and ~exotic~ home remedies. The constant substitution of “The People’s Republic” for “China” is another jab at exotifying China and her athletes.
And that’s not even the end of it! Whitley continues with “Chinese cheating was state-sponsored. If a newborn had big hands and feet, she would be plucked from her family, sent to The People’s Republic of Swimming School, pumped full of mystery supplements.”
So instead of congratulating and applauding a legendary and mindblowing feat, Whitley turns this into China using unsavory tactics to beat America. I guess it’s just that unbelievable that an Asian female is something other than a helpless cartoon white guys jack off to.
Go play in traffic.
Colorblinding I luv yewThis morning, there was a woman in the elevator with me as I headed to my office. I’ve never met her before. We make small talk, and she was friendly. We get off the elevator and walk in the same direction.
Then she asks me, “Where are you from?”
Now, pause.
I get that a lot because I’m Asian-American and I’m not a native New Yorker.
Now, un-pause.
I say, “California” because I really am from California. I grew up there.
Then she says, “No, no, where are you really from? Where are your parents from?”
Excuse me? What?
Now, here’s the thing. She wasn’t being racist, or malicious, or anything like that. She seemed geniunely interested and asked nicely. She really sincerely did not know that question can be offensive.
I tell her, and she replies, “Oh, I’m from Montreal.”
She went into her office after that and I went on my way, but it got me thinking.Even being in a diverse city like NYC, this random woman still viewed me as someone who didn’t originally come from this country. Now, look, I get a lot of racist shit, usually from some drunk guy, so I don’t let the comments bother me. But today was different. I truly think this random woman did not know the non-offensive way to ask me where I was “really from.”
This incident reminds me of the stories the Jeremy Lin coverage generated, and how the Asian American Journalists Association had to put out a document to the media about the difference between Asian-American & Asian, Jeremy Lin & Yao Ming, and Taiwan & China.
I try to see the best in everyone, I believe that almost everyone has good intentions, and I try not to let this city’s craziness get to me. Today with this random woman, I choose to view her question as she was simply curious and didn’t know the right way to ask me where I was “really from.”UGHHHHH. A couple of times I’ve actually said to people, “I know what you’re ACTUALLY asking, so just ask it.” Or sometimes they’ll say, “No, where are your parents from?” To which I truthfully say, “San Francisco and Tracy,” or just “also California.”
Of course, it depends on the person and the tone of the conversation at the time, but generally people get the hint.
(What I thought was interesting was while on a cruise in Australia back in 2005, was that when people asked this, they were Australians who had never actually met an Asian American who wasn’t from Hawaii. And I was happy to indulge/educate. It wasn’t that they doubted our American-ness. They were just genuinely intrigued. North Americans from/in North America, you should know better.)
Because being Asian in America means being a perpetual foreigner.
73 notes (via gaobibaituo & girlwithadotcom-deactivated2012)
Boom.“Why do sheng nu happen now in China?” Wu asked. After a dramatic pause, she answered her own question: “It is a result of high GDP growth.” At this point, several women in the audience fidgeted, wary of an economics sermon, but Wu continued. “In the past, there was no such word as sheng nu. But today women have more wealth and education — they have better jobs, and higher requirements for men.” She reflected: “Now you want to find a man you have deep feelings for who also has a house and a car. You won’t all find that.”
She wasn’t telling the women they should want less, exactly. What she was really pointing out was just how much better today’s Chinese women have it. Thirty years ago, a marriage certificate was a passport into adulthood. “Until you married, there were no basic human rights. No right to have sex before marriage. No house allocated by your danwei [government work unit] before marriage.” Today those barriers have crumbled, with rising sexual freedom and a booming private real estate market. Why marry unless you find someone just right? “The future is different,” Wu predicted, waving her arms for emphasis. China’s big cities will be filled with sheng nu. “Those who can bear the shortcomings and sufferings of men will get married,” she concluded. “Those not, single.”
All this grand theorizing was not remotely what Sabrina, a slender 26-year-old with sexy librarian glasses, wanted to hear. “I wish she had given more practical advice about how to enlarge my social circle,” she whispered to me. Sabrina was there because she truly wanted to get married, and by her own anxious calculation, she feared she had about one year left. She had a graduate degree from a good university, held a respectable job in marketing, and was reasonably attractive. It had never occurred to her that finding an appropriate partner would be a struggle. Did I know any unmarried men? she asked. And if so, I should probably tell them she is just 24.
sheng nu- literally, “leftover woman”; derogatory term used to refer to women “past their prime” who are still single… over the age of 27/30.
I honestly have mixed feelings about the article. One is utter annoyance at the almost condescending way it is written- that the author (a white woman) would compare a speaker giving a presentation in this article to another famous white woman at all: why can’t women of color just be who they are?
Second, this line:
The singletons I interviewed in Beijing were anything but dowdy. At 5 feet, 9 inches, the slim woman who slipped into a seat at the table at trendy Opposite House cafe was, in fact, an utter knockout. Annie Xu has a strikingly angular face, large wide-set eyes, shoulder-length hair, and flawless skin.
there’s something in the wording that smacks of cultural assumptions—like why wouldn’t anyone want these women? THEY’RE GORGEOUS ORIENTAL FLOWERS!!!!
thirdly I feel as though she takes the problem to the women, instead of more deeply examining this patriarchal power structure that contributes to these derogatory terms in the first place.
A generation ago, when Chinese society was simpler, there were fewer choices. But today, with colossal economic upheaval — and a yawning chasm between China’s winners and losers — your spouse may be the largest single factor determining whether, in the words of one infamous female contestant on Fei Cheng Wu Rao, you ride home on the back of a bicycle or in a BMW. And that just crystallizes the problem: China’s educated women increasingly know what they want out of life. But it’s getting harder and harder to find Mr. Right.
excuse me, “simpler”? Simpler to who? To you? Take your attitude and shove it up your lily white ass because you clearly don’t understand the substructures that exist within the family dynamic of “pre-liberated and Westernized” China.
33 notes (via gaobibaituo)
Every year thousands of American men go to China to find a bride. The documentary film “Seeking Asian Female” follows an eccentric modern love story about Steven and Sandy – an 60 year old aging white man with “yellow fever” who is obsessed with marrying any Asian woman, and the young 30 year old Chinese bride he finds online. When Steven meets a willful young woman named Sandy from Anhui, China, over the internet and she agrees to migrate to the US to marry him. Fantasy and reality collide in this modern love story.
Told through the lens of Chinese American filmmaker Debbie Lum, who becomes the couple’s reluctant translator and marriage counselor, the film examines the penetrating effect of stereotype and expectations on love and relationships today. Debbie documents and narrates with skepticism and humor, from the early stages of Steven’s search for an Asian bride, through the moment Sandy steps foot in America for the first time, to a year into their precarious union. Global migration, Sino-American relations and the perennial battle of the sexes, weigh in on the fate of their marriage in this intimate and quirky personal documentary. “Seeking Asian Female” is at the intersection of several timely subjects – finding love online, an increasing interest in New China, and what it means to have a race-based dating preference in a supposedly “post-racial” America.
Read more: http://www.channelapa.com/2012/02/seeking-asian-female-trailer.html#ixzz1nochRxlc
Civil Rights leader Rev. Charles Williams II, calls for immediate apology from Pete Hoekstra to Asian Community for racist ad making fun of Asians.
What: Press Conference
Who:
King Solomon Baptist Church
Rhema International Church
Greater Mt. Tabor Baptist Church
National Action Network Michigan
National Council for Community Empowerment
When: Monday, February 6th 2012@, 10:30a.m.
Where:
6100 14th Street Detroit, MI
Detroit- 2/6/12 – Republican candidate for U.S Senate Pete Hoekstra endorsed and appeared in a new campaign commercial launched during the Super Bowl last night. The add featured a young woman speaking in broken English in Asian accent. Eclectablog featured the video on www.eclectablog.com.
GOP consultant Nick De Leeuw said:
“Stabenow has got to go. But shame on Pete Hoekstra for that appalling new advertisement,” De Leeuw wrote on his Facebook page Sunday morning. “Racism and xenophobia aren’t any way to get things done.”
Rev. Charles Williams II said: “If Pete Hoekstra does not see any wrong in this commercial, he doesn’t deserve to be in the race. The Asian woman speaking in this video would be no different than him having a black person speaking in slave dialect. He needs to apologize now!”
Rev. Maurice L. Rudds said, “The politics of racial division is alive and well in hoekstra’s campaign. What’s next? A commercial mocking African American hip hoppers.”
The coalition of leaders are calling on a formal apology from Pete Hoekstra and urge him to pull down the add immediately.
Rev. Charles Williams is the pastor of the Historic King Solomon Baptist church, and state director of Rev. Al Sharptons National Action Network. Rev. Maurice L. Rudds is the pastor of Greater Mt. Tabor Baptist church, and president of National Council for Community Empowerment, Michigan Chapter.
For more information contact 313-303-8002
(Source: bloggingformichigan.com)
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