From Scratch

By Linda Liu

After the author, Linda Liu, arrives in the United States, she is deeply attracted by the system of the American society. Linda, who has been unswerving in her endeavors, successfully realizes her American dream. At the same time, she receives a lot of help and encouragement from the ordinary American people who treat her with kindness and consideration. While living on American soil, Linda immediately meets many problems in language, family, finance, and especially in career. Her previous work experience is not helpful to find a position. However, because there are a variety of opportunities in this country, no matter how young or old you are, you can get one. Linda decides to upgrade her technical skills, but she faces the challenge of studying and finding a job. During fighting her fear for a better life, her Christian friends introduce the American tradition, culture, and lifestyle; they display God’s power and faith to her. This book is very interesting to those who are looking for a better life and who like to see how nice and generous Americans are.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Nov 30, 2020
• ISBN: 9781645751557

Linda Liu

Linda Liu was born in 1938 in China and had lived there until she came to the United States in 1985. In China, she spent most of her time in Beijing, but she was assigned to a remote area located in Xinjiang for seven years after graduated from Peking University in 1965, and then returned to Beijing for undertaking research in an institute for thirteen years. In the United States, she was engaged as a visiting scholar at UIUC. After she earned her MS, she worked in companies as an IT professional for years. She is an American citizen and lives with her husband in California.

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Way

About the Author

Linda Liu was born in China, grew up in Beijing, and worked there for about 20 years after she graduated from Peking University. In 1985, she came to the United States. She earned her MS in Chicago and then worked as an IT professional in companies for years. She is the author of Frame of Mind in the Mao Era of China, which has been published. She is an American citizen and lives with her husband in California now.

Copyright Information ©

Linda Liu (2020)

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher.

Any person, who commits any unauthorized act in relation to this publication, may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

All of the events in this memoir are true to the best of author’s memory. The views expressed in this memoir are solely those of the author.

Ordering Information

Quantity sales: Special discounts are available on quantity purchases by corporations, associations, and others. For details, contact the publisher at the address below.

Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication data

Liu, Linda

From Scratch

ISBN 9781645751540 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781645751533 (Hardback)

ISBN 9781645751557 (ePub e-book)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2020919481

www.austinmacauley.com/us

First Published (2020)

Austin Macauley Publishers LLC

40 Wall Street, 28th Floor

New York, NY 10005

USA

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Acknowledgement

To my son, John (Yao) Jiang, you were doing exceedingly well in your middle school due to your hard work and getting help from your teachers, classmates, and neighbors. You dreamed to continue studying in USA. It let us, your parents, make the huge determination to put down our roots in the American soil.

In writing this book, I am extremely grateful to my friends I made in Fayetteville and Urbana-Champaign for their help in my time of trouble. They helped a lot in my efforts to live in the United States. Thanks to them, especially Louise Coker, Betty Lou Modlin, William and Winnie Soo Hoo, and Laura Jane Colber, all of whom are very kind and devoted Christians. Those kindhearted friends lit God’s spirit in me, so I never forget the true friendship. It was them who encouraged me to overcome various difficulties and to find the way to living. If I didn’t have these friends, this book would not exist.

A special thanks goes to Janis Holmberg; she reviewed my book and her professional suggestions made my work much better.

Chapter 1

Yearning for the West

Like many Chinese, I yearned for the West, especially for America. I heard that America is a great country because it has advanced industry and cutting-edge technologies, because it has high-level education, because it has freedom and democracy, and because its people live in an age of rapid advances and a high-spirited world. So many good things I heard were from those who returned to China after their advanced education and profession in the United States.

In 1985, the Chinese government announced a policy that allowed a mother or father and their children to go abroad to visit their spouse, so my son and I could visit my husband who studied for his PhD in the USA in May 1985. We were excited about going to America, for it had been unimaginable and unthinkable a half year ago. We were asked to take a photo showing mother and son together for the passport and prepared going to America in 1985.

There was no direct flight between Beijing and the place my husband, Jiang, was living. We had to first arrive at San Francisco Airport from Beijing after a thirteen-hour flight, transfer to a plane to Tulsa, Oklahoma, where we would meet my husband, and then we took a car to Fayetteville, Arkansas. My son, Yao, was looking around, while we were on the plane sitting in seats in the middle rows. He was eleven years old on his first plane ride and was pretty excited. He asked questions, and he wanted to know how long before he could see his dad. I told him, Tonight. Jiang had already been gone from us for one-and-a-half years. Both, Yao and I, missed him very much. We really couldn’t endure such separation in life.

I would never forget that we had suffered from a miserable life after we married and lived in different places far apart and that I had two natural miscarriages over five years in the 1970s. We visited each other once every other year and had lived together about three weeks a year. I couldn’t remember how many sleepless nights I had, but no matter how difficult, we believed that someday we would live together. I expected such a bitter life to be ended forever. What drink do you want? A female flight attendant was serving now and interrupted my thinking. She pointed to two drinks; orange juice and apple juice. Orange juice, please, I pointed, received it, and gave it to my son. After drinking, Yao was sleepy. There were many empty seats on the plane, so I could let Yao lie down across our row of two seats and fall asleep. On the plane, the meal was American food. We had never eaten real Western food before, so we were not accustomed to it and ate a little bit. Yao didn’t eat anything and only drank orange juice. After dinner, an English movie was started; I was not interested in it, because I didn’t understand any of the words. I was sitting there and did nothing, but I couldn’t sleep. I looked around and saw some passengers were watching the movie, some were sleeping, and one was reading an English book next to us. If I had a book to read, how wonderful that would be, I thought. I could read some English books but I hadn’t brought one.

Chinese scholars, who returned to China from the United States and Europe, were hardcore in universities, research institutes, and important industries. The professors, who returned to China from America, gave all students a very good impression about their teaching and research jobs. After working in the research institute, I heard that those who received a PhD from the United States had great achievements in their research with their special skills and knowledge. The young Chinese respect and envy them. We wished someday we would go to the Western world to learn advanced science and technologies to serve people. In 1972, President Nixon visited mainland China and established the relationship between the United States and China and China stated to open the door to West. Since then, Chinese authorities started to assign scholars to Western countries to study, join conferences, or perform temporary work. That set off an upsurge of learning English emulation all over China. Jiang learned more English in the training class in six months in our institute.

In 1980, Jiang joined other two colleagues to participate in the Chemistry Conference in Las Vegas, Nevada. He reported his research paper at the conference. He and his colleagues visited three American National Laboratories. He envied their advanced technologies and equipment, work environments, and conditions. He greatly desired to go to America for work or study. When American experts visited our institute in 1983, he was assigned to receive and welcome the honored guest, P. K Kuroda. Dr. Kuroda was a chemistry professor at the University of Arkansas. My husband asked him if he could work for him temporarily. Dr. Kuroda said that he could receive him as a graduate student due to his grant for a research position. Jiang thought this was an opportunity to get advanced technology and knowledge and he decided to go to the University of Arkansas for his unfinished PhD that was interrupted during the China Cultural Revolution. He went there in December 1983.

I stared at my son who slept deeply and I felt how lucky we were. We were going to the great land that was my dream and I would see what the real America was. I could think about my new job that Jiang found for me for a chemistry professor, but I didn’t know yet if it would be easy or hard for me. Since graduating from university, I had done two kinds of jobs; geophysics and accelerator physics. For the chemistry professor, I would work on molecule structures of chemistry that I didn’t know about and from scratch again. Could I do it successfully? I thought if the time was longer, I should do it well, as I had my work in my second area in my research institute in Beijing.

Maybe too excited to sleep, I still couldn’t feel sleepy. I tried to watch the movie. I saw a Western woman was helping a child and past events suddenly appeared in my mind. The American missionaries dedicated their lives to help Chinese people between the 1930s and 1940s. The churches gave the children of poor families free education. My two uncles graduated from an American church school in Pingding County, Shanxi of China. They became countryside teachers for their whole lives. They knew that America is great country and its people are great human beings. However, under Chinese Communist Party (CCP) rules, my generation heard that America is a big evil capitalist society.

In the 1950s, we were told that socialism and communism provide the ultimate in freedom and democracy within society. In the world, two-thirds of people are living in ‘deep water and scorching fire’, Party officials drilled into us and they are tortured by capitalism. China’s goal was to rescue them and let them jump out of the sea of bitterness. Since that time, we hadn’t heard any positive things about the Western world for thirty years. Like others of my generation born in the old society (before 1949) and growing up in the New China (during Mao era), after China opened its door to the West and overseas relatives returned to visit in the late 1970s with lavish presents, we suddenly realized that we were the ones suffering more bitterness than happiness. In the class-struggle society, Chinese people’s admiration for the West was often tempered with fear, dislike, and jealousy. After China opened the door, our family friend visited Germany as a scholar for one year. When he returned to China, he bought one color camera and took some photos for us. We didn’t have any camera, even a black and white one. It was very expensive to us in China at that time because its price was our two- or three-months’ salary. We certainly contributed to the socialist system in our country, but what did we get? The facts were the opposite of what we were told. I realized that the communists’ propaganda and fake news deceived the Chinese people for a long time.

In the plane, Yao was very quiet and soon, he went to sleep. When I heard the voice of service attendants asking passengers what kind of food they wanted, breakfast was being served. I let Yao wake up and eat something, but he just drank juice. Soon, we arrived at San Francisco Airport in the morning.

At the San Francisco Airport, we first went to the luggage area and through customs. A customs officer opened one of my three pieces of luggage and said it was passed. The other two, he didn’t open. And then, he checked my bag, and found a sandwich that I saved for my son, because he didn’t eat anything on the plane. He held it and looked at for a while and dropped it into the trashcan. He said something in English I didn’t understand. I felt rising discomfort amid the culture shock. I knew that raw grains are banned because they may bring disease or crop damage from insect pests. I didn’t understand why cooked food could not be brought into America. I put my other luggage away and helped a teenage boy and a little girl, the children of my husband’s friend and on the same plane with us.

They had four pieces of luggage; two they carried and one travelling bag. A Chinese customs officer checked their luggage. He held the two pieces they carried that were opened and asked Whose? in Chinese. I looked at them and asked the boy. He said these were his. The bags contained all kinds of vegetables pickled in soy sauce, fermented bean curd, and various salted vegetables. The customs officer said to us, This stuff cannot be brought out of the airport. They cannot be brought into the United States. The boy heard the words and feared them. He told me in a low voice that his mother asked him to bring the food and he would almost cry out if the customs officer threw them away. I begged the official to let him bring them to his mother. The man looked around and said, Hurry up and leave here. Otherwise, an American customs officer will stop you and throw them away. We left there as soon as possible. I thought the Chinese man let us Chinese keep our foods from home to eat. We walked to the gate and I saw the boy’s parents were standing outside the gate and waiting for them. We passed the checkout gate. Oh! We entered America.

Chapter 2

English Teacher

At San Francisco International Airport where my son and I arrived in the United States for the first time, we were waiting to