A Heart for Freedom (35 page)

The gate for the new arrivals opened, and before I could see anything, I heard a joyful cry.

“Jie Jie—Big Sister!” A little, girlish figure flew out of the gate and into my arms. “Big Sister, I saw you from far away, and I recognized you immediately.” We hugged for a long time, our laughter and tears mingling.

When I was able to step back and look at her, I saw she had grown taller—in fact, slightly taller than me—and her face looked more mature. I told her how worried I had been that she would be changed into a stranger. She laughed and said, “It’s me, Big Sister. We’ve been through a lot, and I may have changed, but touch my face. It’s me.”

That night we stayed up late, catching up on the past. The next morning, remembering my first impression of America, I took her to a grocery store. Afterward she told me the cashier had overcharged her fifty cents, and she had gone back to get it.

I looked at her with admiration. “You did that? Oh, my goodness, you
have
changed! You are no longer my sweet, shy, and quiet little sister.” Believe or not, the Chai family has never liked confrontation. In the past we would have pretended we hadn’t noticed the overcharge.

“No,” my sister said, “after that event [referring to the June 4 crackdown], we felt our family was like a small boat, completely swept onto an isolated island. Many people gave us the cold shoulder, nasty looks, and a hard time. Our family had to be strong and stick together to endure all that.”

After taking another day to catch up on the past five years, we turned our attention to what my sister would do now. She had graduated at the top of her class in medical school, but because of my involvement at Tiananmen, she was not allowed to practice medicine in China. Instead she had worked for a drug company. Now that she was free in America, she wanted to become a doctor. To do that, she would need to pass a medical licensing exam.

With my training as a consultant, in those pre-Internet days, I immediately went to the local library and figured out where and how to apply for the nearest licensing exam. After calling and waiting for hours with no success, we drove to Philadelphia to get the application in person. Within a few days of my sister’s arrival, she was registered for a licensing exam two months down the road and had a shared bank account with me and a place to live and study. I even picked up a refugee application from the immigration office and started filling it out for her. There was no way I would let her be sent back to China and risk never seeing her again. As soon as she received her work permit, she would be able to support herself.

Those were intense days with a lot of work, but we did it. It’s always good for new immigrants to have a goal. Otherwise they can be completely crushed by the grim reality of survival and isolation in the land of the free.

* * *

A few weeks later, my sister’s husband and our little brother arrived in Boston. Now that I had four mouths to feed, plus a dog, on my one-person salary, job security became even more important. After work permits arrived, my sister got a job cleaning houses, my brother-in-law worked as a cashier, and my little brother got a job at Panda Express. I continued my fourteen- to sixteen-hour days at the consulting firm. At night I worked on my book, my sister prepared for her licensing exam, my brother-in-law applied to business schools for an MBA and prepared for the GRE, and my brother studied English. The journey for survival in America was underway.

Just when I would think we were approaching equilibrium, another hurdle would appear. I was working to get the last member of our family—my dad—to come to the United States. What I didn’t know was that he had remarried and his new wife had a daughter—and they all wanted to come.

Though I was still struggling to accept my mother’s death, I did not object to my father’s remarriage, because I felt he deserved companionship. But I couldn’t afford to bring three people to America when I had only budgeted for one.

I had to say no. In doing this, I broke a Chai family taboo. We just never did that. If there was a need, we found a way to meet it. Saying no to my father was even more unthinkable.

My dad was silent for a few seconds, and then he responded in a way that was equally unfamiliar. “Ling Ling, our family has suffered so much for what you did, and now I am finally better. This new family likes me and respects me, and they visited me during the most difficult time, when no one in our town would speak to me or your brother. You can’t imagine what I’ve gone through. After your mother and grandma passed away, our home became so lonely. You don’t understand what your father was going through. . . . Well, let’s not talk about the past. I just need one answer now: Will you or will you not bring her to America?”

A massive dose of guilt broke loose in me. I gathered up my courage and said, “Dad, I am so sorry. It was really hard for me to tell you the truth that I am now stretched to the max. I can’t expand any more at this time. My siblings are fighting about wanting to go back to China. We need some time to get stabilized. Why can’t she wait for you to come out first? When our situation gets better, we can get her out. I don’t even know her. I’ve never met her . . .”

“Well, you either take all of us or none of us.”

“No, Dad. You can’t do that to me. You know how important you are to me . . .”

Tears poured down my face. After losing my mother and grandma, was I now going to lose my one last parent?

“I’m going to hang up now,” he said. “I’m done talking. Make a decision and let me know.”

I sat at my desk and cried, but then I had to get back to work. I had a big assignment to complete on a tight deadline, and my manager was breathing down my neck.

Out of my emotional turmoil, a sober reality emerged. My father had not changed at all. No matter how hard I tried, I would never be good enough for him.

That night I didn’t come home from work at all. I stayed in the office to finish my project. By the following morning, I was ready to call my dad again.

“Since the last time we spoke,” I said, “I have been working nonstop. I’m trying to keep my job. If I fail here, we will all be living on the street. I need some time to work things out. If that means I won’t be able to see you for a while, I am so sorry.”

There was a long silence on the other end. Then my dad said, “Let’s all give it some time and think about it.”

* * *

After the difficult exchange with my father, my siblings and I settled into a peaceful routine. My siblings found their own place to live, we all went to work every day, and we were no longer on the roller coaster of emotions most immigrants feel while assimilating into a new culture. We had the time and space to recover and rebuild.

On April 15, 1995, my twenty-ninth birthday, my family surprised me with a party. My sister and her husband cooked my favorite hometown meals—it was like heaven. For people in exile, the taste of food from home is one of the things we really miss that cannot be replaced by a foreign culture or American Chinese food. When my brother-in-law re-created the old recipes, it brought back a piece of my childhood and quenched the homesickness monster—at least for a while.

As I walked back to my apartment, a long-awaited peace descended on me—as if I had emerged from a long, dark tunnel of struggles. The horror of the massacre, the escape, the heartbreak with Feng, the job crisis, and the feelings of isolation were all in the past. I had persevered and overcome, and my life was now on track.

* * *

On Sunday, April 30, I picked up a copy of the
New York Times
. On an inside page, a provocative headline caught my eye: “Six Years After the Tiananmen Massacre, Survivors Clash Anew on Tactics.” The article mentioned two documentaries being produced about Tiananmen and the ongoing debate over who was responsible for the massacre. When my eyes settled on my own name, the blood drained from my face, and I felt the way I had when my name first appeared on the most-wanted list after the massacre.

Ms. Chai said the hidden strategy of the leadership group she dominated was to provoke the Government to violence against the unarmed students. With statements like “What we are actually hoping for is bloodshed” and “Only when the square is awash with blood will the people of China open their eyes,” Ms. Chai denounced those students who sought to bring an end to the occupation of the square.
10

I was stunned. I couldn’t believe this was an article in the
New York Times
, a paper I held in high regard. A reporter had called me a day or two earlier to confirm I had taped an interview. When I tried to explain it was not an interview, he ended the call.

Next, a reporter from the
Washington Post
called. He seemed sympathetic, and he gave me a little more time to answer questions, but his article’s story line was the same as the one in the
Times
. Then I got a call from a reporter for the local community paper. I told him many details, but his story line was the same as the first two articles. After six years of praising the bravery of the students and condemning the brutality of the Chinese government, these papers apparently felt they had a new angle that would grab the public’s attention. Whether it was true did not seem to matter.

I could not believe it. This was the free media we had worshiped and sacrificed our lives for in Tiananmen? What was the difference between these “independent” reports and the stories in the Communist-controlled state newspaper in China? Same story line, same message from the big flagship paper to the small local one.

My education in freedom continued. Once again I was shocked by the realities of America’s prized system: First, its politics were not totally dedicated to freedom; then its private companies were not immune to pressure from China; and now the media were marching in lockstep. It was the last place I had expected to be attacked, but there it was. The American media, which had been so instrumental in getting the true story out of China, had now turned its guns on the students and on me. These false accusations shifted responsibility for the massacre onto the students and justified the murders.

The articles in the American newspapers led to an uproar in Chinese overseas media and turmoil in the dissident community. The Chinese reporters took it one step further, accusing me of sending students to die at Tiananmen Square while I left to save my own life.

To my knowledge, there was never a “hidden strategy of the leadership group” to provoke the government to bloodshed so the country would wake up to join the revolution. As I said before, those were slogans I had picked up as a child or heard from Li Lu. Neither had I left the Square while other students were left to make the sacrifices. On the contrary, after I led the orderly withdrawal from the Square, I stepped forward, on June 8, to record an eyewitness report of the massacre, so the world would know the truth and so the students throughout the nation would maintain peace. That action brought much greater risk and repercussions to my family and me, but I believed it was important to leave a public record so the next movement could be grounded in truth, not based on cover-up lies by the government.

When we were on the Square, we didn’t have all the information necessary to make strategic decisions. We were responding to rumors and ideas and pressure from various fronts. All we knew at the time was what we knew at the time. Even looking back over twenty-two years, I’m still not entirely clear about how all the events unfolded. As others will attest, the activity on the Square was in constant flux, with new ideas being put forward, debated, and often put to a vote. There was never complete unity. Even the decision to withdraw from the Square was a split decision, and it was only when Feng took the microphone and said, “Withdraw,” that students began to move from the Square. Many students did not even hear that announcement, and it was only by word of mouth that everyone was told to join the line of retreat.

Just as I thought my wounds from Tiananmen had healed, my heart was broken by these inflammatory articles. In the past, I had weathered the attacks because I still believed the world saw the truth, remembered the truth, and stood in solidarity with the truth: The Chinese government had opened fire on unarmed citizens. But now the media and the public had lost track of the truth. The victims were presented as villains, and sacrifices were laughed off as foolishness.

The controversy sent a ripple through the dissident community and divided the already fragile democracy movement into two groups. One group, made up mostly of older dissidents who had fled to exile before my time, attacked and condemned me. The students, meanwhile, especially those who had stayed at the Square, rose up to defend the truth.

The dissident groups knew the facts and didn’t believe we’d had a secret strategy to provoke a massacre. But the debate focused on whether we should have left the Square earlier to
prevent
the massacre—implying we should be held responsible for the loss of life throughout Beijing.

The firestorm reignited my survivor’s guilt, only this time it hurt even more because it brought back to the surface two questions for which I had no answers:
How could I have not foreseen the massacre?
and 
Why was I allowed to live?

31

True Love

By 1996 my tenure at the consulting firm was quickly approaching its end. The way the business works, after three years junior associates either go on to business school or are let go. Few progress directly to the level of management consultant. I was told I needed an MBA to succeed in the business world, and Bob Maginn, my boss’s boss, recommended I apply to the top business schools. Reluctantly I applied to only one school—Harvard—and was accepted.