Chinese American dream chaser turn their eyes back
- Source: Global Times
- [21:36 June 11 2009]
- Comments
Illustration: Liu Rui
By Yu Donghui
When talking about different kinds of stories of Chinese people chasing their dreams, it’s unavoidable to mention one topic — those who return to China to continue their career development.
Its remarkable success achieved in only 30 years has made China another place people come to for dream-chasing. Chinese people who have realized their “American dreams” and those who are still striving for it begin to turn their eyes to their home country.
As reported before, lots of Chinese have waited for a long time for US citizenship, but many of them who have realized their dreams in the US now want to give up their American nationality. The flimsy piece of paper desi g n a t i n g their nationality has turned out to be a besieged fortress.
Xiao Yingxian’s experience might be a good example. In 1988, Xiao worked for the Beijing Institute of Microbiology under the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He came to the US armed with dreams and aspirations, determined to make a great achievement in the field of biological research. Now 21 years have passed by, and Xiao said, “While I believe what I’m doing now is valuable and I’ve made some achievements, the results are far from my dream.”
Xiao said that people of his generation had a thirst for knowledge and a sense of mission. When he had an opportunity to go to the US, he first thought of learning advanced technology, getting a PhD and going on to accomplish great things. After five years’ hard study in the US, Xiao received his PhD from the University of Maryland. He decided to stay in the US for post-doctoral research and planned to return to China after obtaining outstanding results. Unexpectedly, small and medium payoffs came one after another. But the big accomplishment he dreamed of remained beyond reach.
Thinking back to those days, Xiao sighed and said, “If making an outstanding achievement in scientific research is an American dream, I’m now still far from that dream.”
H e said that as his age advanced, he felt a little disturbed when he thought about this.
He was afraid that the dream of his l i f e would never come true. So many years had passed by, and he still could point to no glorious accomplishment in the US. When thinking of this, he always feel that he could not face his parents and friends in China. But at the same time, he and his peers have always been thinking of returning home.
In March of this year, Bai Yansong, the noted host of CCTV, China’s national TV station, gave a speech at Yale that best summed up the essence of Chinese people’s dreams. “I can’t name another country that has dramatically changed people’s lives in the past 30 years the way China has. Over the years, Chinese people seemed to view the US through a telescope.
All the good things about the US are enlarged by this telescope. It is often heard how good it is in America, and people ask when life in China will be the same as life in America. While people in the US also seem to view China through a telescope, I suspect they are holding the telescope in the wrong way. Forty years ago, the famous speech given by Doctor Martin Luther King — ‘I have a dream!’ — spread all around the world. In the Far East, there is also a dream. It is not an empty slogan. It does not exist only in government. It belongs to every ordinary Chinese.”
Whether or not you actually attain your dream is not the real point. The important thing is to have the dream, and to follow it to the best of your ability. It is through this process that China has grown so quickly, and the lives of its people have improved so significantly.