Wei-Tai Kwok Takes Road Less-Traveled

Wei-Tai Kwok, Volunteer Climate Activist

Yale-educated Wei-Tai Kwok sacrificed his company and career to become a Climate-Change activist, volunteering with former Vice President Al Gore’s non-profit Climate Reality Project.  This wasn’t an obvious path for him. His grandfathers were both bankers, his father an engineer, and, in fact, Wei-Tai was educated in business. 

Both his parents were born in China (Wuxi) and Hong Kong, and both of them came to the U.S. to study.

“My dad, by 1946, had finished his degree at St. John’s University (Shanghai), been through the war (WWII), went to U Penn for a Master’s degree in engineering, and then another bachelor’s degree at Case Western Reserve.  At the time—in the ’49 period when the Communists took over China--he didn’t want to back. He was just trying to extend his foreign student status here until he could figure out a way to stay here in the States.”

Wei-Tai’s mother and father met in Philadelphia in the late 50s, got married in 1961, and they stayed. His dad worked at VA Hospitals for 24 years until he retired.

Both of his grandparents  also fled China in ‘49 when the Communists came.

“On my mother’s side, they ended up fleeing to the Philippines. They were in Manila for a little while, and eventually moved to Cebu, the second largest city in the Philippines, where my grandfather became an executive with China Banking Corporation. “

“My grandmother told me that in 1974, she finally bought a refrigerator because she realized she wasn’t going back to China. She had thought, ‘I don’t want to buy this expensive refrigerator. We might go back to China.’ She held out hope from 1949-1974 before she realized she was going to be staying forever in the Philippines.”

In 1974 China had the Cultural Revolution, Chairman Mao, the Gang of Four—none of these offered Wei-Tai’s grandmother hope of returning.  Even when China opened relations to the west, and people began returning, Wei-Tai’s grandparents stayed put.

“They were afraid, because my grandpa feared that as a banker/capitalist, his name could be on a blacklist. Even though China opened up to the west in the 80s and 90s, and I myself lived in Shanghai during that period, he was reluctant to visit.  Afraid that he would be trapped, or something like that.  He did not dare return—even though he dreamed of it.”

Wei-Tai’s grandparents died in Cebu, their dream of returning never fulfilled.

(To be continued. Next: Father Dives Back Into China, Taking Wei-Tai Along.)