One Good Teacher Makes Difference

Retired NASA Chemist, Winifred Huo, was born in Guangzhou, China two weeks before the start of the Sino-Japanese war.  She recalls the first eight years of her life as looking for a safe place to live, and a place where her father could work. (see post one.) Winifred's highly-educated father was assigned to Guangdong to help build the impossible: the Burma Road. (see post two.) Two years after arriving, the Japanese invaded and the family had to make a quick escape. (see post three.)

When the war ended, they returned to Guangzhou. Although they had lived so many places, and spent lots of time and energy moving and getting settled and moving again, Winifred had kept up with her studies.  Her mother—although not highly educated—had insisted on it.

“She came from a somewhat untraditional family. My grandfather was against bound feet, an unusual view for his generation.  He insisted that none of his daughters should have bound feet."

The practice of foot binding lasted a millennium, from the 10th-20th century.

“She never worked. But she always admired women who worked, and always told us, ‘Look at so-and-so. She’s having a career. She’s able to be independent.’ So she was very emphatic about that.”

Winifred’s mother’s tutoring and concern paid off. For, after the end of the war, when they returned to Guangzhou, the school system tested all the children to see what grade they should enter. Winifred tested two years ahead. 

While they thought they were done with all this moving around, 1949 (the takeover of the Communists) came. So, once again, Winifred moved to Hong Kong. 

“I finished my high school in Hong Kong. The high school I went to was originally established by the American Baptist church. It was a missionary girls’ school. I had a very good science teacher.”
Winifred had discovered her passion.

(To be continued. Next: Disappointment Opens Door to Better Opportunity.)

Wartime Escape Just Like Movies

Retired NASA Chemist, Winifred Huo, was born in Guangzhou, China two weeks before the start of the Sino-Japanese war.  She recalls the first eight years of her life as looking for a safe place to live, and a place where her father could work. (see post one.) Winifred's highly-educated father was assigned to Guangdong to help build the impossible: the Burma Road. (see post two.)

Two years after they moved to the wartime provincial capitol of Guangdong, the Japanese occupied the area. Winifred remembers what it was like to escape.

“It’s just like what the movie looks like. Everyone—young and old –some carrying the bedding. It’s really like that. Since my father was working for the Department of Public Works, they had trucks. Because my mother was pregnant at the time, they arranged for her to ride on the truck. My mother and I rode on the truck. So we had not too bad an experience except that, as you went along the mountain, the truck driver would say, ‘Well this is where the local bandits are.’ So they would stop and negotiate.  And, then sometimes you would get to some place and the driver would say, “We cannot take this route because the Japanese have occupied it.” So you had to turn around and go back and find a different route.  It was an interesting experience looking back, but at the time—I didn’t know better—but my mother was very worried.” 
(To be continued.  Next: One Good Teacher Makes Difference.)

American Education Fosters Engineering Milestone

Retired NASA Chemist, Winifred Huo, was born in Guangzhou, China two weeks before the start of the Sino-Japanese war.  She recalls the first eight years of her life as looking for a safe place to live, and a place where her father could work. (see post one.) 

Winifred’s father was a highly-educated engineer who received his Bachelor Degree in Civil Engineering from Jiaotong University, got his Master’s at University of Michigan, and returned to China,

“He got a job in the provincial Department of Public Works. After the Sino-Japanese war started, he was transferred to the team building the Burma Road.

“The  Burma road is the connection from Yunnan Province to Burma. During the Sino-Japanese war and WWII the big problem for the Chinese was weapons—the Chinese were not good at making weapons. All the good weapons came from the West. And there was no way to do importing.  The Japanese blocked the whole eastern coast.  So the easiest way (to import weapons) was from Burma or India. It was a highway through the jungles and mountains.”

Building the road was a huge team effort of which Winifred’s father was a part. It was also considered one of the remarkable engineering achievements of the time.  
“My mother and I followed him as he went along.  We went to Yunnan for a year and Guizhou for half a year. We spent about two years in Guangdong.”

(To be continued.  Next: Wartime Escape Just Like Movies.)

Seeking Safe Place To Live

Winifred Huo, a retired atmospheric chemist from NASA-Ames Research Center, studied chemistry before women were doing those things. Her focus was on the behavior of molecules under high temperatures, a key component necessary to the entry of space vehicles. She is a recipient of the NASA Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal (1994).  

She was born in Guangzhou less than two months before the Japanese attacked China in 1937.  During the next eight years of war, her family would move four times, hoping to stay ahead of the danger.
“We kept moving. It was interesting. I remember when I was young I tried to learn all sorts of languages/dialects. Whenever I went to a new school, the first two months I would have to keep my mouth shut because nobody understood what I was saying, and I didn’t understand them.  By the time I was able to communicate well with my classmates, I had to move again. We were trying to find a safe place to stay and for my father to work.”

(To be continued. Next: American Education Fosters Engineering Milestone.)

Poignant American Story

Dynamic activist Gerry Low-Sabado, who lives in Fremont, travelled 90 miles to Monterey to show me her ancestors' village. (Post one.) She first led us to Point Lobos, a point not only of nature but history, she said. Her great grandmother's photo is in the Whaler's Village. (Post two.) Her great-great grandfather floated over from Canton, escaping the chaos and poverty that accompanied war. (Post three.) Gerry researched her ancestors, and so had lots of information to share when CSU-Monterey Bay expressed interest. A documentary came from that research, and bolstered Gerry to spread the word.(Post four.) People didn't always want to hear her words. (Post five.) Still, making history correct became Gerry's mission. (Post six.) While at the Chinese cabin, we encountered a European who said that accepting others is a problem everywhere. (Post seven.) Working together with the city of Pacific Grove, Gerry managed to create the Walk of Remembrance as well as remove offensive lines in an annual festival performance. (Post eight and nine.) Working together with the city of Pacific Grove, Gerry managed to create the Walk of Remembrance as well as remove offensive lines in an annual festival performance. (Post eight and nine.)

On October 15, three years after I first met Gerry, I attended her award ceremony, as she was presented with the ACLU’s Ralph B. Atkinson Award for Civil Liberties. She accepted the award for all of her efforts in sharing the Chinese history of Pacific Grove/Monterey.
“I have visualized and hoped for change with kindness for so long, and now it has been embraced by us all. I am joyous."

"Others, who I was once afraid of, I now consider my friends as we collaborate together to tell the story of our Chinese-American ancestors and their villages. We’ve started meeting with each other, listening to each other, crying together and working with each other to build bridges of understanding and respect.  

"The process for change has begun, and our Chinese ancestors fishing village and their stories will continue because we believe in the truth, and we believe in each other. Our story is a poignant and compelling American story.

"I feel that working together, talking together, respecting each other is so much different than what we are seeing on TV in the news these days. I believe that the bonds that we have built could be a model for the world. Right here, our friendships we are telling each other to be proud of each other, to lift each other up.”

(With gratitude and thanks to Gerry, this concludes this interview.)

Walk of Remembrance

Dynamic activist Gerry Low-Sabado, who lives in Fremont, travelled 90 miles to Monterey to show me her ancestors' village. (Post one.) She first led us to Point Lobos, a point not only of nature but history, she said. Her great grandmother's photo is in the Whaler's Village. (Post two.) Her great-great grandfather floated over from Canton, escaping the chaos and poverty that accompanied war. (Post three.) Gerry researched her ancestors, and so had lots of information to share when CSU-Monterey Bay expressed interest. A documentary came from that research, and bolstered Gerry to spread the word.(Post four.) People didn't always want to hear her words. (Post five.) Still, making history correct became Gerry's mission. (Post six.) While at the Chinese cabin, we encountered a European who said that accepting others is a problem everywhere. (Post seven.) Working together with the city of Pacific Grove, Gerry managed to create the Walk of Remembrance as well as remove offensive lines in an annual festival performance. (Post eight.)

The Walk of Remembrance has become an annual tradition, and it grows more and more popular each year. Gerry gives a short presentation of the history at the Pacific Grove Natural Museum, which is followed by a lion dance, and then a hike along the path where her ancestors once lived.  

Gerry points out where her grandfather would fish. When tensions got tight, her grandfather (who could not swim) went out in his boat at night with a kerosene lantern. He thus discovered that squid are attracted to light. While her grandfather was not a swimmer and her mother is not a swimmer and Gerry is not a swimmer, she made sure both of her children could swim. In fact, her daughter Amber swam backstroke on a relay team that broke the national record.  Her son Brandon’s swim team was the Mission Valley Athletic League Champions.
“Even though the ancestors didn’t swim, we changed that history.”

Some years ago Brandon did a triathlon at Pacific Grove called the Kelp Crawl. When he emerged out of the water at Lover’s Point, exactly where they hold the Feast of Lanterns celebration, Gerry was awestruck.

“I see him as an artifact of the Chinese village emerging out of the ocean. The 6^th generation emerging out of that water. He is the symbol of strength and courage. The symbol that –even though they tried to push everything into the ocean—they bulldozed the village into the ocean--the artifacts are emerging back out.”  

(To be continued.  Next and Final: Gerry Receives Civil Liberties Award.)

Happy Doing Right Thing

Dynamic activist Gerry Low-Sabado, who lives in Fremont, travelled 90 miles to Monterey to show me her ancestors' village. (Post one.) She first led us to Point Lobos, a point not only of nature but history, she said. Her great grandmother's photo is in the Whaler's Village. (Post two.) Her great-great grandfather floated over from Canton, escaping the chaos and poverty that accompanied war. (Post three.) Gerry researched her ancestors, and so had lots of information to share when CSU-Monterey Bay expressed interest. A documentary came from that research, and bolstered Gerry to spread the word.(Post four.) People didn't always want to hear her words. (Post five.) Still, making history correct became Gerry's mission. (Post six.) While at the Chinese cabin, we encountered a European who said that accepting others is a problem everywhere. (Post seven.)

Another issue that Gerry wanted to work on was an event that has been going on since the village burned to the ground in 1906: The Feast of Lanterns. Young people re-enact a performance of the Butterfly Lovers, a Chinese drama that tells the story of a young woman who falls in love with a man her father disapproves of.  At one point during the performance, the father says to his daughter’s lover, “Pig, son of swine. I’ll cut you up and feed you to the crows.” The audience has always jumped on this line and booed him.  

Gerry suggested that this line be changed.

“People in the community were telling me, ‘Oh, you’re just being silly. It’s just a play.’

“No, it’s disrespectful. When you say, ‘Pig, son of swine, I’m gonna cut you up and feed you to the crows’ what are you teaching your children?  What I say is don’t boo anybody. Because this is the town where the Chinese were burned out, they should see it as booing the people they burned out.

“The mayor of Pacific Grove—because she saw that I was trying to bring about change with the play and probably knowing that wasn’t going to happen—suggested I create an event. I think they thought that if I did that I wouldn’t press them for change of the other. But while I’m happy I had my own event—The Walk of Remembrance—it still bothered me that they were booing the Chinese a few months later.”

Thus began the Walk of Remembrance in in 2009, where I first met Gerry.

Last year, two weeks before the event, the vice president of the Feast of Lanterns called Gerry. “They told me they were going to take out the sentence.  I was crying. They were crying. The fact that they were crying told me they knew the importance of this. So we were all happy crying together."

(To be continued.  Next: Walk of Remembrance.)