A Shaky Beginning to Career

Yale-educated Wei-Tai Kwock surrendered his hard-won company and career to fight for our climate, working with Vice President Al Gore for the non-profit Climate Reality Project.  This wasn’t an obvious path. His grandfathers and father were into business and science. They had all fled China when the Communists took over in 1949, his parents coming to the U.S., his paternal grandparents going to the Philliipines . HIs grandparents never set foot in China again. (See Part 1 .)Wei-Tai's father did return, though, as soon as the country started ties with the U.S. (1979), and he took Wei-Tai with him. China was not as Wei-Tai's father remembered. Still, he was proud of the country's accomplishments, and eager to introduce other Americans to it. (See Part 2.) Wei-Tai also became enchanted with the idea of leading tour groups. (See Part 3.)

Wei-Tai picked up so much of the language during the summers of his undergraduate studies, when he graduated, he decided to keep up his language progress. So, rather than applying to work on Wall Street, which was a popular choice in the 80'S,, he moved to Shanghai and enrolled in Fudan, one of China’s top five universities.

Shanghai's Fudan University ID, 1985

 He remembered the cost of education was so, so inexpensive: about $600/semester for school, about $4/day for room and board. More than that, he found himself in the midst of a UN of sorts. His fellow classmates came from all over the world: including North Korea, Russia, Czechoslovakia, Eastern Germany.  “These were countries that Americans usually never interacted with. Fortunately, China was the place where all these people could congregate. China had relations with all these countries.  As students, we sat in the same class, ate together, played baseball, volleyball and ping-pong together. And you wondered, ‘Why are these countries enemies?’ And, you realize it’s sort of contrived to be enemies. When you get to know them, they’re just the same as normal people.”

After he graduated from Fudan, he got a job as a translator and legal assistant at Paul Weiss, an American law firm with an office in Shanghai.  It was then he happened to meet his wife, Violet. Born in Hong Kong, and educated in the U.S. (Duke, Thunderbird), she had a job at IBM in Beijing.  After Shanghai, Wei-Tai was transferred to Paul Weiss in New York for two years, where he eventually concluded that he had little interest in a legal career, even less in living in New York. He had visited California several times, and had always enjoyed the place. So, hanging on only to the hope that he’d find a job in high tech, he jumped to the land of sunny blue skies. Within a week his dream had materialized, and he found himself working for a nuclear-energy consulting firm.  Monday, October 19^th, 1989 was his first day on the job. At five o’clock, he put his pencils away….and the Loma Prieta Earthquake began.

(To be continued. Next: From Nuclear to Advertising Power.)

Initial Chinese Impressions of Americans

Yale-educated Wei-Tai Kwock surrendered his hard-won company and career to fight for our climate, working with Vice President Al Gore for the non-profit Climate Reality Project.  This wasn’t an obvious path. His grandfathers and father were into business and science. They had all fled China when the Communists took over in 1949, his parents coming to the U.S., his paternal grandparents going to the Philliipines . HIs grandparents never set foot in China again. (See Part 1 .)Wei-Tai's father did return, though, as soon as the country started ties with the U.S. (1979), and he took Wei-Tai with him. China was not as Wei-Tai's father remembered. Still, he was proud of the country's accomplishments, and eager to introduce other Americans to it. (See Part 2.)

Wei-Tai also became enchanted with the idea of leading tour groups.  His goal was not only to see the country, but to learn the language.

“I did not grow up speaking Chinese except for yi, er, san, nihaoma (one, two, three, hello.) During my high school years, a friend of my father’s said, ‘Hey, you know, China is going to be a very important country during your lifetime. As a Chinese-American you better be able to speak Chinese. People are going to expect you to speak it. ‘"

Since Wei-Tai  was interested in international relations and saw the vast potential of this one-billion-person country (at that time,) he dove into a Mandarin class at Yale. He discovered that Mandarin “is an extremely difficult language to learn in the United States.  But when I traveled in China, in three weeks my fluency level picked up so much, ‘cause you’re in the environment. You see characters all over the place—from just that daily, hourly reminder of all the characters  I almost made as much progress in three weeks as I did a semester in America."

So, for the next two summers, he took Americans on tours throughout China.

As China had been closed off to the world for 30 years, many Chinese had never seen a westerner. “When we walked down the street, legions of people would be riding bikes, and just staring at us. Even walking up and just following us just to see what we were going to do.  Or to try to say hello.” Wei-Tai was 19 in 1983, but many of his clients were retired. He remembers several Chinese asking, "Are all Americans old and fat?"

Also they’d never seen blonds. “Often Chinese people would come up and ask to touch their hair.  Just cause it was so unusual."

One lady was even approached by some women, asking if they could touch her breasts, as they’d never seen any so large. Said this woman, “We must look like Martians to these people." Wei-Tai emembered China as a sometimes difficult place to live and travel, but definitely innocent and charming.  He said that the hotels varied by city and were pretty smelly by Western standards” in remote areas. (Think squat toilets.) Also, at the time, the planes in circulation were Russian jets and  propeller planes. “One time, when a portly Americana passenger tried to put his seat belt on, the whole thing came off. The stewardess told him it was OK not to wear one."

(To be continued. Next: A Shaky Beginning to Career.)

Father Dives Back into China, taking Wei-Tai Along

Yale-educated Wei-Tai Kwock surrendered his hard-won company and career to fight for our climate, working with Vice President Al Gore for the non-profit Climate Reality Project.  This wasn’t an obvious path. His grandfathers and father were into business and science. They had all fled China when the Communists took over in 1949, his parents coming to the U.S., his paternal grandparents going to the Philliipines . HIs grandparents never set foot in China again. (See Part 1 .)

Wei-Tai led some of the earliest groups of American tourists on 18-day tours through China.

Wei-Tai’s father  was a different story. He loved to travel.  “When China opened up to the west with Deng Xiao Ping in the early 80s, my dad was keen to go, but you could only get a group visa to China. There were no individual tourist visas. Group tours had started a year or two previously. 1979 was the warming-up period of relations.  So, he joined a group. At the time, Lindblad Tours, InterPacific, and Pacific Delight were the three major American tour companies that were authorized to bring tour groups to China. My dad and I went on the InterPacific tour, which was a company owned by one of his friends, Patrick Yau, of New York City.”

They even managed to visit the Kwok Home in Shanghai where Wei-Tai’s father grew up. and where a distant cousin still lived. His father had great memories of this awesome house that he lived in, because when he was growing up, Shanghai was the Paris of the East.  Even in war, the house was well-appointed.

Wei-Tai remembered walking into that old glorious house. “This three-story house that had chickens walking around indoors, and the paint is peeling off the walls. No maintenance. And, they burned coal to heat it, so there’s these coal-stained walls.  Dirty light bulbs hung from the ceiling. My father’s heart sank.  

Under Communist rule, you don’t own your home, and thus you don’t put any work into it.  You don’t try to improve it. It’s not yours.  And any home that’s gone through 40 years of no maintenance is going to look quite dilapidated.“

While Wei-Tai’s father was disappointed by the look of his glorious old home, he felt pride in the country. “When he saw China as a whole—a country that actually had transportation, had food, clothing, and was not a war-torn country in chaos but an organized place, he greatly admired the progress.  He felt proud that China had come through the Cultural Revolution and was opening up. And that the people behind the iron curtain were actually good people.”

Wei-Tai’s father wanted to know more about the country and the people he had left behind. So, for the next 20-30 years after he retired, he helped Americans tour the country. “Even at the age of 93, he’s still interested in China and travel “
Wei-Tai also became enchanted with the idea of leading tour groups, and for two summers in college led some of the earliest groups of American tourists on adventures through this heretofore closed country.

(To be continued. Next: Initial Impression of Americans)

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.)

Advice for Chinese-American Students

Mathematician, control theorist, and retired Harvard professor, Dr. Larry Yu-Chi Ho moved around a lot as a child, following his Nationalist Army (Guomindang) father to various places in the interior of China during WWII. (See post one.) At the end of the war, Larry and his families escaped to Taiwan. When he graduated high school at age 15, he came across the Pacific to attend MIT.  He met many helping hands along the way. (See post two and three.) He graduated, found a research position in one of the first-ever washing machine companies, and won the immigration lottery. (See post four.) He returned to school, this time to Harvard where he was one of a handful of students.    (See post Five.) In 2001, Larry tried to retire. Instead he was asked to provide guidance to the MIT of China. (See post Six.) With one foot in each country, I asked Larry what he saw as some of the challenges. He mentioned that while China is trying to woo students home, many of them remain in the U.S. to enjoy freedom. (See post Seven and Eight.) In the U.S., he sees that we have several issues: a mountain of debt, a mountain of garbage, and a refusal to move into the future. (See post Nine.) While he suggests the U.S. work cooperatively with China, he doesn't see China as Super Power...at least not in the near future. (See post Ten.)

Larry has a blog which describes many of his teachings/experiences throughout the years, and reaches millions of people across the globe. I asked what advice he would give today's students from China?
His first thought was that they might be better off back in China. “Foreign-educated Chinese students are very well treated. They have all kinds of opportunities to rise to the top."

"In China, you don’t have a glass ceiling to deal with. In the U.S., they will never rise up to become the President of the U.S. or president of Amazon, or so forth. There is a glass ceiling, which is even admitted by the U.S. Labor Department data.”

For those who decide to stay, he says, “Practice and live the American dream.”

(With gratitude, this concludes this interview.)

OK With China As Superpower?

Mathematician, control theorist, and retired Harvard professor, Dr. Larry Yu-Chi Ho moved around a lot as a child, following his Nationalist Army (Guomindang) father to various places in the interior of China during WWII. (See post one.) At the end of the war, Larry and his families escaped to Taiwan. When he graduated high school at age 15, he came across the Pacific to attend MIT.  He met many helping hands along the way. (See post two and three.) He graduated, found a research position in one of the first-ever washing machine companies, and won the immigration lottery. (See post four.) He returned to school, this time to Harvard where he was one of a handful of students.    (See post Five.) In 2001, Larry tried to retire. Instead he was asked to provide guidance to the MIT of China. (See post Six.) With one foot in each country, I asked Larry what he saw as some of the challenges. He mentioned that while China is trying to woo students home, many of them remain in the U.S. to enjoy freedom. (See post Seven and Eight.) In the U.S., he sees that we have several issues: a mountain of debt, a mountain of garbage, and a refusal to move into the future. (See post Nine.)

I asked Larry if he was okay with China becoming the superpower of the planet. 

“I don’t think they will….not for a long time to come. China has too many internal problems to worry about. They won’t become a super power. They are powerful enough , yes. They are one of the largest export nations. They hold a lot of U.S. debt. They are the largest holder of U.S. bonds in the world. That’s why it’s important to learn to deal with them in a cooperative fashion rather than as an adversary."

(To be continued. Next: Advice for Chinese-American Students.)

The Main Three Problems in U.S.

Mathematician, control theorist, and retired Harvard professor, Dr. Larry Yu-Chi Ho moved around a lot as a child, following his Nationalist Army (Guomindang) father to various places in the interior of China during WWII. (See post one.) At the end of the war, Larry and his families escaped to Taiwan. When he graduated high school at age 15, he came across the Pacific to attend MIT.  He met many helping hands along the way. (See post two and three.) He graduated, found a research position in one of the first-ever washing machine companies, and won the immigration lottery. (See post four.) He returned to school, this time to Harvard where he was one of a handful of students.( See post FiveIn 2001, Larry tried to retire. Instead he was asked to provide guidance to the MIT of China. (See post Six.) With one foot in each country, I asked Larry what he saw as some of the challenges. He mentioned that while China is trying to woo students home, many of them remain in the U.S. to enjoy freedom. (See post seven and Eight.)

Larry saw three challenges facing the U.S.:

MONEY: “We owe China a lot of money. We are living beyond our means. So many people feel so much entitlement.”

Larry says we are hanging by a string, both intellectually and monetarily, in our schools. “Without all the foreign students—I’m not talking about Chinese students—the U.S. University would collapse.  There would be no graduate students... A lot of U.S. students don’t aspire to be educated at the graduate level in technology, and so forth.  And, that’s actually—I view it as one of our biggest problems. 

RESOURCES: “The world is finite. If China becomes stronger, you have to share some of the wealth of this earth. I mean we—the U.S.--consumes 30-50 times more resources than the rest of the world. That situation cannot last. We export all kinds of pollution out of our country to other places. In fact, until very recently, to China.  All that garbage was dumped there in the ocean. That  kind of situation cannot go on. We have no right to consume that much resources compared to other nations. We have to learn to change."

ATTITUDE: Larry sees the U.S. as suffering from its hold on the past. “We should accept the fact that China is now a rising power, and we cannot have the same kind of influence and domination of the Asia region. You have to let China have some influence there. After WWII, and in the 50’s, we were the only single power, and everybody listened to us. But, now we have to learn to accept the situation that we are not the only superpower in Asia."

Larry insists that, “China has very little desire to acquire more territory or be—what is it called—a hegemon. I mean they are acting civilly. They are not seeking to take over some place—maybe a couple of islands in the South China Sea. That’s about all. They have no interest in taking over, say, Southeast Asia. Or for that matter, the Philippines. So I don’t think we need to worry about that. But we have to accept the fact that we have to live with them."
(To be continued. Next: Ok with China as Superpower?)