by Weijian Shan
I packed so much into those two days in Washington, DC. It was a great exposure to US institutions and a great learning experience. Now I realized why the Asia Foundation arranged for me to take this trip to the East Coast. I only had seen a small corner of the country before this trip.
I flew back to San Francisco just before the fall semester began.
* * *
One big challenge for me for my last semester at USF was, again, money. The private donation from the Cassous covered my tuition and fees, but the financial support from the Asia Foundation for my living expenses ended with the conclusion of my East Coast visit. I needed to find a way to support myself.
Sandy and Connie Calhoun, who had hosted me over the winter break, invited me to live with them. I was grateful for the opportunity to save a bit of money and felt very warm toward the family. But more importantly, Sandy helped me get a job.
By then, I had completed a year’s worth of studies at law school. Graham & James, the law firm where Sandy Calhoun was a senior partner (later merged into Squire, Sanders & Dempsey), offered me a job as an intern. The firm was located in Embarcadero Center. I was excited about this job, not only for the money but also for the experience. And the salary was good. The firm offered to pay me $1,200 per month. It later raised it to $1,300, presumably because the partners there found me useful. I was pleased with the pay. It was enough to cover my living expenses with plenty to spare. Since I was planning to go back home at the end of the year, I was hoping to bring some gifts for my family and friends.
The second week of work at Graham & James, on September 15, 1981, Sandy Calhoun invited me to visit the mayor’s office with him. He had been appointed the Commissioner of East Asia Arts of San Francisco, and asked me to attend his swearing-in ceremony.
The mayor of San Francisco was a 48-year-old Democrat named Dianne Feinstein. Mayor Feinstein had been head of the city’s Board of Supervisors until November 1978, when her predecessor, George Moscone, and her colleague on the Board of Supervisors, Harvey Milk, were assassinated by Dan White, a disgruntled rival politician. Feinstein served out the rest of Moscone’s term and won reelection in her own right the following year. I was impressed by how young she looked. She had a large porcelain statue of an old Chinese sage in her office. She told me it was a statue of Confucius. I wasn’t so sure because the statue was quite colorful, and Confucius was usually presented as a rather dull, colorless old scholar. She explained, however, that a museum curator told her it was Confucius. I was impressed with her interest in Chinese art and history. Under her leadership, San Francisco had established a sister-city relationship with Shanghai. She told me that she was going there for a visit the following Monday.
I found the work at Graham & James interesting. I had a room to myself with a phone and a desk, and I was delighted to find I could use all the office facilities, including the library. I had never worked in an office before. Mr. Calhoun had a British secretary named Della. Della was cool and reserved and spoke with a distinct British accent. Mr. Calhoun received a copy of Reader’s Digest at the office every month, but he never read it. Many years ago, he said, he’d gotten a deal to pay for a lifetime subscription. Since then he had received a copy every month even though he had long ago stopped reading it. I had loved Reader’s Digest ever since I began studying English back in Beijing. I was happy to put his free copy to good use. Even after I finished working at Graham & James, Della would make a point of mailing the magazine to me every month.
I was placed under the mentorship of a partner named Bob Patterson, helping the lawyers with their legal research. I was requested to fill in a time sheet for all the work I did; the time sheet was the basis to bill clients. I was quite certain my work earned enough for the firm to cover my pay, for which I felt happy.
In 1981, the computer revolution was just beginning to change the way office work was done. One day at law school, Professor Garvey showed me a clipped newspaper article with a photograph of a machine called a “personal computer,” which IBM had just produced. “Look at what they have come up with,” he said excitedly to me. “With a machine like this, it will make writing so much easier.”
At Graham & James, I discovered there was already an electronic service for legal research. It was called Lexis Nexis, and would print out all the relevant cases when a keyword was typed in. But the service was expensive, it required the approval of a partner to use it, and was used only if it was difficult to locate the right materials through Shepardizing.
One day, a partner named Norman Laboe gave me an assignment. One of his clients wanted to sue the San Francisco city government for condemning and seizing a property of his, purportedly for the purpose of building some public works. But the city eventually abandoned the project and sold the property for a profit. The client did not think this was fair and wanted to either recover the property or the profit the government had made.
The case fell under the doctrine of “eminent domain,” which is the power of government to take over private property for the purpose of public use. It seemed unfair to me that the government could condemn someone’s private property and then turn around and sell it at a profit. Nonetheless, through my research, I discovered that our client did not have a case. The government only needed to prove that it had intended to build the public works as announced, and that the compensation given to our client was fair at the time the property was condemned. If the government later changed its mind and abandoned the project, it was under no obligation to give the property back to the previous owner or to pay the difference in price.
I wrote a memo to Norman to that effect. When I next went to the office, Bob Patterson shared with me a handwritten note Norman had sent him. It read: “Mr. Shan did a fantastic job on the question. The fact I don’t like the answer is irrelevant. I am convinced that he came down on the legally correct side of the equation.” Needless to say, I was delighted he thought my work was useful.
This particular case also quite intrigued me, in the same way that Mrs. Cassou’s warning against trespassing on private property had when I was visiting her in Greenwich. Even though private property and ownership were regarded as sacred and were protected by law, the government had the power to take private properties for the good of the public, provided fair compensation was paid. In China, there was almost no real private property, but it was difficult to seize land from someone occupying it even though all the land was supposed to be state-owned. I was reminded of a wall that BIFT had been building before I left Beijing. There was a small tree growing where the wall was supposed to cut through. BIFT approached the farmer who claimed to own the tree, asking him to relocate it so that they could build the wall. But the farmer refused and the negotiation failed. Eventually, the wall had to zigzag to avoid the tree.
The experience also made me think back to what Andy Andrews had said when he tried to persuade me to study law, that China did not really have a legal system. It seemed that China still had a long way to go to build its system of laws as it moved in the direction of the market and private ownership.
Being a lawyer was a lot of hard work. I always had perfect eyesight. But reading all the fine print in legal documents day after day took a toll on my eyes. One evening, I walked out of the office and was about to cross the street. Then I noticed that I could not clearly read the street sign on the opposite side. It seemed blurry. I went to see an optometrist. She said, “Look, you have to accept the fact that you now need glasses.” That was quite bad news for me, as I always thought myself lucky to have good vision. Fortunately, the glasses she prescribed for me made only minor corrections to my eyesight and, more often than not, I did not wear them.
At school, Professor Murray asked me to fill in three application forms for PhD programs: New York University, the University of Washington (in Seattle), and the University of California at Berkeley. I thought that money was an insurmountable obstacle, so I did not hold out much hope. I did not do any research about PhD programs
in different universities or take the initiative to pick any specific degree programs. I just did what Professor Murray asked me to do.
Coincidentally, the Asia Foundation arranged for me to visit the University of Washington to give a presentation on China to a group of students and faculty members. The few Chinese students in the audience were all from Taiwan. At one point, one person in the audience asked me about the relationship between Taiwan and Mainland China. I said, “Well, Taiwan is part of China.” I then realized that the statement could be a bit controversial for the Taiwanese students, as the Nationalist government in Taiwan claimed to be the legitimate government of the whole of China. So I continued without a pause, “or China is part of Taiwan.” The audience laughed.
That visit went well. The business school tried to woo me to its PhD program and offered me a full scholarship. My application to UC Berkeley was received favorably as well. The lead professor there, Dick Holton, worked hard to get me all the financial support necessary, not only for myself but also for my wife. He introduced me to Captain Tsui, a private businessman and the owner of one of Oakland’s Free Trade Zones. Captain Tsui agreed to provide Berkeley with funding in support of my program.
I was going to go back to Beijing after completing my MBA program at the end of 1981. The big challenge remained whether or not BIFT would allow me to return to the United States to pursue a PhD program. All my friends offered to help. Dr. Williams of the Asia Foundation and Professor Bill Murray were going to visit Beijing soon. They both told me they would do their best to lobby BIFT authorities on my behalf, even before I returned to Beijing, to get the institute to allow me to come back to the States to pursue a PhD.
I completed my MBA program by Christmas 1981, after one year and three months in America. I spent my second Christmas and New Year in San Francisco. On January 9, 1982, I left San Francisco to fly to Hong Kong on my way back to Beijing.
I felt, however, as the opening line in a song made famous by Tony Bennett went, that “I left my heart in San Francisco.”
Chapter 21
The People’s Republic of Berkeley
Frederick F. Low was a Gold Rusher. Few people remember him today, but he held a few prominent positions in his life that link him to my story. Born in Maine in 1828, he was a self-taught man. He came to California hoping to make a fortune and struck gold within a few months, unearthing about $1,500 worth of it. His gold haul was worth more than $5 million in today’s money ($100 in 1850 = $3,412.56 in 2017), a handsome amount. He was elected to the US Congress in 1862 as a representative of California, a year after the outbreak of the US Civil War; a year after that, he was elected governor of the state and served until 1867. Under his governorship two great California institutions were established: Yosemite National Park and the University of California.
Even fewer people know that two years after he left the governor’s office, he became the US ambassador to China. His title, quite grandly, was Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to the Great Qing Empire; more simply, he was the United States Minister to China. By then China’s fortunes were on the decline and the country was greatly weakened by the corrupt rule of the later Qing emperors, a defeat in both Opium Wars at the hands of Britain, and the invasion of foreign powers. It is unclear whether Low, as the US ambassador, ever set foot on China’s soil.
Frederick Low is remembered mainly as the founder of the University of California. He had set in motion the establishment of the great educational and research institution it is today. Its first major campus was established at Berkeley, across the bay from San Francisco, in 1868, although by then Frederick Low had been succeeded by Henry H. Haight as governor.
Today, the University of California has 10 campuses across the great state, with more than a quarter million students and more than 20,000 faculty members. The UC system is recognized as one of the finest university systems in the world. In particular, its oldest campus, Berkeley, has consistently ranked among the top universities in the United States. The UC system has produced 187 Nobel laureates and counting, more than 50 percent of the total for the entire United States (which has a total of 371 laureates, including recipients of the nonacademic Nobel Peace Prize). Berkeley alone has had 104 Nobel laureates, four times as many as Russia, which garnered just 26 even including the former Soviet Union. Berkeley is truly a first-rate research institution with a reputation for academic excellence.
Known for its liberalism and tolerance in both academics and politics, Berkeley has also been a hotbed of political activism. Berkeley was ground zero for the hippie movement and the antiwar movement during the 1960s and 1970s. Berkeley has a rebellious spirit probably unrivaled anywhere else in the world among institutions of higher learning.
* * *
After finishing my studies at the University of San Francisco, I went back to Beijing in January 1982 to rejoin the faculty at the Beijing Institute of Foreign Trade. China was going through much change due to Deng Xiaoping’s policies of market-oriented reforms and opening up to the outside world. Now private businesses in the form of proprietorships were encouraged. Deng said of the new policy: “Let some people get rich first.” The first foreign-owned hotel, managed by Holiday Inn, had just opened in Beijing.
At BIFT, a new Department of Management was established to teach business in the Western style. I was asked to offer a course in Western mainstream economics to train new faculty members for the Department of Management. The trainees had been carefully selected from among the best of the most recent graduates from the Department of English. The textbook I used for the course was Economics by Richard G. Lipsey and Peter O. Steiner, copies of which had been shipped to me by the Asia Foundation. Armed only with some basic concepts of economics picked up in my MBA program at USF, I had to train myself first before I lectured my trainees. I taught my class in English. My students, who were smart, highly motivated, and eager to learn, kept me constantly on my toes. They had now had so much exposure to visiting faculty members from foreign countries that they were as proactive as US students in asking questions, making points, and challenging the teacher. I found it stimulating to teach this class, but I also felt compelled to read up to stay ahead of them.
The subject matter of my course was, I admit, quite dry, and I did my best to liven it up with examples of practical applications of economics in current events. I often used articles from the newly expanded collection of publications in the school’s library and reading room, including BusinessWeek and the Wall Street Journal, although the copies were somewhat outdated. The expanded collection of foreign publications reflected a new level of openness, which I found refreshing and encouraging.
Between March and April 1982, I received acceptance letters with full scholarships from the PhD programs of all three universities to which Professor Murray of USF had asked me to apply. I was worried I might not be able to receive the necessary permission from my institute to return to the United States to further my studies. After all, I had just come back to China. Professor Murray and others intensively lobbied the leaders of BIFT on my behalf. As luck would have it, Xu Shiwei, BIFT’s vice president in charge of academic affairs, was visiting San Francisco. The senior members of the Asia Foundation, including Dr. Williams, L. Z. Yuan, and Andy Andrews, strongly impressed upon him that my enrollment in a doctorate program would help further the relationship between the foundation and BIFT. The lobbying worked. Mr. Xu sent a cable from San Francisco to instruct the personnel department of BIFT to process my papers for my return to the States.
* * *
On August 21, 1982, I flew back to San Francisco. It felt almost like a homecoming. I was excited about starting my doctorate program at UC Berkeley. But I also felt deep regret that I had to leave my wife behind yet again, and there was no telling when we would see each other next. The separation was painful. But being among the first Chinese students from the PRC, if not the first, to earn a PhD in United States was an opportunity that neither Bin nor I ever consi
dered turning down.
Our marriage so far had been punctuated by separations. After just six months I’d left for America the first time, and we were apart for more than a year. Now, after less than a year together in Beijing, I was off again. Communication was difficult then. Like most people in China at that time, Bin didn’t have ready access to a telephone, nor could I afford to call her; overseas calls were prohibitively expensive. We relied on letters to keep in touch through what would be a period of intense joy and sadness.
After I arrived in Berkeley, I rented a room in a small house owned by Jean Radford, a kindly woman who was a professional cellist. Situated on El Camino Real in Berkeley, it was biking distance to campus. My room cost $200 a month, thanks to Berkeley’s rent control policy, which was good for tenants but not so popular with landlords. Because of the restrictions on raising rent, I’d heard of landlords in the area who did not improve their rental properties. But Jean’s home was comfortable and well maintained.
On the first day of class, I rode the roughly two miles to campus on a borrowed bicycle. While crossing Sproul Plaza, the heart of UC Berkeley, I saw a huge red banner in front of the school bookstore. It read:
FOR ALL THINGS REACTIONARY, IF YOU DON’T HIT THEM, THEY WON’T FALL DOWN. THIS IS LIKE SWEEPING THE FLOOR: WHERE THE BROOM DOES NOT REACH, THE DUST WILL NOT CLEAN ITSELF. —MAO ZEDONG
I stopped and stared, mouth agape. Wow, I thought, this was like the Cultural Revolution all over again. Since his death, Mao’s quotations had largely disappeared from public places in China. The last place I expected to see them reemerge was the United States.
This quotation from Chairman Mao, I soon found, along with policies like rent control, was why some people jokingly referred to the town as “the People’s Republic of Berkeley.” The city was a bastion of liberalism and radicalism in the 1960s and 1970s, known for the hippie counterculture and the anti–Vietnam War movement. In the campus bookstore, a portrait of Karl Marx stared down from the wall, along with one of Albert Einstein.