From Darkness to Sight

by Ming Wang

  “We are delighted to be going to China,” he said. “China and the U.S. have been building a very strong relationship in recent years. I have great hopes for what we can accomplish together.”

  In that moment, I felt like I was living in one of the movies I had screened at the film festival on campus. I was just a poor kid from Hangzhou who almost didn’t make it to college. And now here I was, face to face with the President of the United States in a West Wing conference room. Amazing!

  President Reagan talked about the history of educational collaboration between the two countries. He described the Boxer Rebellion near the end of the nineteenth century, and how America had asked the Chinese government to use the money that it otherwise would have paid the U.S. for helping to put down the rebellion, to instead send students overseas to study in America. That resulted in the first wave of Chinese exchange students who came to the U.S. in the beginning of the twentieth century.

  After he talked with us for a few minutes, President Reagan said, “I’ll be happy to meet each of you for photos.”

  As head of the U.S. Chinese Student and Scholar delegation, I was the first to be escorted across the hall to a smaller room, where President Reagan was waiting with a photographer and other members of his staff. He welcomed me and shook my hand again. I held this leader in great esteem, so I was surprised by how warm and friendly he was. He asked me how I was doing, where I was from, and what I was studying in graduate school. He was down-to-earth, and we had a wonderful conversation. Talking to him felt like being with my own grandfather.

  We had our picture taken in front of an oblong mirror on the wall, my young face beaming as bright as the mirror’s flowery gold frame. While it may have been hard for me to believe, the truth was that I wasn’t on a movie set, and Reagan was no longer an actor. The eight of us who met the Vice President Bush and the President Reagan that day were completely ecstatic when we left. The photo of the President and me arrived in the mail at my home not long afterward, signed with the President’s own hand. Little did I know at the time that this event, along with many more to come, would inspire my interest in making a difference in social and political issues in America.

  I have treasured that photograph with President Reagan ever since that day, and so does my family back in China, where world leaders are esteemed as kings. I sent copies of the photo to Hangzhou, one of which my family framed and hung on the wall, right near the front door where visitors would surely see it. One of my uncles showed his copy of the photo to his manager at work, and was soon promoted for apparently being so well connected. Though I lived so far away, I continued to fulfill the promise I made to my family when I first came to America—to bring great honor to the Wang family name. At the same time, I was indebted to those who had given me the chance to shine, both in China and here in the States.

  Chapter 10

  A Dream Renewed

  Dr. Norman Anderson walked into his office where I had been waiting for some time, patiently perched on a couch just inside the door. He glanced at me, stopped only briefly to shake my hand, and then walked across the spacious room to a big, oak desk by the far wall. With his back to me, he began shuffling some papers.

  “What brings you here, Mr. … er … Wang?” he asked, not looking up from the file in his hands.

  “I want to find out how to apply for medical-school,” I said. “I was hoping you would advise me on the application process.”

  I followed him across the room, expecting him to ask me to sit down in one of the chairs near his desk. But he didn’t. We stood for the entire length of our interview, which turned out to be not very long at all anyway.

  It was the spring of 1986. I had scheduled a meeting with Dr. Anderson, the assistant dean of admissions for the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, to find out the prerequisites for medical-school. Dr. Anderson was tall and imposing, and wore a white lab coat that would barely close around his massive frame, the buttons bulging from the strain.

  He lifted his head and looked squarely at me. “So, where are you from?”

  “I’m from China,” I replied.

  The look on his face implied he had already assessed my ethnic origin. I told him I had come to Maryland to study laser atomic physics. I handed him a copy of my résumé, but he gave it only a cursory glance.

  “I have no idea what kind of education you received in China, and now you want to go to medical-school here in the U.S.,” he said in a haughty and dismissive tone. “Do you understand how difficult it is even for American students to get into medical-school in this country?”

  I stared at him, completely taken aback.

  “Johns Hopkins is one of the best medical-schools in the U.S.” he continued. “You’re wasting your time here.”

  My face felt hot. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Dr. Anderson hadn’t even looked at my résumé, nor inquired about anything I had done, yet he had already questioned my academic preparation and abilities. Had he simply judged me with a look? Was my ethnicity and the color of my skin all he needed to know?

  I contained my anger and remained polite.

  “You really don’t believe I can do this?” I asked.

  “That’s correct. Given where you came from, you’re not being realistic about what it takes to get into medical-school in this country.” He closed my file and handed back to me and headed for the door. “You’ll see yourself out?”

  He left me standing there by his desk.

  I walked out of the building with slow, heavy steps. I felt so insulted that my stomach churned as I thought about Professor Miller and his repeated slights about my ethnicity. I recalled the empty lecture hall on my first day of recitation classes, and again felt the sting of not being trusted because I was from a foreign country. However, despite those initial troubling moments, my experience in America had been overwhelmingly positive … until now.

  For the first five years, I’d had the freedom to live and study without the kind of fear and constraints I experienced during the Cultural Revolution. I thought I had finally found the land of freedom and opportunity. I thought I now lived in a free society. But the prejudice I felt in Dr. Anderson’s office felt eerily similar to what I encountered back in China as a child in the stinking ninth class. Maybe America wasn’t a whole lot better than China after all.

  Though I did understand that Dr. Anderson’s behavior was not representative of the majority of Americans, I was still amazed how one person’s behavior can affect the perception of a whole culture. At that moment, I came to the realization that each of us not only is responsible for our own behavior, but also needs to know that as a member of the community our own action could affect the perception by others of our whole community as well.

  For weeks, I was listless and depressed. Maybe medical-school just wasn’t meant to be because, although I could change many things about myself, ethnicity wasn’t one of them. If Dr. Anderson was right, perhaps I should just give up on the idea of being a doctor altogether, no matter how long I had held on to that dream. Maybe I should be satisfied with the doctorate in laser physics—which I knew was a notable achievement in itself—and seek the promising career in the research and development of laser technology. After the long distance that I had come in life’s path, perhaps I should have been satisfied with what I had already accomplished. This option would certainly be a more comfortable route since at least there would be likely no more disappointments, and perhaps no more discrimination.

  But whenever I thought of giving up, I would hear my father’s voice saying, “Don’t give up. Go for it.” Throughout my life, I had been driven to succeed, especially whenever I encountered something dark and oppressive. I wanted to fight, to get as far away as I could from the ghosts that I have encountered in my life—the black dot, the threat of deportation, the corpses in coffins, and now the racial discrimination—and move toward higher ground.

  One thing Dr. Anderson said was true; it was indeed ver
y difficult to get into medical-school, even for Americans who had advantages like language, culture, and pre-med preparation. Getting into medical-school would be exponentially harder for me as a foreign student without such preparation.

  But I knew that abandoning my dream would be confirming Dr. Anderson’s prejudice that minority students just don’t have what it takes to succeed in medical-school. I was disgusted at the thought that I might prove him right.

  As I emerged from the fog of despair, I began to see clearly what I had to do next. The prejudice only spurred me on to work even that much harder to prove that prejudice is wrong. I poured all the anger I felt toward Dr. Anderson into preparing for the medical-school entrance exam. Ten years earlier I had fought against all odds to win a fiercely competitive spot in taking the first college entrance exam after the Cultural Revolution had ended. But back then, I was only concerned with my own future. This time, I felt I was fighting not just for myself, but also on behalf of all minorities who had endured prejudice and discrimination. I was going to get into medical-school and show the likes of Professor Miller and Dr. Anderson that they were completely wrong in condemning a person based solely on the color of his or her skin.

  Unfortunately, I felt rather alone in this pursuit of honor. With Shu at medical-school in another state, I lived more like a bachelor than a married man. The distance was a tremendous strain, and our bond was continually disintegrating. I was thankful when my mother later joined me in Maryland during the summer of 1986. She and my father felt strongly that the family needed to live closer to each other, even though my brother and I were both grown-ups and were starting professions of our own. Thanks to drastic economic improvements throughout China during the 1980s, my parents’ income had risen rapidly and they could finally afford the airfare to travel across the globe. They each came to the U.S. on visiting scholar visas and worked as researchers to support themselves. My brother was studying at the Hangzhou Medical College—an affiliate of the Zhejiang Medical University—where both my parents had worked. He would later join us in the U.S. when he finished his MD in 1990.

  Mom arrived two years ahead of Dad. She conducted research in infectious diseases at the University of Maryland in College Park. She stayed at my apartment and cooked me dinner each night, while I immersed myself in studying to apply to medical-school while continuing my doctoral research in laser physics. I had flashbacks of the times Mom would bolster me during the trying times back in Hangzhou when I was cramming for the impossible college entrance exam. Yet again, she would be there for me during another very challenging time of my life.

  I had about six months to prepare for the Medical College Admission Test (MCAT) that fall. I’d taken ample chemistry and physics courses, but nothing in the biological sciences, which would make up half the MCAT. There wasn’t time for several semesters of biology courses, so I enrolled in an accelerated summer program and did my best to study the necessary materials.

  Besides the pre-med courses, I also had to learn how to perform well on an exam that tested one’s logical thinking, reading comprehension, and essay writing. My English had improved greatly by then, but it was still my second language. I came across a Kaplan test preparation center, not far from Dupont Circle in Washington, D.C. To pay for the prep course, I picked up night and weekend shifts at the Best Western whenever I wasn’t doing research in the lab; and three long evenings a week, I studied and practiced for the MCAT at the Kaplan Center.

  I studied very hard and threw every bit of my energy and every moment that I could find into the study. During the daytime, I immersed myself in my PhD research in laser spectroscopy in the lab; in the evenings and weekends, I poured all of my time into studying for MCAT while also at the same time holding on two side jobs so I could pay for it. I remember how hard that I had to study at the end of the Cultural Revolution to overcome an almost insurmountable barrier to survive. Now I had to study just as hard so I could not only realize my life-long dream of becoming a doctor but also prove people like Drs. Miller and Anderson wrong who discriminated others based on ethnicity or race. After months of intensive preparation, I took the MCAT on campus that August. I spent nearly five hours in a room with other medical-school hopefuls, pouring over question after question, praying that I would get enough right answers . A month later, I got a call from the premed advising office at the University of Maryland, telling me that I could pick up my scores.

  The early fall day glowed with golden leaves and warm sunlight. I ran all the way across campus to the pre-med advisors’ office. For the past few weeks, I had tried not to think about the test results because every time I did, I would seize up with anxiety. But today was the day, the moment of truth. My childhood dream would either live or die.

  An advisor handed me an envelope, but I didn’t open it right away. I went back outside and stretched out on the grassy lawn, the envelope resting on my chest. I had no way of knowing how I had done, as the test wasn’t designed to be completed, nor to be answered perfectly. It had six categories, each with a top score of fifteen. The national average per category was around seven per subject. If I scored as high as ten, I was confident I would get into a medical-school, and if I scored eleven or twelve, I could get into one of the top schools. Scoring thirteen or fourteen was very rare. And a perfect fifteen in any subject was nearly inconceivable.

  “What’s it going to be?” I asked the big blue sky. Following in my family’s footsteps had been my dream since I was a kid with my little kit full of ointments and bandages, and although the dream was dashed in China, I felt I now finally had a real chance of the dream becoming a reality.

  I took a deep breath and opened the envelope. My hands shook, just as they did when I opened the letter from the Ministry of Education back in China a decade ago. There on a sheet of paper were my scores and my ranking compared to test takers across the nation. I gaped at the piece of paper in my hands.

  My reading comprehension score was average—a seven—but I scored perfect fifteens in each of the science subjects, and was ranked in the 99.999th percentile. I was in shock! How was this even possible? I sprung up from the lawn and dashed back to the advisors’ office to show them my scores. None of them had ever seen perfect MCAT scores like that in all the science subjects.

  Apparently, neither had Kaplan. Rosalie Kaplan Sporn, niece of the organization’s founder, Stanley Kaplan, called to congratulate me.

  “You’ve set a record,” she said. “We’ve never had any of our students score perfect fifteens across the board like that. Would you consider teaching for us?”

  Rosalie managed the Washington-area Kaplan Centers, and the instructors she hired were always those who had done well on the MCAT. She offered me an hourly rate nearly six times the minimum wage. My days at the Best Western and Burger King were over! Besides the extra money, I was excited because I loved teaching. I worked hard to improve the materials so my Kaplan students could score higher on their MCATs. Unlike previous tutoring sessions I had held that did not attract many students when I arrived at America years ago, my Kaplan sessions were now always packed with people who had chosen me from among the other instructors. I taught off-and-on at Kaplan throughout my ten years in medical-school and clinical training.

  Mom and Dad got married right after graduation from Zhejiang Medical University, Hangzhou. (1958)

  At age one I learned to rock my high chair back and forth to move it around so I could explore the world. (1961)

  My little brother Ming-yu is born. (1968)

  With my parents and Ming-yu right before Mom was separated from us for two years to face forced labor and re-education in a remote area of the country. Three of us wore badges of Chairman Mao. (1970)

  Playing erhu with Ming-yu, who was unaware that my constant practicing was an attempt to avoid the devastating deportation. (1974)

  Learning to dance was another skill I hoped would end the seemingly inevitable fate of deportation and a life of poverty and hard labor. (1974)


  Denied an education and earning 10 cents a day as a factory book wrapper during the Cultural Revolution, I rode my bicycle to work everyday. (1976)

  In front of the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) as a freshman. (1978)

  The Three Musketeers (Jason, me, and Ji-hong) arrived in America, nearly penniless yet formally dressed. (1982)

  The Three Musketeers and our first American car—a 1973 AMC Matador—which we named “M1” due to her massive size. (1982)

  The yellow dot! The sodium dimers finally formed in the center of the laser atomic collider, beaming with atomic happiness. (1985)

  With my lasers and atomic collider, conducting experiments for my PhD thesis at Weiner’s Lab, University of Maryland at College Park. (1986)

  With my PhD thesis advisor, Professor John Weiner, beside our laser atomic collider. (1986)

  With Professor George Church, Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical-school. (1987)

  On the MIT campus, as a student in the Harvard-MIT Health Science and Technology (HST) MD program. (1987)

  The Nature paper I wrote with Professor George Church about the development of a new method to study DNA-protein interaction in a living cell. (1992)

  As the president of the U.S. Chinese Student and Scholar Association, I was honored to meet with President Ronald Reagan at the White House. (1984)

  A private photo-op with President Ronald Reagan at the White House. (1984)

  In front of the Chinese Embassy in Washington, DC, protesting the atrocities at Tiananmen Square. (June, 1989)

  With Senator Bill Frist, MD. (2006)