by Ming Wang
That afternoon, the Harvard Medical-school graduates came together for our own private ceremony, under a canopy that stretched across the quad. My parents and brother sat in a row next to Shu and her family, and our son Dennis bounced happily from lap to lap. I listened as names were called from the stage, gazing across the quad and remembering the late night stroll that had followed my admissions interviews. During the Cultural Revolution in China, I had been condemned to the bottom rung of society with no hope of a future, and now I was about to receive my Doctor of Medicine degree from one of the most prestigious universities on the planet. Such a wondrous improbability hinted yet again that my life had a spiritual purpose, and now I knew that purpose would be found in the field of ophthalmology.
“Ming Wang, MD, magna cum laude,” announced the dean, “and winner of the best graduation thesis in biomedical sciences of the Harvard Medical-school and MIT Class of 1991.”
The entire crowd erupted in applause.
I walked onto the stage with Dennis, holding his small hand. The dean handed me the diploma, but I only held it for a moment before Dennis grabbed it and carried it offstage. Years later, Dennis boasted that this moment was his claim to fame because he had received a degree from Harvard too! My father stood ready to take a picture, beaming from the other side of the camera. I knew how proud he was, since he had led our family through the tumult of the Cultural Revolution and had watched his son’s life nearly be destroyed. I would never forget how much he and my mom had done for me, and that the culmination of their efforts allowed me to graduate from the top medical-school in the world.
Our commencement speaker, Harvard University president Derek Bok, had said earlier that morning, “Is it enough for Harvard to attract the brightest students if we do not excel in making them caring, active, enlightened citizens and civic leaders? … Surely we must teach our students to appreciate the Biblical admonition, ‘Much has been given and much will be expected.’”
His words resonated deeply with me. I had been given much more than I could have ever imagined possible, and my hope was to find a way to give back more than I had received. I knelt down next to Dennis and smiled broadly, as my dad counted to three and snapped another photo.
Chapter 12
My Adopted Country
“I’m an American now!” I shouted, the phone pressed to my ear. I felt like I was floating in the spring air. After living in the United States for ten years, I had just been sworn in as an official U.S. citizen.
My parents were on the other line, congratulating me from back in Boston. Mom worked in the department of molecular and cellular biology at Harvard, and Dad was a visiting scholar in the department of pathology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. My brother, Ming-yu, came to the U.S. in 1990 for a graduate program in genetics and microbiology at the University of Massachusetts in Boston. During my last few years at Harvard, my parents, brother, and I shared a two-bedroom apartment on Worthington Street near the medical-school. For the first time in nearly a decade, our entire family was living in the same home, more than seven thousand miles from Hangzhou.
Following medical-school, I moved to West Orange, New Jersey for a yearlong internship in transitional medicine at St. Barnabas Medical Center. During the first few months I was in West Orange, Shu, Dennis, and I lived together for the first time in our entire five years of marriage. We had been living completely separate lives, both of us consumed with school and work, but we hoped that now we could finally be a family. Unfortunately, by that summer we realized it was too late and our marriage had disintegrated irreparably. We filed for divorce that fall. Dennis, who was only three years old, was once again in his grandparents’ care. I felt a deep sense of failure at the collapse of my young family. Perhaps Shu and I had gotten married much too young, or perhaps we were naive to think we could make it work while living so far apart. Regardless of the reasons, I felt terrible despair about not being able to create a family life for Dennis like the one I had enjoyed as a young boy. Years later, I would look back with profound regret at how much of his young life I had missed. To escape the painful emotions I felt about my failed relationships, I poured myself even further into my work.
Given how fragile my own young family was, I was thankful to have my parents and brother with me. Moving from China to America had been a drastic change in geography and culture for all of us. But I also noticed that a profound inner change had been taking place in me over the course of many years. Becoming an American wasn’t just a move across the ocean or an event facilitated by a bureaucratic process. It was a gradual inner transformation over a decade of life here in the United States.
My first inkling of this metamorphosis occurred when I returned to Maryland after my first trip back to China in 1984. After two-and-a-half years of graduate school at the University of Maryland, passing my qualifying exams and defending my doctoral thesis proposal, there had been a natural break that seemed perfect for me to visit my family back in Hangzhou. Working at the part-time jobs allowed me to save up enough money for a round-trip plane ticket and for the eight big ticket items I was allowed to import without paying customs.
My family picked me up from the airport in Shanghai. My little brother was a short adolescent thirteen-year-old when I first left China but at sixteen, he had become a man and was as tall as our mother. I didn’t even recognize him! We took a train from Shanghai back to Hangzhou, and other than my brother’s growth spurt, not much else had changed. My hometown was still very poor despite the country’s recent economic reforms, so even with lifelong careers as doctors, my parents could never have afforded the appliances I had purchased for them from the States. I bought my parents their first refrigerator, color television, washing machine, clothes dryer, home stereo, modern bicycle, and Canon camera. Before coming to America, I could never have imagined being able to afford such extravagant things.
I also had a lot of small gifts for my friends, former classmates, and the many teachers who had helped me through the traumatic years of the Cultural Revolution. To save money and space in my luggage, I brought back about forty travel-size bottles of shampoo, which was a uniquely American product and a novelty item in China at that time. The little bottles with labels in English were a big hit with my elders and friends.
During the two weeks I was in China, my teachers and former classmates asked me many questions about my life in America. They were wide-eyed about this wondrous faraway place. I recognized how differently I ranked in China versus in the States. In America, I was at the bottom of the totem pole—a poor student, a minimum wage, night shift worker at Burger King and Best Western, cleaning up grease. I was poor in the eyes of the wealthy American society, but in China I was rich. They noticed I had gained weight from all the fast food I had been eating. In China, where so many people still had limited access to meat and nourishing food, my weight was yet another sign of prosperity to them.
Whenever people asked what I was doing in Maryland, I would say, “I’m studying on a beautiful university campus with pure air and roads so clean you can lie down on them. I live in a luxury apartment with only two roommates, rather than thirteen like at USTC. I buy clothes for cheap and watch movies for a dollar.” But I didn’t mention to anyone how hard I had to work, nor about the prejudices I faced. My neighbors and family expected me to do well, so I only shared the most glamorous aspects of life in the States. China, the country of my birth, no longer felt like a harsh place that nearly stripped me of a life I longed for, but instead I felt reconnected with my ethnic origins and grateful for the realization that it was my Eastern upbringing, family values, and work ethic that had helped me overcome life’s challenges so I could succeed in America.
When I went back to Maryland, I realized that something else in me had shifted. My roots were in China, but I had become very comfortable in America and had aligned myself with the interests of my adopted country. I felt like a citizen of both countries and an intermediary between them. But my two hom
es had different values, histories and cultures, so I had an identity crisis. Was I American … or was I Chinese?
I remained in this liminal zone between cultures for several more years, during which my appreciation for America increased and my English continually improved. Eventually I found myself even thinking in English. Before that time, I would think in Chinese and then translate the thoughts into English before I would speak, but over time English became more natural to me. Not only did I start thinking in English; I also started thinking like an American. I embraced whole-heartedly American values like freedom and democracy.
I encountered perhaps my strongest feeling of allegiance to America in June of 1989.
At the end of my second year at Harvard, the Tiananmen Square protests of Chinese students in Beijing had reached fever pitch. For several weeks, students had been peacefully demonstrating in city centers around China, calling for democratic reforms. I was returning to my dorm room on the evening of June 4, with the events weighing heavily on my mind. The day before, the students had been given an ultimatum to clear Tiananmen Square or they would be forced out by government troops. It had been hard for me to focus on my studies that day. When I got home I turned on the news, and as I listened to CBS’s Dan Rather reporting on the scene, my heart fell to the floor.
I grabbed the phone and dialed quickly.
“They’re killing people!” I hollered, my voice strained and trembling. On the other end of the line was a compatriot from the Chinese Student and Scholar Association back at the University of Maryland.
In the news report, I could hear gunshots and could see the dead and wounded being carted away. Hundreds were presumed to have been killed. It was unthinkable to me that any country could do this to its own people.
“There’s going to be a protest in D.C.,” my friend said. “We are asking Congress to protect the Chinese students here in the U.S. Can you join us?”
“I’ll see you on Capitol Hill.”
One morning a few weeks later, I joined a group of my fellow Chinese American students for a rally on the steps of the Capitol building to protest the cruelty of the Chinese government in Tiananmen Square. Following the rally, we were granted an audience with congressional leaders, including Nancy Pelosi, who was then a junior congresswoman from San Francisco. We told her and other representatives that the Chinese students studying in the U.S. who had supported the demonstrations could be in grave danger if they were forced to return to China when their student visas expired.
I had never been politically active in my life prior to this moment. Though I had been the president of the U.S. Chinese Student and Scholar Association and had met an American president in the White House, I had never appealed for congressional action for any political purpose, so actively participating in democracy was a major turning point in my young life. I had come from a one-party dictatorial political system that, as the events on June fourth had made clear, tolerated no opposition. To be allowed to walk the halls of Capitol Hill and speak freely to the men and women who represented everyday Americans was empowering. I had experienced profound psychological trauma as a teenager from political oppression during China’s Cultural Revolution, so now that I had tasted the freedom of democracy as a young adult in America, there was no turning back.
I had truly become an American.
Since this inner transformation occurred over a period of many years, the naturalization process itself was simply a formality. After I completed the required paperwork and passed the background checks, I received notification that I could come in for my interview with an officer from U.S. Customs and Immigration. I was tested on my basic knowledge of English, history, and government. By far, this was the least stressful test I had taken in my entire life, yet at the same time, it was replete with meaning all the same. The last step would be to return for a ceremony to take the Oath of Allegiance.
In the spring of 1992, the day of the official ceremony had finally arrived. I parked my car in downtown Newark and walked toward the Peter W. Rodino, Jr. Federal Building on Broad Street. The winter had been harsh, but now the air felt light and full of the excitement of a new beginning. I walked through the front doors and took an elevator upstairs to a bland, gray office where I joined twenty other foreigners, some speaking Spanish, others dressed in brightly colored saris, a few wearing turbans, all of us ready to pledge faithful allegiance to the United States of America.
We stood in front of a large American flag, its red, white, and blue colors draped around a tall pole, topped by the emblem of an eagle. A federal judge led us through the official Oath of Allegiance to the United States. We held up our right hands, repeating our solemn promise to renounce all previous loyalties to foreign states, and to support and defend the U.S. Constitution and the nation’s laws.
Standing before that vibrant flag, I realized how blessed I was. What other country in the world embraced so many people from foreign lands and allowed them to make that country their home? I had gone from a communist country that had nearly destroyed my future to a free and open nation that enabled me to go to graduate schools with the brightest minds in the world. Thanks to America, my childhood dream of becoming a doctor—like my father and grandfather before me—had finally come true. The U.S. was also the origin of my spiritual nascence and the incubator of my continued quest for faith. My experiences in this country, and the people of faith that I had encountered, had initiated my first awareness of God and the emerging purpose for my life.
I had brought from China a disciplined work ethic, and a character that had been enriched by its cultural roots and shaped by suffering. In the United States, I had received freedom, an education, and a promising career. I felt tremendously indebted to both countries, and particularly to America; so to have the chance to finally become an American meant to me that I now had the duty to serve and to defend this great country, and to help protect the most important foundational concepts of American society, namely that all men and women are created equal, one Nation under God.
“When I’m finished with my medical training,” I told myself, “I will do something worthwhile to express my gratitude to my newly adopted country. I will loyally serve this nation and its people for the rest of my life.”
The United States was now my home and my country. My parents and brother eventually naturalized as well. Until their retirement in 2006, my parents continued to dedicate their lives to improving the quality of life of patients here in America suffering from diseases. Like the field of medicine, giving back to our adopted country became a family tradition, which continues to this day.
I also longed to find someone here in America, with whom I could build a future. Though my first marriage was not successful, I would not let that deter me from continuing to grow my family, specifically a family built on love and Christian faith.
Chapter 13
Gwen
When the elevator doors opened and I saw her standing there, I stood a little taller and tried to look relaxed. She and another resident were laughing as they walked in. I had seen her only a few times before, usually from a distance. She was striking and tall, with thick golden brown hair and big green eyes. Besides her beauty, I was also impressed by her lively demeanor, as she was smiling and joking every time I saw her.
Who was this dazzling young woman? I just had to find out.
I had moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in July of 1992 for a fellowship in ocular genetics research with Wills Eye Hospital, the first eye care facility in the United States. After the yearlong fellowship, I would complete my three year residency in ophthalmology at the same facility. My goal was to combine my training in lasers with a top-quality training in ophthalmology. I was fortunate to be recruited as a resident at Wills Eye, one of the top eye institutions in the world.
In a laboratory on the fourth floor of the six-story building, I worked under Dr. Larry Donoso, the director of clinical research and a professor of ophthalmology. Our work focused on pinpointing
the DNA mutation that caused ocular melanoma and retinoblastoma. Dr. Donoso was in his early fifties, a very kind and charming man from Utah who served as a mentor to many young doctors in training. One day I asked Dr. Donoso if he knew who the young woman was.
“Her name is Gwen,” he said. “She’s a third-year resident. She worked in my lab several years ago when she was a student at Jefferson Medical College next door.”
“What’s she like?” I asked.
“She’s smart and capable,” he responded. “She finished experiments very efficiently and was always eager to do more.”
Naturally Dr. Donoso talked about her work but I wanted to know more about her personality.
“Is she always so happy?” I asked.
“Yes, she is,” he said. “Why do you want to know?”
I shrugged. “Just curious.”
Dr. Donoso grinned at me. “She is always smiling and joyful,” he continued. “She treats everyone with kindness. Her good nature sometimes seems too good to be true.”
But it was all true. When I looked into those large green eyes, they seemed like a lake of clear water, so pure and honest. I had a few opportunities to chat with her—in the cafeteria, along hospital corridors and outside lecture halls after presentations. She was a ray of sunshine, and I was mesmerized by her. By the time I finished my fellowship and joined the ranks of the other residents, she had finished her residency herself and had left for Tampa, Florida for a fellowship in cornea.
A year later, I was going about my life as usual when one day I received a letter in my hospital mailbox. There, on top of the return address, was Gwen’s name.
“I’ve just returned from a mission trip to China,” she wrote, “and I have pictures I want to share with you.”