2 The opening of China

In the 1980s, Beijing is very different from what it is now. Our apartment now is on the third ring road but we lived much closer to the second ring road when I was born. Where we live now was still Tsing Dynasty tombs. And now Beijing has the sixth ring road. And we live in "central" Beijing.

The neighborhood I lived in were all geologists from the same institute. Despite extreme lack of everything, when my mother was pregnant with me, they gave us eggs, meat, etc (Or more precisely, they shared their certificates for their quotas.). A set of clothes would pass on three generations among the kids in the neighborhood when they grew into it.

In the mean time, one of my favorite Chinese leaders, Deng Xiaoping (Deng Xiaoping and the government), opened China. He opened a few experimental districts first. And that's when my father ended his scientific pursuit.

My mother came from a rural family. One of her older brothers however, became an Economics professor in one of the most famous Universities in Northern China, Ji Lin University. He then became a government official and one of 11 decision makers( equivalent to senators?) of the city.

One of his student was obviously open-minded and venturesome and I call him Uncle H. My father went with Uncle H to Hainan Island, the southmost part of mainland China to exploit the market. After a few years, they moved to Shang Hai because Shanghai stock exchange was ready.

Uncle H was apparently resourceful. He made a big fortune. I don't know what exactly he did but risks were involved too. The earlier players' of the market, as I don't think there were small investors at that early a stage, gambled and rivaled among themselves. 7 out of 10 went to prison and 3 survived. My father wasn't any part of that. He is highly conservative and he only did office work. So when he went off work one day and went back to find the office was all empty the second day, it was pretty obvious what they had paid him and the car he had was the decision on his share.

I don't know how to evaluate what he did in proportion to what he got. When he left, we only had a tantamount of $250 total in cash and deposit. But it was pretty impressive to have a car when he came back. No family was isolated from this big change in China. A few men in the neighborhood also went to Hainan with different groups and they came back after a while too.

(The opening of China restructured the society quite a bit. Tailors for example, was regarded low in social status. Money isn't everything but when the tailor in our neighborhood got really rich, he enjoyed above par respect. The commercialization taking place in China will continue to transform our values. A friend told me how she valued entrepreneurship and that impressed me because no one knows what entrepreneurship is ten years ago and how the new generation of young people like me differed from the rural, idyllic mentality of our progenitors.)

But all I knew was happy to have my father back. But my father certainly learned more street survival than during his scientific pursuits and repeated failed attempts to join the party because my grandfather was a nationalist.