Out of the Gobi Read online

  Out of the Gobi

  Source: WorldAtlas.com

  Note: China, with a landmass of approximately 9.6 square kilometers (3.7 million square miles), is about the same size as the United States (with its landmass of 9.8 million square kilometers, or 3.8 million square miles). China’s population of about 1.4 billion (in 2016) is more than four times that of the United States (325 million). The shape of the country reminds one of a rooster. The Gobi Desert is located on the back of the rooster, in the north. The Great Wall, shown as a dotted line, stretches from the throat of the rooster near Beijing all the way to the west, roughly parallel to the rest of the Gobi Desert for 6,259 kilometers (3,889 miles), but its total length, including all its branches, is 21,196 kilometers (13,171 miles). The Yellow River, part of which flows close to the southern edge of the Gobi Desert, is the second-longest river in China and the sixth-longest in the world, with an estimated length of 5,464 kilometers (3,395 miles).

  Out of the Gobi

  My Story of China

  and America

  Weijian Shan

  Cover image: © Weijian Shan, photo of the author as a boy in the Gobi

  Cover design: Wiley

  Copyright © 2019 by Weijian Shan. All rights reserved.

  Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.

  Published simultaneously in Canada.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

  Name: Shan, Weijian, 1953–, author.

  Title: Out of the Gobi : my story of China and America / Weijian Shan.

  Description: Hoboken, New Jersey : John Wiley & Sons, Inc., [2019] | Includes index. |

  Identifiers: LCCN 2018046912 (print) | LCCN 2018049208 (ebook) |

  ISBN 978-1-119-52956-9 (Adobe PDF) | ISBN 978-1-119-52955-2 (ePub) |

  ISBN 978-1-119-52949-1 (hardcover)

  Subjects: LCSH: Shan, Weijian, 1953– | Businesspeople—China—Biography. | Chinese—United States—Biography. | China—History—1949– | United States—History—1945–

  Classification: LCC HC426.5.S43 (ebook) | LCC HC426.5.S43 A3 2019 (print) |

  DDC 338.092 [B] —dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018046912

  To my wife, Bin Shi, and to our son,

  Bo, and daughter, LeeAnn

  Contents

  Cover

  Foreword

  Acknowledgments

  Author’s Note

  Prologue

  Chapter 1: Man-Made Famine

  Chapter 2: School Cut Short

  Chapter 3: Storm of Revolution

  Chapter 4: Turmoil Under Heaven

  Chapter 5: Exiled to the Gobi

  Chapter 6: Digging for Potatoes

  Chapter 7: War Is Coming

  Chapter 8: Repairing the Earth

  Chapter 9: Battling Frozen Lake

  Chapter 10: The Longest Night

  Chapter 11: Unforgettable Movie Night

  Chapter 12: Barefoot Doctor

  Chapter 13: Brickmaking the Ancient Way

  Chapter 14: Petition to Mao

  Chapter 15: Pigs Don’t Fly

  Chapter 16: Half the Sky

  Chapter 17: Desert Dreams of College

  Chapter 18: Last Convulsions of the Revolution

  Chapter 19: Roads to Rome

  Chapter 20: Old Gold Mountain

  Chapter 21: The People’s Republic of Berkeley

  Chapter 22: Ivy League Professor

  Epilogue

  Index

  WILEY END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT

  Foreword

  The manuscript of Weijian Shan’s book arrived on my desk at a hectic time: I had commitments for weeks to come. But when I finally picked up the manuscript, I was so gripped by his stories that I could hardly put it down.

  I have known Shan for 36 years, since he first showed up in my office on a sunny September day in 1982. He struck me as a charming young man, full of smiles, but in need of a good meal and a new haircut. He had arrived at Berkeley to start his Ph.D. program, and I was his academic advisor. I was stunned to discover that he had no formal math training. All the math he knew he had learned by himself, by candlelight. Over time, I learned a bit about Shan’s unique and extraordinary background growing up in China, where he was denied an education for 10 years after elementary school.

  Yet I was fascinated to read his detailed account of a China gone mad during the 1966–1976 Cultural Revolution, of the severe hardship he and his generation had endured, of his relentless pursuit of an education through reading whatever books he could find while serving as a hard laborer in China’s Gobi Desert at a time when almost all books were banned, and of how, against all odds, he was able to get out of the Gobi and eventually find his way to America to attend graduate school. He recounts a contemporary history of China rarely told in the English literature from a personal perspective, a history that paralleled our own tumultuous period in the 1960s and 1970s in America. His keen observation of the United States from the viewpoint of someone with a totally different cultural, political, and economic background is unique, insightful, heartwarming, and often funny. He recounts his stories with vivid clarity, short, punchy sentences, and light and dark humor. They captivate the reader, who feels as if he is watching a movie, anxious to know how the plot will unfold and where it will all end.

  After earning his doctoral degree, Shan received offers of professorships from some of the most renowned American universities, including MIT and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. I remember him calling me for advice, asking which school he should choose for his academic career. I told him he couldn’t go wrong at any of these top schools. As I remarked to one of m
y Berkeley colleagues at a celebration party on the occasion of Shan’s graduation in 1987, I found it mind-boggling how far he had journeyed—from working as a hard laborer without a secondary education and with no command of English to becoming a professor at one of America’s most prestigious universities, all in about ten years.

  Shan’s story shows the crucial role that education plays in the success of individuals and society as a whole. Moreover, Shan’s life provides a demonstration of what is possible when China and the United States come together, even by happenstance. It is not only Shan’s personal history that makes this book so interesting but also how the stories of China and America merge in just one moment in time to create an inspired individual so unique and driven, and so representative of the true spirits of both countries.

  Particularly now, the people of both nations have much to learn from and teach one another. I hope that Shan’s book will serve as a cornerstone in that ongoing conversation.

  Janet Yellen

  Federal Reserve Chair (2014–2018)

  Eugene E. and Catherine M. Trefethen Professor of Business and Professor of Economics Emeritus,

  University of California, Berkeley

  Acknowledgments

  This book is a memoir, not an autobiography. The distinction may be blurred at times, but my idea has always been to tell stories that I consider reflective of history as I lived it, both in China and in America.

  By coincidence, the release of this book will mark the fiftieth anniversary of the start of my life in the Gobi Desert in China’s Inner Mongolia. My generation in China is truly a lost generation, because for 10 long years the vast majority of us were deprived of a formal education and many were unable to make up for the lost years later in life. I dedicate this book to my friends of the Gobi days and to the people of my generation who shared similar ordeals.

  I am immensely grateful to Dr. Janet Yellen for providing the foreword for this book.

  I began to write this book in 1990, and after a few months I completed about 100 pages, which included my recollections covered in Chapters 5 through 7, 9 through 13, and 15. Dr. Judy Shapiro at the University of Pennsylvania helped me edit those pages. Before I was able to finish them, I became extremely busy, and by good fortune I remained so for the next 26 years. On New Year’s Day 2017, at my son’s home in California with our family, I decided to pick it back up again.

  I wish to thank Bill Falloon, my editor at Wiley, who, in addition to his editing work, made good suggestions from which the book benefited immensely. It is based on his suggestion that I include a prologue for each chapter, to provide historical background and context for the ensuing story. I also thank the Wiley teams in copyediting, design, production, and marketing for an excellent job in turning the book into a beautiful product.

  I owe my gratitude to my other editors, Mark Clifford, Jill Baker, and Tim Morrison, for their encouragement and their essential help editing, fact-checking, and suggesting numerous good ideas to improve the quality of the manuscript. I thank my assistant Rachel Kwok for helping me in countless ways related to this project.

  The stories in the book are based on recollections of my own experiences, and on rare occasions those of others, woven together into a coherent narrative. I have incorporated materials and data from historical research, but do not otherwise provide sources and citations as you might find in a more formal work of history. I have made an effort to check multiple sources to determine the accuracy and reliability of the data included here. I along with my editors have made our best efforts to fact-check all material information in the book. The responsibility for any errors is mine alone.

  My good friend Liu Xiaotong, a self-taught photographer who owned a rare 135mm camera, took many of the photographs of us in the Gobi, including the photograph on the cover showing me running in the Gobi. He would have been an accomplished musician and multitalented artist if not for the Cultural Revolution.

  I am deeply indebted to my wife, Bin Shi, for her support and sacrifice as I devoted almost all my spare time to this project, and to my children, Bo and LeeAnn, whose fascination with the stories of my past strongly motivated me to write and complete this book, and whose critiques helped improve it greatly.

  Weijian Shan

  October 17, 2018

  Hong Kong

  Author’s Note

  Chinese names are written and spoken with the surname or family name first, followed by the given name. Take, for example, the most famous Chinese names of the twentieth century: Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, Deng Xiaoping, Chiang Kai-shek—all are written with the family name first.

  Western-educated Chinese tend to adopt the European way to write their names in English (i.e., putting the given name first and family name last). My name as presented in Chinese is Shan Weijian. In English, it is Weijian Shan. In mainland China today, a woman does not adopt the family name of her husband, so there is no distinction between a “maiden” and a “married” name as in the United States or Europe. Some Chinese women living outside mainland China, such as Hong Kong and Taiwan, adopt their husbands’ family names. My wife’s given name is Bin and her family name is Shi. In China, it is written as Shi Bin, but in America her name is written as either Bin Shi or Bin Shi Shan, the latter adopting my family name.

  In this book, all Chinese names are presented in the order of family name first, followed by the given name, and are indexed in this way as well.

  I refer to some characters in the book by their given names and others by their family names, with or without an honorific or professional title (Mr., Mrs., Dr., or Professor). This largely depends on how I would greet them in real life, as such references come naturally to mind when I write. It should be noted that it is common in Chinese culture to greet someone by putting either “lao (Old),” which is a form of respect, or “xiao (Little),” which is a form of endearment, in front of their family name. In this book, I use this in referring to Old Yi, Old Cui, Old Huang, and so on, because this is how they were addressed by the people around them.

  China uses a traditional system of measurement as well as the metric system. The Chinese system can be easily translated into the metric system in whole numbers. For example, one kilometer is exactly two Chinese li, one meter is exactly 3 Chinese chi, one kilogram is exactly two Chinese jin, one hectare is exactly 15 mu. In the book, I provide the imperial equivalent when a unit of measurement is presented in the metric system or Chinese system, for example, 100 kilometers (~62 miles) or 100 kilograms (~220 pounds).

  I make an effort to minimize the use of acronyms, abbreviations, or untranslated Chinese terms to make it easier for the reader to understand. For example, I use the “Nationalist” Party or the “Nationalist” government to refer to Chiang Kai-shek’s organization, instead of “Kuomintang” or “KMT,” which are loanwords based on Chinese phonetics often seen in the English literature of Chinese studies.

  Prologue

  On September 13, 1950, UN forces commanded by General Douglas MacArthur made an amphibious landing at the port of Incheon, on the west coast of Korea, about 40 kilometers from Seoul. The operation involved more than 260 naval vessels, including 6 aircraft carriers, and 75,000 troops, the largest deployment of firepower since the D-Day landing at Normandy. North Korean forces had squeezed the opposing UN troops to a toehold around Pusan, in the southeastern corner of the Korean Peninsula, and threatened to push them into the Pacific Ocean. For the North Koreans, victory was in sight. The Incheon landing, however, was a complete success: It put MacArthur’s troops well behind the North Koreans’ front lines and turned the tide of the Korean War. By October, UN forces crossed the 38th parallel dividing North and South Korea. By the end of the month they were within striking distance of the Yalu River, which demarcates the border between North Korea and China. General MacArthur declared that the war would be over by Christmas.

  On November 1, advancing US troops were halted at the Battle of Unsan some 200 kilometers from the Chinese border and re
pelled by Chinese forces, which eventually pushed all the way back across the 38th parallel and recaptured Seoul, the capital of South Korea.

  As his troops lost ground, US president Harry Truman declared that he would take whatever steps necessary to win the war in Korea, including the use of nuclear weapons. In April 1951, he sent nine nuclear bombs with fissile cores to Okinawa, along with nuclear-capable B-29 bombers. In October, Operation Hudson Harbor conducted mock nuclear bombing runs across the war zone, preparing to rain fire on a huge swath of northeast Asia, including parts of China and Russia if necessary. Fortunately, they never had to. By that summer the war had largely devolved into skirmishes in a narrow zone around the 38th parallel, and armistice talks were under way.

  I was born in October 1953 in China’s Shandong Province, one of the two primary target areas for the planned nuclear strike. I was lucky to have been born.

  * * *

  My parents’ generation, and the generation before theirs, had lived through numerous wars, each more devastating than the last, with almost no respite or peace in between. Tens of millions of people died in China in those wars and in famines during the century before my birth.

  The last Chinese dynasty, the Qing, was overthrown in October 1911. Prior to this, the country had been repeatedly ravaged by foreign invasions and peasant uprisings.

  In the First Opium War of 1840, Britain invaded and defeated China for refusing to allow British merchants to sell opium to China. The Second Opium War followed, from 1856 to 1860, during which the joint forces of the British and French empires marched all the way to Beijing to force China to legalize the opium trade and open its ports to foreigners. They burned down the magnificent Old Summer Palace, said to be many times larger and grander than its replacement, which itself is still considered one of the greatest imperial palaces in the world.