The Family History

I remember hearing stories as a child. Stories about distant people in a faraway land in a time that had no meaning or relevance to me. The memories were always mysterious. Who were those people? I knew they were some how related to me, that I should some how care, but life was full of important things like football and baseball, Roy Rogers and Batman.

My mom and dad were some of the first Asians to arrive in Chattanooga, Tennessee in 1955. Each arrived circuitously from vastly different parts of China. So different, that each one's dialect of Chinese was unintelligible by the other. Yet, it was naturally assumed when they met that of course they would get married. My brother, Walter, was born in 1956, my sister, Lily, in1958 and when I, as the baby of the family came along in 1960, our family was complete, just in time to march into the turbulent decade of race riots, assassinations, hippies and the war in Vietnam. So maybe as a child, when I did hear all those stories about a faraway land, it interested me, but life was so confusing already, that it didn't "stick". I simply was not ready to understand what life had handed down to me and my focus was simply to make sense out of the life surrounding me.

Well, now it all makes sense. I understand the significance of the stories. I know who all the people are. I stood in their homes, ate with their families and I heard the stories from their own lips. I am deeply grateful for what I have been handed.

Prior to the Communist Revolution, China's government was weak as the Imperialistic government (Emperor rule) began fading in power. The industrial revolution had left China behind and the country was ripe for exploitation. In the late 1800's, the British forced China into a series of lopsided trade agreements, including the open importation of Opium from other British Colonies, stiff tariffs and taxes, and claiming the rocky island that became Hong Kong as their sovereign territory. When the weak Chinese government tried to protest, the British attacked their port cities and pummeled the country into submission.

My Mom's Side of The Family
The Gold Rush (1840s) and the Transcontinental Railroad (1860s) drew hundreds of thousands of Chinese to America, mostly from the Guangdong Province, home of what is now called Guangzhou (formerly known as Canton). During this period, two of my maternal great, great grandfathers were born and became some of the first converts by Baptist missionaries in the Guangdong countryside. The gospel transformed both of their lives. Lee Wuen Juen had a son, and Senn Wai Tong, a daughter, and so the two new Christian converts arranged a marriage. The son, Lee Tsai Leong, my great grandfather, desired to be a Pastor in the US, and with his young wife and five children, they set sail to America in 1896. How unusual it was back then for an entire family to immigrate to the US.

The picture shown on the right was used as their passport photo. My grandmother, Edna Rachel Lee, is the little girl on the far left. By the way, in China, the surname is always put first. Lee Tsai Leong would be known as Tsai Leong Lee in America. This added a lot of confusion once immigrants from China arrived in America, depending on which immigration officer processed the paperwork! Some families ended up with entirely new names upon entry into the US. I switch between these two formats throughout this article almost at will, but you should intuitively know which is what.

After several years in Chicago, the Lee family, made their way back to the Bay Area where Reverend Lee Tsai Leong planted the first two autonomous Chinese Baptist Churches in San Francisco and Oakland in 1904 and 1906, respectively. Both churches still exist to this day!

By 1906, the Lee family consisted of nine children! The oldest daughter, Edna Rachel Lee (my grandmother) grew into a lovely young lady and began attracting suitors. An enterprising, young man named Holt Cheng began courting her. Holt, also born in the Guangdong Province, had stowed away as a 14 year old boy on a US bound steamer in 1892. He and his cousin were kicked off the ship in Hilo, Hawaii where he eventually started a grocery business that grew into one of the largest grocery stores in the city. Wanting to study medicine in the a US medical school, ambitious Holt sold his grocery store and moved to California in 1900, where he managed to enroll into the San Francisco College of Physicians and Surgeons. In 1904, he became the first Chinese licensed medical doctor in the state of California.

Dr. Holt Cheng and Edna Rachel Lee married in 1910 and returned to Guangzhou. A ferry boat incident occurred in which a Chinese man was beaten to death by a foreigner. The British controlled medical establishment ruled that the man's death was accidental. A local uproar ensued and my grandfather and a handful of colleagues were moved to start the first Western medical school that was run by an all Chinese faculty and staff. It later became the Guang Hua (Beautiful China) Medical School. My grandfather served as the first Dean of the school for over 20 years and never took a paycheck for his work. He and Edna had six children, including my mother, Gilda Cheng (their youngest daughter).

Reverend Lee Tsai Leong returned back to China around 1920 and continued to pastor and teach seminary. His first wife died shortly after returning to Guangzhou and he remarried and had seven more children. He built a grand house for its time in the Guangzhou countryside with a magnificent rooftop terrace that overlooked the farmlands. The house still stands today and is now swallowed up on all sides by high rise apartment and office buildings!

China was struggling to find itself from around 1912 all the way through the official birth of the People's Republic of China in 1949. Sun Yat Sen, considered the Father of China, had limited success unifying the country and calling for the people to revolt against the Imperialists. His successor, Chiang Kai Shek was able to secure portions of the country, but became bitter rivals with the growing Communist party movement, headed by Mao Zedong. Both would struggle for years, even though they fought temporarily against a common enemy during the Japanese invasion that preceded World War II. Mao eventually gained control of most of the country and forced Chiang Kai Shek to flee to an outlying island off the coast of China where he formed the country of Taiwan.

My Dad's Side of the Family
In 1920, my father, Wen Han Li, was born in the outskirts of Shanghai. His father died when he was just five years old, leaving behind his 29 year old mother with four young daughters and my dad, the lone boy. They lived a difficult and destitute life and worked incredibly hard with one goal in mind: to see my dad through the best schools. Every sister helped take care of my dad so that he could study. They all told stories of how motivated he was and how hard he worked in his studies. They collectively put my dad through one of one of the best colleges in Shanghai (St. Johns University).

The picture above is the one and only photo we have of my dad and sisters as children (circa 1925).

Upon graduation, my dad started a chemical company with three friends making matches. Discovering that he needed even more education, he studied extremely hard to receive a prestigious scholarship that allowed him to attend a university in the US. Though most of his expenses were paid, it still required that the entire family sacrifice to send him to America. In 1947, my dad arrived in the US with one suit and $500 in his pocket and initially began studying Petroleum Engineering, but switched to Chemical Engineering after discovering how expensive it was to drill for oil.

The Birth of the People's Republic of China
In 1949, as soon as my dad graduated from the University of Michigan with his Masters, Mao Zedong, declared the birth of the People's Republic. The entire country was in thrown into turmoil and my dad was cut off from his family. There were 5000 students from China enrolled in US universities at this time. The US government granted them all Permanent Resident status.

Throughout the 1950's, Mao implemented his Great Leap Forward plan, which formed collectives throughout the countryside. Poor quality steel was produced in backyard smelters at all cost, leaving crops to rot in their fields. People starved. It was estimated that 30 million people died of famine and that much of the country was malnourished by the early 1960's. Birthrates plunged.

The Li Family Is Born
Back in America, because my dad could not return home, he completed his Ph.D. from Georgia Tech (my alma mater!). He then accepted his one and only job with the Dupont Corporation in Chattanooga, Tennessee, where he met a young Cantonese woman who had just graduated from Furman University named Gilda Cheng. Gilda was Holt and Edna's youngest daughter. Holt died in the 1940s and Edna passed away in the 1950s while living in Hong Kong. All of my mom's brothers and sisters made it out of China before the revolution and were already living throughout the US.

My dad was never able to see his mother again. There was an attempt to bring her to America, but the government wouldn't allow her to leave the country after discovering her failing health. He was able to get letters through and every once in a while was able to connect by phone. One sister told of the story that in the last phone conversation between my dad and his mom, that she simply heard the word, "Ma" (mother) on the other end of the phone and cried so hard that she could not speak a word during the entire conversation. His mother died in 1959, one year before I was born. All his sisters married and had lots of children.

The Cultural Revolution of the 1960s
Back in China, the dismal results of the Great Leap Forward greatly weakened Mao's power base. Out of desperation, he called on the common class to revolt and to purify China's culture from all liberal ideology. The Red Guard's mission was to purge the country of the Four Olds: Old Culture, Old Customs, Old Habits and Old Ideas. It threw the country into a virtual civil war. Children were encouraged to turn in their parents. Intellectuals were forced to the country side where they were "reeducated." Many of China's historical and cultural relics were burned to ashes. In 1966, Mao officially ordered the Red Guard to stop all police action.

Many family members on both sides of my family suffered harm during the Cultural Revolution. On my mom's side, Reverend Lee's oldest daughter, Lai Ying, (my great aunt) told how how her children were taken away for seven years and how two of her sons managed to escape to freedom by swimming across the river to Hong Kong. The Red Guard converged on their house and burned all writings of her father (the pastor!), all books and virtually all family artifacts.

Behind my dad's house in Shanghai, there stood a small building that was filled with scrolls containing family records going back many, many generations. Once a year, the family would unfurl the documents in the sun to allow them to air out. During the Cultural Revolution, everything was completely destroyed. Many of my relatives were sent to the work farms for re-education, and it did not help that my father had left Shanghai, was highly educated, and now living in the US.

The Guang Hua Medical school that Holt Cheng started was combined with two other medical schools in Guangzhou and renamed the Sun Yat Sen University of Medical Sciences. The statue that was erected in Holt's honor was torn down and destroyed. His picture, which hung in the main Administration building, was torn down. An anonymous person managed to salvage the picture and smuggle it to the US where it was given to Holt's youngest son, Dr. Homer Cheng (my uncle).

It took many years for the actions of the Cultural Revolution to die down. Some believe it did not officially end until the mid 1970's. Richard Nixon's visit in 1972 marked the beginning of the new era in China's openness. My dad, now a US citizen, was one of the first Chinese to return to his homeland in 1974. He had a joyous reunion with his four sisters. Mao died in 1976 and his main successor, Deng Xiaoping, is largely credited for beginning China's capitalist reforms and opening up the country even more. My dad brought the entire family back in 1978, when I was just 17 years old. He retired early and spent the rest of his life going back and forth to China as a textile consultant. In 1987 he received one of the country's highest honors, Foreign Expert, where we was received by the Premiere himself.

Modern Day
In 2002, the Dental College of the Sun Yat Sen University of Medical Sciences was renamed back to the Guang Hua school of Stomotology, in honor of my grandfather, Dr. Holt Cheng. A bronze bust was sculpted and placed in the school's library along with a wonderful display that chronicled the original school's history. One of the highlights of the trip was gathering my entire family around this bust for pictures and touring the state-of-the-art medical facilities, impressive by any standard.

Another highlight of the trip was when the 12 of us sat in the house my great grandfather built in the 1920's with my great aunt (see slide show). We encouraged all our daughters to ask questions about growing up with Rev. Lee Tsai Leong. We then went to the cemetery and saw the headstones of one my great, great grandfathers (Lee Wuen Juen) who was one of the first believers in our family. Since the Christian cemetery was located outside the city, and by God's grace, it escaped the destruction of the Red Guard.

When we got to Shanghai, we heard many of the stories about my dad for the first time. We shot video, took pictures and made notes of what was said. One of the reasons I am taking the time to write this blog is so that it will be recorded and disseminated. I had a very hard time maintaining my composure when I saw my two remaining aunts for the first time in 30 years. They reminded me so much of my dad. They kept telling us (my brother, sister and I) how much we reminded them of my dad. I went to the restroom and cried.

Little Rock, Arkansas
It's difficult to express how I feel as I comprehend the richness of my heritage, the sacrifices that many of my relatives made for their loved ones and how I am the direct beneficiary of it all. I cannot imagine how disappointing it must of have been for my dad's side of the family when he was not able to return home. It is even more difficult knowing the depth of family that I have there, yet possessing only a shallow knowledge about any of them. How different life would be if I had been born in China. I must ultimately leave it into the hands of our wonderfully sovereign God, who knew every event that was going to happen to my family before time began.

So that's it! If you've made it this far, you know a lot about my family. My Uncle Homer just completed a massive book about his father, Dr. Holt Cheng. It is being printed in China as we speak. Others in our family are working very hard at documenting and preserving this history. My hope is the one day these stories will become as much a part of my daughter's lives as they have become to mine. I know the stories. I sat in their homes and heard about the people in the stories. It is no longer a mystery to me. It is what has been handed down to me.