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by Jeffrey Tam

This paper documents me. Myself. One could say that I was born into historical circumstance. I too, was born in Hong Kong. My father and mother were white-collar professionals; both graduated from the National University of Taiwan. My father, in particular, was a production manager at a prominent manufacturer of print circuit boards in Hong Kong. My sister and I, we went to school at St. Paul Co-Educational College, one of Hong Kong's elite educational institutions. The single reason for our immigration was the looming question of 1997. Would the Chinese government keep their promises and allow Hong Kong to prosper? That's a question which is still unanswered.

Yet, life in the United States was harder than the stereotype of the typical successful Hong Kong immigrant dictated. We found that this was true of many other Hongkongers as well. With the money we got from selling our flat in Hong Kong, we managed to pay for moving costs, and the down payment for our car in America. The first few years were rough, as few American companies would hire my father. After all, my father was a white-collar manager without too many specialized skills who spoke no Spanish and bad English. It got worse when the recession hit, and the manufacturing industry in Orange County virtually disappeared. Eventually, he went back to Hong Kong, where he had no American managers to look at his Asian facial features with a leering eye. There in Hong Kong, my father was at his best, in charge of Hong Kong workers and Chinese workers. But he finally came back to the States. Now he goes to work at six in the morning and leaves at five in the afternoon; his English had actually improved during his years in Hong Kong, having dealt a great deal with American and Singaporean bosses there, and so he's back as a supervisor, of nine factory workers.

Still, every day my father reminds me of how lucky I am. Of more than a billion Chinese, I was lucky enough to be born among the seven million in Hong Kong. There, the air is free, and the sky's the limit. And among the seven million Chinese, I was one of the few to have had the luck to be able to immigrate to the United States, attend good public schools, go to Stanford.

Hopefully, after I graduate, I'll be able to become sufficiently self-reliant so that my father will finally be able to retire. It's cliché, but it's true that his hard work has paved the way for my easy life. For the many Hong Kong Chinese who have landed on these shores, life is not easy. Maybe it's easy for the tycoons and the lawyers and the doctors, but not for everyone. This is their story.

If you have any questions about the web site, feel free to email me at tamj@stanford.edu.

1. I spend two full pages detailing Hong Kong's history. It's necessary in order to set the historical background upon which I discuss my topic. I apologize for the length of the section reciting Hong Kong's history, but two pages was as short as I could shrink 160 years of history into.
2. Research at Green Library was not too terribly difficult, though it was a challenge trying to find Hong Kong - to - America specific immigration sources. There were a few of them, enough to do this paper.
3. Because of the length of the paper was already quite long, I decided not to include something I was originally planning to have in the paper, the experience of Hong Kong immigrants in Hawaii. I was planning on comparing the Hong Kong immigrant experience with Pak. However, I had already taken down some quotes for that part, so, for your viewing pleasure, here they are:

Written by Richard Chabot, Oi Man chan, and Alvin Y. So, from Reluctant Exiles.