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A family's two-generation odyssey abroad

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2009-09-18 11:47

SHANGHAI: For a long time, Fan Qijin had held that every person on earth should wear the same shoes. That was undoubtedly in his mind until his study tour in Japan 28 years ago.

When Fan first boarded a train in Tokyo in 1981 shortly after his arrival in Japan, then 37-year-old was a bit shocked to see that no two pairs of shoes worn by ordinary Japanese were the same.

"The feeling was so bizarre, as what I saw in Tokyo then was totally different from my country," recalled Fan, now 65, and chief engineer of the Shanghai-based Yangtze Estuary Waterway Administration Bureau under the Ministry of Communications.

In the early 1980s, the infant stage of China's reform and opening-up, Chinese people were still dressed predominantly in their identical gray or blue, plus the grass green rubber-soled canvas shoes, dubbed "jiefang xie", meaning "liberation shoes".

It was no wonder that Fan felt culture shock, coming from a society where uniformity had been omnipresent for almost three decades.

Indeed, the study tour itself had been a "godsend" to Fan, given his "tainted" family background.

He fell unfortunately into the "Black Five" Category, a highly politicized term coined for "landlords, rich farmers, anti-revolutionists, bad elements and right-wingers" in China from 1957 to 1976, when the decade-long "Cultural Revolution" ended.

Not trusted due to the nametag, Fan had been frustrated in his political advancement at a time when everything in China hinged on political "correctness".

Upon graduation from Tianjin University in north China in 1968, Fan was assigned to a military farm in Taishan County, south China's Guangdong Province and worked as farmer for two years.

It was not until 1970 when he was transferred to the Qingdao-based No.1 Port Construction Bureau under the Ministry of Communications, that he was finally in a job along the line of his college major -- harbor engineering.

An opportunity came his way in the late 1970s, when Deng Xiaoping, chief architect of China's reform and opening up, instructed that more students and scholars should be funded for overseas study to accelerate the country's reform process.

As the bureau Fan worked for was in 1980 only assigned one place for overseas study, competition was tough. Fan passed his Japanese language and professional knowledge test, but he still had to face a more complicated check up of political records.

"I didn't know exactly how the check-up was carried out," Fan said, "but I knew the process was lengthy."

In 1981 Fan joined some 250 people to study in Japan with state funds. And he was to study at the School of Science, the University of Tokyo.

Life abroad was tough for Fan, on a state allowance -- 1,000 yen (US$4.5) a day -- could only buy a bowl and a half of noodles at a local market, far from a decent living.

"Therefore I didn't want to go shopping at all even though the stores and shopping malls in Tokyo were full of dazzling goods I'd never seen back home," he said.

"More importantly, time was so valuable for our generation to learn from foreign countries," he explained. "Imagine how excited we were when being exposed to such an enormous amount of knowledge that China desperately needed during that time."

This hunger for knowledge had made Fan's life in Tokyo a simple route between university laboratory and dormitory.

"I was a 100 percent learner in Japan then," Fan said. "I didn't have much time to play and the only song I learned in Japan was Spring in Northland."

When he completed his study in 1983, all Fan wished was to bring almost every major item back to China, where durables were still a rarity in the 1980s.

"Made-in-Japan wrist watch, refrigerator, washing machine, color television set," Fan counted with his fingers.

"What really annoyed me was I didn't have enough money for such a long list then," he said.

Over 20 years later, however, a much longer list needed his scrutiny when he returned to Japan to give a lecture on China's harbor engineering in February this year.

But the difficult part this time was choosing at Japanese stores presents for his family back in China, with no made-in-China tags.

"It was like shopping at home as it is hard to find stuff not made in China," Fan added.

It's amusing that the electronic photo frame he had carefully chosen turned out to be "made in China".

"Things are very different now," Fan said. "From China's international standing to its technological progress, great changes can be seen everywhere."

In 1950, China's imports and exports amounted to a mere US$1.13 billion, or 0.9 percent of the world trade volume. The figure had grown in 2008, however, to about US$2.56 trillion or 8.86 percent.

"The ups and downs in my life were closely linked to the state of the entire country," said Fan.

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