Chinese Americans

"I always indicated my pride in my heritage and the contributions of Chinese civilization over thousands of years, and I would also highlight what I thought were some of the greatest attributes of America and its contributions to the world. And then I would indicate that I was the representative of the United States and its people."

"My family and I traveled throughout China. Everywhere we went the Chinese people received us with warmth and friendliness. When we visited my ancestral home, we were mobbed by the local villagers waiting to take pictures with us. It was a deeply moving experience for my children to see where their grandfather and great grandfather were born."

"Well, it’s always important for any administrator, executive — whether in the private sector, or in government, or a college campus — to be talking with all members of the organization, the rank and file, to really understand what their issues are, and what their dreams and aspirations are, and what their frustrations are."

"I joke that it took our family 100 years to travel one mile. But what a journey it has been. Our family story is the story of millions of families whose ancestors came to these shores from all around the world in search of freedom, opportunity, and equality."

"With the military becoming increasingly dependent on commercial-off-the-shelf dual-use technology, it is important to ensure that our licensing criteria are based on objective technical parameters that take into account the strategic nature of an item and whether or not the item is available from non-U.S. suppliers."

"Commentators have suggested that increasing economic and military competition from China is the beginning of a new Cold War. Others have suggested that high levels of trade and integration with China and today’s global economy means a more cooperative dynamic exists. The current conflict in Ukraine though has added new complexities to ours, foreign relations as Western nations implement unprecedented sanctions against Russia and provide support to Ukraine while avoiding a direct role in the conflict."

"Our higher education system has to be a part of the economic recovery strategy."

"The strength of America is our diversity of people, ethnicities, cultures, languages, religions — this is the secret sauce of our dynamism and resilience."

"I always wanted a job where I could help people. I never dreamed when I ran for a seat in the Legislature that I would end up in the Governor's office. At the time, I wanted to do something to improve education in the state. It's still my highest priority."

"Memory is the central part of the individual identity… and I think that’s true with a nation, too. What a nation is how the nation remembers its past, and with the authoritarian government in China, so far recent history has been written in the authorities’ narrative; how they came into power, and what has happened since they came into power, have been revised in a way that fits into the official narrative."

"I think empathy is not learned. Maybe I’m wrong, but in my experience it’s not."

"People in China who praise the government despite that they have family that died from Covid because of the lack of medical response and lack of care from the government, but they still say they are appreciative of the government, I look at those people and they could be my family or my friends. I would never look at them with disgust or contempt or as morally superior. I understand how they became that and how they got their information, how their ideology was formed."

"There is a difference between disinformation and misinformation. Disinformation is somebody giving the wrong information but unknowingly. They did not know it was wrong, so maybe they could say they are working with the information they had at the time but it’s still wrong. Misinformation is intentionally spreading wrong information. At what point the disinformation turned to misinformation is really hard to go back and find. The people who are at the level of government, whose responsibility it is to present transparency and truthful information, those people need to be held accountable for giving inaccurate information."

"I’m pretty pessimistic about the Chinese government because I think there is no balance within it or any institution, country or organization that can hold it accountable. So, I don’t know what the future will be."

"The most repressed countries often produce some of the most amazing films. I think that it will push people to find a way to express their ideas in new ways."

"Misinformation is just like a virus. There is an origin. It’s hard to find where the origin is, but it starts with a small group of people and it takes human hosts to spread from person to person. All the people who voted for Trump or believed that COVID didn’t exist, you need to go back to see where did it start and how long have we ignored that. I do want people to look at it, and not to place judgement but to look beyond those superficial issues."

"We all like to believe that our world has clear heroes and villains and that the heroes are going to save us after all, but that’s not the reality."

"During filming, it never occurred to me that I was going to be a part of either film. I was always trying to cut my voice out by having subjects include my question in their answers."

"I’m conscious what things were not positive. And I, as a storyteller, as a filmmaker, and as a citizen, I felt that it’s my responsibility to expose that and to reveal that, to raise awareness so people could see. That’s the only way I feel you could really push the country to move forward, to improve, and hold the authorities accountable."

"I think the first step of any change comes from the people who live in China. And that's why I think the most important impact I hope that documentaries would have is to change people's perception. Because personally, I experienced how I have learned so much, and unlearned so much, about what I was taught growing up about China."

"Our goal was to make a film that in 50 or 100 years will survive as a reliable account of what really happened during the one-child policy. It can serve as a rebuttal to the official narrative, which in China already is pure propaganda. Even outside of China, many people we’ve spoken with have told us how surprised they were by the details of the film, which shows how effective the propaganda promoting the policy truly has been."

"The biggest challenge we faced during post-production was how to integrate all the different elements involved in the film. The topic of the one-child policy and its consequences are massive and complex. We went through a lot of trial and error to decide which characters to include and how to transit from my personal and family story to a larger national and international story."

"We all want certain things. We all want transparency. We all want accurate information. And especially with the experience of coming from China, knowing how somebody could firmly believe in something that was not true. I would never look at any of the subjects in China who say they love, they admire, they appreciate Xi Jinping and they appreciate what the Chinese government does with contempt or with disgust. I would never do that. Because I know what they came from, and I know what made this happen."

"The conversations about human rights in China, they can be a little numbingly familiar after you talk about it."

"The values of freedom and democracy upon which America was founded are the same values that once inspired my father and are the ones to which he remains dedicated. Those values are not just every American’s birthright; they are the fundamental rights of all human beings."

"The truth is, the lives of activists are much more complicated than what the novel presented. My father was not a regular man nor a regular father. He gave himself to his cause, and our relationship was forged by distance. There is no resentment. The world needs people like my father."

""I was born in 1989, and my father, being a democracy activist, he was paying a lot of attention to what was going on in Tiananmen, in Beijing, at that time, so after the massacre, he named me Ti-Anna to commemorate the victims ... and also to celebrate the ideals of freedom and democracy. He really wanted to remember their courage."

"In a country without meaningful rule of law, my family has no means appeal my father's conviction, despite having secured exonerating evidence for the charges against him. The lawyers we've retained on his behalf are routinely intimidated by authorities, obstructed from visiting him and threatened with disbarment. Because of my outspokenness, the Chinese government repeatedly refuses my visa applications. Consequently I have been unable to visit him for the past seven years."

"From early on, I was nourished in a literary way. I didn't realize that there was a writer already living in me"

"I was disillusioned with the communists after they shot the students at the square. But now I'm disgusted with this country [US], as well. I thought the US was such a free land. I don't know where else I should go to now. I was just naturalised."

"I like to play with words. In English, there's only one or two ways to say something; in Chinese there are 30 ways."

"I don't see myself in the circle of Asian-American writers. My English is only that of a 15-year-old. I don't feel confident enough to write about contemporary America. China has been the subject of my writings, no matter where I am. However, I'm not completely Chinese - more an outsider of China's affairs. I have the right to speak on the subjects that I lived through"

"With books or film I want to commemorate our youth and the sacrifices they made. No matter how bitter the time was, there is always something beautiful. I want to satisfy my nostalgia and hope [my work] is touching enough to move audiences who may not have the same experiences."

"Any suffering registered in your mind makes the emotion deeper. Maybe as a writer, I am constantly looking for tragedy."

"There are still many problems that aren't answered in China. As a writer, I have to keep searching for truth. The Chinese government still neglects many mistakes that were made during the Cultural Revolution and covering the facts. We need to revisit the old wounds."

"Good stories will keep haunting me for years. They will mature and want to be born. I can't help it."

"Don’t you think all women need to be admired, and welcome it? Admiration comes out of sensitivity and attention. Admiration includes paying attention to every detail of her body, decoding her body language, being sensitive to her subtlest gestures, being aware of all the expressions behind her expression. Women always feel that the people closest to them don’t understand, don’t comprehend them; that they lack the sensitivity that comes from true passion. Without this sensitivity and understanding, women lack a sense of security and don’t have the impulse to open their hearts completely."

"I realized that on the internet, you can hide in invisibility, so speaking with another person is kind of like speaking to another part of yourself, or like confessing to a priest of your own creation. So it becomes very daring, very frank, with a desire to give the burdens you carry in your heart to the other person, to have that other person share the burden. Secrets are very heavy, and someone who keeps a huge secret cannot live carefree. Over time, the corrosiveness of secrets can erode the most intimate relationships."

"I think Chinese is a difficult language to translate. Every time a draft translation of my work lands on my desk, I read it as if it were someone else’s work. I think I have the ability to stay detached and read my own work objectively, because when I read a translation draft, I rarely compare a sentence or a paragraph with my original work. The only time I do is when I discover a passage that doesn’t sound right. I don’t nitpick. It’s unfortunate that Chinese is a such a unique language, with origins so different from Western languages, so every time I read a translation, I feel something is lost, some of the strength or color."

"But these days in China the authorities don’t grant my novels official book licensing numbers, so there’s no way to publish them in China. For that reason, I’m considering writing in English again. I swim every day, and when I swim, I feel that swimming laps back and forth is rather boring, so I think about a novel’s structure, its beginning, its characters and such, and that way I enjoy swimming more. After I have swum for a few more months, maybe I can talk more concretely about my next project."

"But it’s frustrating, that you know what good literature is but you cannot get it totally right."

"I don’t think a novel has a function or a mission such as teaching somebody something. Instead, I think a novelist, by writing a story in the most vivid way, with poetry of language and by sharing it with the public, is willing to discover the truth about the story together with the readers. I have written stories about women suffering during wars and after wars, because I think that no matter who wins or loses, women on both side are the ultimate victims. Their bodies are the last part of a defeated country to be conquered, to be violated. They are the mothers, wives, and daughters of soldiers whose lost lives leave voids in the women’s lives, too deep to be filled."

"I think the Chinese are a people of survival. We are all wonderful survivors. We have risen in population during the last century, a century in which wars and famines have happened all the time. We have survived natural and political disasters almost every other year during the last sixty years. Without optimism I don’t think my people could live until today. I have gone to poor rural areas in China and seen destitute people joke and jest and laugh. I can imagine Chinese at the bottom of society, surviving like them over thousands of years. They must have a good sense of humor to go through hardship, and they must have learned how to steal whatever small pleasure they can to hold on to their dear life. I can’t imagine that any people could survive so many centuries of sorrow if to live only means to suffer. They have learned to steal joy, however little, out of the overall suffering."

"The pity is my expression in English is still young and not subtle enough. It’s not quite there. I read English very well, I know what good language is, and I want to reach the level of Nabokov and Conrad."

"My dream is to write with both pens, in English and Chinese. I want to be more truthful and more straightforward when I write in English."

"I consider myself as having two selves. One self is Chinese and more delicate, more subtle, in terms of language. But the English self is young and audacious, and I say what I want to say."

"As I mentioned previously, on the internet everyone enjoys being nameless, having the privilege and protection of anonymity. It is like a person hiding in a crowd; if the crowd curses, he curses along with it, and only by cursing along with it does he feel safe. But if he doesn’t curse along with it, he loses the crowd’s protection and is not safe. On the internet many people tell the truth, or attack others, or curse others, anonymously, thinking that if they can disappear into the vast ocean of the anonymous crowd they can feel safe."

"It’s frustrating seeing things lost in translation. Some expressions are just so Chinese, or so English, you have to switch your thinking to English in order to write it with spontaneity and naturally."

"What makes me choose to write a particular story as fiction only depends on how interesting the story is and how much literary and aesthetic value I can see in it. In China, I don’t believe there are enough good literature and artistic works of aesthetic value that have been created on this war. So far, most are just crass propaganda. Literature doesn’t stop war, but it helps us understand what war can do to human hearts, and what worst or best behaviors war can trigger from us."

"Under normal circumstances, I will not travel until a novel is finished.If there is an agreed itinerary, I will calculate the time at home, enough to write a lot of work. If I am writing a novel and encounter an urgent matter of traveling, I will be very upset and even painful. If more than half of the work has been written, and the tone of voice of this work has been formed, then I will feel better, otherwise, when I come back from a trip and sit at the desk, I want to give up because the tone is out of tone and the sense of language is weak."