Episode 799: Journey to America

Published Jan 17, 2025, 6:18 AM

Newt talks with Xi Van Fleet, a Chinese immigrant who shares her experiences growing up during China's Cultural Revolution and her journey to America. They discuss the premiere of the documentary "Journey to America" on PBS, which celebrates the achievements of nine immigrants, including Van Fleet. She recounts the chaos of the Cultural Revolution, her struggles under Mao's regime, and her eventual escape to the United States. Van Fleet emphasizes the importance of legal immigration and the need for immigrants to assimilate and appreciate American values. The documentary aims to showcase the diverse contributions of immigrants to the United States. “Journey to America” is streaming now on PBS.org and the PBS App.

On this episode of newts World. Journey to America with Newton Close to Gingrich will premiere on PBS and is streaming on PBS dot Org and the PBS app. The film celebrates the achievements and shares the stories of nine individuals from different backgrounds and periods who immigrated to our country in pursuit of the American dream. I'm joined today by one of the people we feature in the documentary, she Vanfleet. She grew up during China's Cultural Revolution before legally immigrating in the United States. Her latest book, Maus America, is available now. She welcome and thank you for joining me again in newts World.

Thank you so much for having me.

I think what makes you really remarkable is that you were an eyewitness to Mao's cultural Revolution, and then you were sort of an eyewitness to what was happening in America and you managed to make sense of it. So could you talk first about what was it like growing up in China.

Well, first of all, I have to say, watching that remarkable film, I feel so honored and I feel I'm disqualified because, yeah, including me with those extraordinary immigrants who become American like Einstein, my goodness, But thank you so much for having me as part of that film.

I don't want to shock you, but as far as I'm concerned, you are as important and as consequential as Henry Kissinger or anybody else who's in the program. You have really been very important in alerting America to what's going on and what we need to be aware of. So I'm just honored that you're with us because I know how busy you've been and how much you've been writing and speaking, and you know, you're a remarkable person. I'm curious because I think this will really help all of our listeners. What was it like to grow up in China under moul.

It's just difficult to just describe, But one word I can use is to summarize is chaos. Just the day that I remember that something was different, It's like a day in the night, and memory before that was just like a blurb, and everything after that was just a world turned upside down. And as I described in my book, really soon after the culture I've started, in May nineteen sixty six, the school was closed. There's no school why because the kids altered the principal and the teachers, and it's just total chaos. We had nothing to do, so as kids, we just went to the streets and every day way witness struggle sessions, a term that more and more Americans are familiar with because that's going on in America. And see those people that being paraded, and what's wrong with them, Well, they are supposedly deemed as the enemy of mouth. And so they include groups of people, not just the individuals who did this. If you belong to the group, for example, if you belong to what more called reactionary intellectual authority, you're a bad guy. That include teachers, principals, professors, anyone in the field of education are deemed as enemy. And that's what the kids went after. And then there's other people. I did not know what was going on. I just knew something just like a hurricane. They just sweep through the country. And then the family and they just kids were taught to turn in their parents. We are out there looking for what called counter revolutionaries. The only thing I can say is that just like today's racist, we're looking for anyone that might say anything that is incorrectly in politically incorrect. Those people will be deemed as enemy. Target of the Red Guards I was too young to be a Red Guard. By I weitness all this and that's why in twenty twenty I was like, oh my goodness, this is the rat play of what I experienced as a child. And it is exactly what it is. It's America's cultural revolution.

To give our listeners a sense of what China was like in that period. Even though your parents were part of the cadre of the Chinese Companist Party and we're sort of a privileged class, could you describe what the equivalent of privilege meant, because I think most Americans will be shocked to realize how difficult and how challenging it was, even if you were in a privileged group.

Yes, and I described And we have one and a half rooms for a family of five, and we are lucky that we have a kitchen. It's just a room and shared by four families. And we have a toilet shared by again four families, and that is a privilege. And a lot of people have heard about Lelly town William and she was a candidate for Congress in the past election in New Hampshire. Her situation that the whole building share an outhouse. That's how privilege I.

Was when you think of that as being privileged, and you also point out that you actually had an opportunity to go to a boarding school and you lived there six days out of the week. What was it like to be a boarding school student in China in that period?

This is misleading. It's a boarding option for a regular school, and if you just have to pay extra. There's no such thing as like a boarding school is for the privilege, but you do have to pay extra. To me, it's like an orphanage because for six days of the week, I did not get to see my family. I did not get to see my parents. They were all busy with whatever the revolutionary work. They were doing it out of town most of the time. So I remember asking just like an orphanage. And unfortunately, and I have a good teacher who took care of me just because she takes the liking of me and become almost like my shod mother. And that was a good memory compared with what happened after the Cultural Revolution started.

I didn't realize how young you were when the Cultural Revolution began.

I have to tell you, if I were just like a three or four years older, I will definitely be part of the Red Guards. I may just get myself killed. That's how bad things are. And I think it's a blessing. I was too young to be part of the real Red Guards, and they become a little Red Guard.

You first noticed that there was these huge posters on the wall which denounced the teachers and the school administrators. Was it sort of a deliberate effort to undermine the authority?

Absolutely, just as I said that, you become an enemy if you belong to a group of people, and Mao deemed this group of people reactionary intellectual authority. And so if you are part of that teachers, you have authority over the students and the principles, you have authority over the school. And they all become enemies automatically. It's not individual base. It's never individual base. It's all group and a group identity. Now we're all familiar with it. If you belong to that group, you're doomed. And so they become the initial enemy of the Red Guards because it's most convenient. You know, the kids turned to their teachers because that's what they know best, and then they eventually went to the others. And the highest level of authority was the president of China, Luchauti. The Red Guards went after him and held Througo session against the President of China, and he eventually was exiled and died and in misery. And that's culture Revolution.

As the Cultural Revolution was going on, lots of people, I think something like sixteen million young people from the cities were sent out. Even Dong Chaopeng, who had been a founding member of the Chinese Companist Party at one point, found himself I think working in a tractor factory in South China. Mean, it really was a deliberate effort by Mau to create turmoil throughout the entire society, in the notion there'll be some kind of a great leap towards a more perfect communist society. And you got involved in part in a program that was called up to the Mountains and down to the countryside movement. Now what was that like and what was it like for you being in it?

Yes, this is really Mau's way of getting rid of the so called youthful idiots. Those were the young kids, the Red Guards. It did what Mao wanted them to do. They destroyed the Chinese civilization, took down those in power who were supposedly the enemy of Mao, and then they become a problem and Mao turned against them, and it's always the case, and I really really want people. And that left these activists to learn to know about this historical fact. It happened over and over. So what did Mao do to the tens of millions of Red Guards? Send them to the countryside and told them, you know, you need to go to the countryside and get you re education from the peasants to be better communists. So that, of course, that's an excuse, and he wanted to get rid of them because they become problems. But also there's no economy. He destroyed the economy. There's no jobs, there's no nothing for the young people. So they were sent to the countryside. It's for the Red Guards. But since then all the high school graduates were set and I graduated from high school in nineteen fifty five, same thing. Nothing for me. Sent to the countryside and I worked there for three long years.

What did you learn from It's an amazing experience and you're now an American. But there aren't many Americans who were sent to the countryside. So what was it like at a practical everyday life level to be in the countryside.

Well, it's to be a peasant. And then what it means to be a peasant is to be at the very bottom of the Chinese socialist utopia. That was like a primitive condition, and all the peasants were landless because their land was taken away by the state. So they own nothing and they have no decision to make what to grow because it's not theirs. They become serfs, and I become one of them. So what you do is every day you would gather at what you call the production team and the boss, the party boss, will tell you what to do, and after the day's work you get work points and eventually you get produced or whatever at harvest time. So we are all serfs slaves.

It seems to me you I had a chance to experience socialism and found that it just didn't work.

I learned that in the countryside because before I was a kid in school and so what is socialism? I learned it firsthand in the countryside. So there's two ways for you to make work points. One is by hours, so for example, weading, So today everyone will do the weading. Okay, so it's eight hours, and if you do anything or not do anything. Chat your way through, no problem. You get eight points, and then some other time it's by how much your hobbyist for example potato, it's by kilos, and then no one will had time to chat. Everyone was working so hard to get as much as possible because they get more points. So I say, okay, Communism is like you do whatever, you get the same result. That is why communism doesn't work. Capitalism is like you get paid for what you put in. Communism is you get the same thing no matter how much you put in. So that was my really really firsthand experience understanding that socialism doesn't work. And that's what's happened in the city now. People would hurry to go to work because you have to clock in, say eight o'clock. Once you get there, drink your tea, you read your paper, because it doesn't matter.

I really identify with the impact that you had learning about socialism firsthand. I had the wonderful opportunity Henry Kissinger inviting me out to his farm in Connecticut and had leak onon you as a guest that weekend, and the older statesman who had been the creator of modern Singapore. We had a chance to chat privately. I said, I'm really curious, how did you know how to make all of these decisions that worked and that led to the rise of this amazing economy. And he said, well, you know, I was a student in Great Britain at the end of World War Two, during the British Labor Party's Socialist government with Clement Attlee as the Prime minister. And every time I faced a problem, I would say to myself, what would Clement Attlee and the Socialists have done? And I would do the exact opposite. And it worked because every time I relied on incentives and I write on people working hard. Somehow Singapore prospered. And I thought it was a great illustration of how the principles of socialism are the opposite of what really works.

Yeah, but in China it's just a few people. It's really mao. He had his idea what should happen, and then that is the idea that everyone has to follow, and it crossed the higher country. So it's a plan, not just planned economy, it's planned everything. And I always tell people, you know, there's people knew there's no freedom of speech in communist country, but there's no freedom of thoughts and you can't even think certain way. And it's especially true for young people because we were never taught to think, and we could not think because we did not have any different sources of information. Were fed's one version of the so called truth, and that's all we knew and we just repeat. We could not think. That's what Mau said. We have to unify our thoughts, not just everything else, but even how you think has to be regulated.

What was it like when Mao dies in nineteen seventy six. What was your personal reaction when you heard that Mao had died.

Oh, I remember, I aptly remember the moment. I burst into tears, just like millions of Chinese. I thought this guy was falling. I just could not imagine a world without Mild because I grew up with like he was everywhere he was just like everything we did has to be the correct one follow his instruction. I had no idea what well becoming of us, and I feel despair because I did not know better. It was devastating to me and I was seventeen.

Dung Chahpeg Caesar's power and opens up China to the West, and I want to test something with you. Dung Champeg is one of the original founders of the Chinese Communist Party. He spends a year at London University in Moscow in the twenties. Tell me if this is wrong. He's really making the case we have to have a market economy so the Chinese people won't throw us out. But it was actually a step to keep the dictatorship, not a step to unlock it.

Thank you, thank you. That's exactly what it is. And people don't understand what he inherited from now was a total ruins. At that time, there's no economy, and the people were angry. People were angry about the rulers, and they absolutely angry at this ideology called communism. So everything was bankrupted, the country and the ideology. Doan shal Kin his the sole goal is how to save the power of the CCP. How to save not China, not Chinese people, but power. He knew you had to do something drastic. That was his black cat, white cat theory. He was not interested in improving people's lives. He did, but the goal was to secure the power for the CCP.

But now, in the middle of all this, you decided to come to the United States. How did that process run when did you begin to think, gee, maybe I'll go to America.

I think in the late nineteen seventies, the Chinese government started to send Chinese students to study in the West, and then eventually a lot of people started to apply for themselves with a scholarship from America. And then eventually I tried the same thing, and it's difficult. I met some Americans who came to teach in my university, and I befriended one of them, and she's from Western Kentucky University. She worked there, and she helped me to get assistantship and helped me do everything. She was my sponsor. And then I have to do my part, you know, to get the passport. It's not easy job, and to pass the total examination and that's required, you know, like an English efficiency. And that's how I got here to America.

As I understand it, When you go to the American consulate in chang Dou to get a visa and they turn you down, what did you do?

Then there was a policy. I believe that they only interested in same students. My major that I applied is English, and so for that, I think they don't want anyone to go there to study English. They want people who stud math, you know, chemistry in or whatever. I think there's something else. They don't want unmarried young women. They're afraid that you might want to stay. And the truth is that everyone would want to stay. But to me, the motivation is I just want to get out of there. I want to get all there so bad I would do anything.

So you get turned down, what did you do? Then?

Well then you have another year. You can really apply a year later. But back then there's no internet. So I was smart enough to realize, hey, maybe I can go to Beijing. And they did not know. I applied, so within I think two months, I got my paper together and I went to Beijing. That was my lucky day. That was my lucky day. That's the day after Thanksgiving nineteen eighty six. I said, probably everyone was in good mood after you know, a day off, and so there I got my visa and oh my god. I just never forget the moment. And when that young visa officer told me to come back in a wake, I was like, maybe he made a mistake. So I basically ran out of it thinking he said, hey come back, let a mistake. It was so so, so so unforgetable moment that then at that point I know I have a ticket to freedom.

That is a great, great story. And did you fly to America?

Yes? I did, And also I described this moment of flying united. I did not have enough money and my uncle stepped in and helped me because he had connection in Hong Kong. I asked, remember the moment, and this steward said, welcome aboard. She had this smile that I've never seen in my entire life, such a big smile, such a big smile. I was like, Oh my god, I'm going to a great place. Everything started so perfectly, and I can't never forget. I've never seen that kind of smile my twenty six years in China.

You're so remarkable, and you were such a leader in Walden County and trying to educate the school board and the public, and then went on to make speeches and be on TV and write books. You also did us the great honor of participating in our new gingrich Smy sixty documentary, Journey to America on PBS, which will stream for free on pbs dot org and the PBS app. The documentary celebrates the achievements of nine individuals from diverse backgrounds. You're one of them, and I want to share a sneak preview of journey to America.

Immigrants have come to America from around the world for many reasons.

Some fled famine, poverty, others sought religious freedom, and some came for the possibility of a better life.

My name is Henry Kissing Jew and I came to America in nineteen thirty eight.

The promise of freedom and opportunity continues to be a powerful draw for those who make their journey to America.

What drew you to want to participate in the project?

When you told me about this project, I said, yes, I want to participant because I don't have an extraordinary story, but I do have a story of my journey freedom and how I get to feel in totally in love with this country and how I understand what makes this country exceptional. And that is such a journey. And that is why in twenty twenty I really realized this is my payback time. I have been able to enjoy the freedom and enjoying the opportunity and achieve my American dream. It's more as it is, it is my American dream, and I'm proud of it. And now I see this American dream dying. I see it the freedom, you know, slipping through our fingers, and I just feel like I have to I have to step up, and I have to tell American people my story. And of course back then I did nothing that big. I just went to the school board.

You were great in the show, and I should tell people that there are eight other people in addition to achieve. Athlete Henry Kissinger, a Jewish German American statesman, came to the US in nineteen thirty eight, had a remarkable career, maybe the most influential Secretary of State in modern times. Tam Gafarian, who came to the US from Iran at sixteen, now has Axiom Space, which is the largest private sector space company building an international space station privately the second largest customer for SpaceX after the US government. He also is doing a great job with modular nuclear power. One of my favorite stories Hetty Lamar, who is a Jewish Austrian American actress. But more important, I knew that she was an actress, and I'd seen her in the Bob Hope and Ben Crosby Road movies. What I didn't realize was until we did research for the show. She was an inventor who decided to try to help defeat German submarines, and she invented a technological device which is in virtually every cell phone in the world today, which just blew me away. Maria Dom we included she is a Russian American. She was adopted from an orphanage. In two thousand and two, she became the first female graduate of the United States Marine Corps School of Infantry, which is quite an achievement and shows that she's really committed. And then Callissa's favorite Saint Francis Xavier Cabrini, Mother Cabrini, who became only a saint Italian American, who fought her way to come to America in order to help Italian Americans who had come over here and who were poor. She founded the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred. She is in a shrine in New York City and was the first US citizen to be canonized as a Saint. Albert Einstein, who what he knows of, came to the US in nineteen thirty three, made remarkable contributions in physics. Zelmai Calili Zad is an Afghan American first came to the US as a student in nineteen sixty six, became a diplomat and foreign policy expert and was a US embass the United Nations, Iraq and Afghanistan. And finally Victoria Sparks, Ukrainian American, came to the US in two thousand and was elected as a member of the US House of Representation Indiana in twenty twenty and it's still serving in the US House. As you look at all that she do you think stories like that can help others understand how important legal immigration is.

Absolutely, this is really what this film will do to help people to understand that America is great because it has so many legal again, legal immigrants like those people featured in the film, and they've done so much and now we have La Mosque and the people like that and helping America. Immigration is the key to the success of this country. But have to be legal, and what's going on today is we have this illegal invasion. And I just don't think it's correct to use the word immigrant. Is illegal when you come illegally, you're not immigrants. You are really criminals because you'll break the law. And so I think that's so so important for people to understand we do not want to make this two thing together and legal immigration. America's success depend on more legal immigration of people of all sorts of talents from all over the world.

I agree with you, and of course that's why christ and I wanted to do Journey to America. And we're very honored that PBS decided it was good enough that they're going to stream it for free on PBS dot orgon the PBS app Sheep. I want to thank you. You are a remarkable person. You are the perfect person to have been in this particular program. You exemplify the fact that people can come from anywhere and they bring with them talents and skills and insights, and they dramatically enrich our country. As an American, you know that this is an amazing place, and I think you have certainly contributed to it. And I really appreciate you taking the time to talk with me.

Oh, thank you so much. That's such an honor for me to be in that film and to be on the podcast with you. Now.

Thank you to my guest, shi Van Fleet. You can learn more about the Journey to America documentary on our show page at Newtsworld dot com. News World is produced by Ginglish three sixty on iHeartMedia. Our executive producer is Guarnsey Sloman. Our researcher is Rachel Peterson. The art work for the show Who's created by Steve Penley. Special thanks to the team at Ginglish three sixty. If you've been enjoying news World, I hope you'll go to Apple Podcasts and both rate us with five stars and give us a review so others can learn what it's all about. Right now, listeners of Newtsworld can sign up for my three free weekly columns at gingwishree sixty dot com slash newsletter. I'm Newt Gingrich. This is neut World

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