Mike From China

I met a very interesting man today.

An elderly Chinese man with a very interesting origin story.

Normally when a person plops down in my office I'm privy to more personal information than I'd ever ask for but today it was welcome. I have always been interested in the eastern culture and all the history and philosophy that it entails so when  Mr. Chen, a man born in 1923 wants to tell his story I am all ears.

As it turns out this gentleman is the descendant of a great general of the Ming Dynasty -The folks that brought us The Great Wall of China and the great effort to expel the Mongols.

Take that, MONGOLS!

His grandfather was the first Chinese student allowed to study abroad. He went into detail about the numerous vaccinations and health proceeding he had to go through in order to be accepted into France.

This man, who gave his first name as Mike because he was a victim of Identity theft, was a scientist. He went to an american school in Shanghai and when the Japanese invaded and began their atrocities during world war II he and his family ran. They traveled for months to escape the Japanese and just when they reached the dessert where they assumed they were safe they received word that it was safe to come home. When he returned his life as he knew it - his home, his school - was gone.  but Mike was determined as ever to get back to what he had started and found the means to continue to his goals.

Flash forward a few decades. Mr. Chen lives a successful life as a Organic Chemist with his wife and daughter. But once again political conflict gets the better of his nation and he is forced to run again, this time from the communist party. He soon tragically loses his wife and decides he needs to get to a place where his daughter can have a fighting chance at life. So he came to America. He assumed he would be able to get work in his field but soon found that since he was not a legal U.S citizen he hadn't many options. He took an under the table job where the boss promised to get him naturalized but in the process (unbeknownst to Mr.Chen) to cover his own ass for hiring illegal immigrants the boss had a service wipe his past clean including his degrees and credentials and gave him a new identity.

Mike knew 6 different languages, was a highly accredited Scientist in China , extremely organized and diligent and had survived 2 major wars just to have it all stripped away from him to do manual minimum wage labor for the rest of his life....

And he did just that. He worked day and night to put his daughter through an Ivy League college so she could have the bright future he was once promised and now she is very successful and has her own family. Through her success Mr. Chen found all the past injustices that plagued him to be worth the sweat and perseverance.

 He was in my office because now that he's retired he wants a quiet place to write a autobiography. He wants his Daughter to live a life with her family and not have to worry about the old man living in the spare room.

I did my best to set him up on section 8 so he could afford to move into a nice 1 bedroom apt and accomplish his final goal of logging his amazing story.

He made me realize a lot about the false ownership and entitlement that most Americans have in them. and the low level of appreciation we have for the tyrannic oppression-free life's we are able to lead. 

With all the interesting pictures he had painted over the last hour an a half of what was my workday bleeding into my lunch break the most interesting thing I could say about this man is also the oddest...

He had serrated teeth.