hello and welcome to pathways i mean your host jenny hartshorn and i'm just really thrilled to introduce my guest she was born in china she went through the cultural revolution she educated herself and came to harvard and is now but is now become the new president of mercer county community college and her story is fascinating so without further ado i'm going to get right into it so welcome  to start by telling us where you were where you were born and what was it like growing up in elementary school in one hundred sixty eight the cultural revolution began and if you could give us a very quick one hundred one what that was what we were talking about when they just tell us what it was like for you as a small girl to be a part of that and how it affected your you're your track start with that question absolutely absolutely i was born into a family of a very ordinary background my mother never went to school my father graduated from middle school and so i'm the first child to my parents and in a culture where valued than girls that was hard it was hard for me but i didn't know it it was very hard for my mother when you say boys are more value than girls yet did you you were the only girl in your family that was the first child elica first child born to my parents right and so as a first born being a girl my mother was a sort of a black market by my grandparents and not so good you give birth to a girl they wanted a boy more than anything else so i came into this world and no way that people didn't really want me that's a horrible feeling as a young child and then two years later my sister was born and then my grandmother on my father's side which is the only grandparent i ever know i knew knew her i knew her my mother's parents passed away when my mother was young so i never met them and the my grandpa on my father's side also passed away before i was born so i only had one grandmother and when my sister was born my grandma or came to the hospital where my mother had a serin session for giving birth to my daughter and before my mother woke up she took my sister away and he gave her up for i don't know what but she we came into a hospital and she just took the girl took your your little sister ye you were two at the time i was to a time i did not know i was in the mother was always my was it was still in the recovery room and when she woke up she couldn't find her baby and you can well imagine what kind of state of mind she was she was hysterical and she screamed and kicked and told the force my father to tell her where the daughter was taken so and then my mother went to the country and found the girl there and but you cannot take her back because it was some kind of agreement i think it's like almost like you sold your girl to somebody so so she lost her baby she was your gov baby she knew where she was but if she couldn't take you couldn't  beginning of life yet not only will you not want to but then yeah daughter that mad about your sister was your way and then i just from that point on in my life i'm always thinking i have to be super school when my brother was born ok ok and i still remember to this day when my brother was born he was born bright early in the morning and i remember my father came into this big four square yard  that day forward i always knew i had to kind of the be the second to my brother and so wherever i go i became the little mother i took care of him because my parents work and so he spent more time with me than with my parents so your father celebrated and at this point you were probably what eight years old yeah so how did that feel for you i felt i was a little mother i was told by my parents to take care of him so whenever i go visit my friends in school i always carry him with me so till this day i go back home visit my middle school high school classmates they always ask how's your little brother my little brother is almost fifty years old so so vaccine elementary school so you're in elementary school were you there was a cultural revolution sixty eight did it begin or sixty sixty six sixty six and you were how old i was about eight years old and can you tell the viewers are very quick to cut the meaning of the cultural revolution well it's a period when it's really a time when mo don't feel that he needed to do something that will secure his position of power so so go so you're tell us because it's so interesting to hear your perspective wish and the mile mobilized millions of young people like me very impressionable and told us that unless until we all unite together and fight against those educated imperialists and we call them imperialists to running dogs and boys you are and so the people really respected teachers yeah so this was how to be more catastrophic for that rafa salute me at least you know those were told to turn against a teacher yes all right so then and then everybody was reading this illiterate fuck yes and that was the whole thing you got here and that's that and i thin this didn't go for now i was so bored out of my mind i mean you know it's this is sort of this little red book you cannot expect them to do otherwise we should not use the method of suppression and prevent them from expressing themselves but should allow them to do so and at the same time argue with them it makes no sense it's really confusing and it is but all of us were so sold on this ideology and to give you an example how crazy i was sold it to the ideological when mao called for all of us to go to the countryside to be educated by peasants reeducate again clarify what you mean there is for you students to go to the peasant to the peasants who have no going nowhere and i'm saying i'm crying i'm screaming and i want to be the red mouse you know red guard was your teacher being persecuted yes my teacher never i was it was a one of the only student probably i can recall who did not because for whatever reasons i'm all for mouse you know ideology but i have a special regard for my teachers you violent person i'm not and i never kicked at them i never spit at them and i never punch to them that's what was happening or whatever absolutely i go to class i will have students are sitting behind me they have this slingshots and they will roll the paper so fascinating here and he's educated young he's reading this and having never did i say yet and they're not only shooting him it's they're doing a lot more than that yeah and they throw chairs at them so i mean this is supposed to get through class and he's supposed to just doj and didn't go anywhere my my parents won't let me go my parents on let me go so i didn't go and and then that's what i decided i was so bored out of my mind and i was surfing my little transistor radio everywhere and you know and so i was just you know surfing on the radio and for one minute i got into v o a voice of america i was like what is vance and  it's really amazing to hear people say this is a banana and this is a red or yellow banana and this is a red and apple i'm like what do you is this this is so cool  time so then i want more for your britches and then i went to school so i'm very close to that teacher and so i went to say to him i said guess what i found something really cool on my  just don't say anything so he says to me come to my house on sunday and i'll talk to you about it so i said ok so i went to his house on sunday and he turned around he took out a book and showed me he said this is the textbook of the program that you heard on the radio and i america is very far away i said how do i get there he said you cannot get there by foot and i said train he said no you have to fly i said no i can't fly i cannot fly fly so so he said no you take a plane and you go never mind i came and take the train i never took a train at that time in my life so i have been asking my parents to send me to textbooks lying i do intrigue you and i turn to the back of the book and i saw it was like i can't remember exactly but it was like one chinese dollars some change translated into american dollars that maybe twenty five cents or whatever but it was a lot of money i knew my parents would never never give me that kind of a money so if you were a student you were working at the time not in the i was a middle s he said one week because he's learning english himself and he's listening to the radio so so he needs the book through under the copy machine right so i said oh good i got a week then i said oh wait i don't have a notebook you know back then everybody smoke men and women young and old they all smoke and cotton you know cover for the cigarettes pack they have a glossy inside a white and it's very nice so so i copied the whole book and then i learned how to follow the book because now it's less someone you know or you have to show your parents that book i don't think i ever showed my parents the book because my parents never supported me eighteen my parents found me a job in the transistor radio that makes transistor radio across straight to where they live and they consider that they have and my master the mentor who is this oh i get sometimes it's god's will yeah i was his apprentice and he is the only college graduate in the country of six hundred eighty employees one and only college educated person so i would really want her your teacher yes and so every day we have to breaks between the morning and lunch we get a break in the morning we get a break in the afternoon every time when we break up everybody else will congregate in the corner of that workshop the scene shop we work and everybody would congregate and gossip about whatever i will grab whatever i can grab a piece of newspaper or a little book something and i'll hide myself in the corner across the the farthest away from the gossip a group and i'm sitting there reading so one day my mentor said to me you know have no connection i have no money how am i know the college i was for i said my parents would never say that and he said you have to talk to parents you can quietly prepare is that how i said you need to read and do exercise shift to your work schedule and you can work from four o'clock in the afternoon till midnight and no one will be in this place and you are alone and you can study your heart's content this is an angel yes and so he gave me all of us a college textbooks myself all ready to go so the night before the exam i have to take six exams over three days period it money  thought have to tell my parents because my parents have to sign their they agreed to let me take the test sign up for the exams when and i said tomorrow and my dad said what and i said yeah and then i try to say my mentor told me i should do that and i know the culture respects the elderly so if i said to my mentor told me to do that i get a little break so my mother said no you're not going and i said why  your brother is going to college you are going to work and you're going to get married and you'll take care of us and that's that that's what i'm saying so i said but i want to go to college and said no so i  cry i start to scream i start to care i did everything i could think of as a little girl and that didn't work so i keep crying i keep crying i keep current finally my dad said well you know what  yeah yeah so i was happy they signed the paper i'm going to the test but i was nervous as hell because i knew this was my one and only chance if i blew it and that's the end of that so i went i s i can only try once and he said we'll take care of it so the next year i said but i don't have a signature he said didn't i signed last year i said yes he said where is the paper i said i am interested in very quickly because we're going to run out of time you got into harvard university yes by default you're your husband the time to knock it out yeah yeah that was something very interesting and i told this story i was in china teaching english in a university and and my university president one day called me and said you were dean has terminal cancer and he and and i said no i need to study how to be an administrator i'm a good teacher but i'm not an administrator and so where you think you're going to study i don't know i'm going to learn and figure out a way i can go study in the meantime i have been a very politically active protesting which leads to tenement square protest down the road so i'm already in political hot seat so between this offer and my ex husband was already in the u s as a fulbright scholar in minnesota twin city law school and between my political entanglement my friend said to me you know what jim get out before it's too late and so i said ok i can do there so i went to the university president and i said i think i'm going to go study in america and he looked at me says i don't think i will have the benefit of it good for you but i'm not going to be the beneficiary and i don't know no i will come back i was honest with him i definitely wanted to go back so i came out i landed in arbor michigan where he was beginning his visiting scholar  in michigan law school and but he only has enough money to cover his own expenses i have to support myself so i'm walking from michigan law school to the apartment building that he was living there and i pass a mcdonald's on the corner and he says help wanted i walked right in and i said i can help i want a job so the manager says to me so why do you want a job i said i need the money to pay the rent doesn't look like you fit here i said but i want to learn and i also need to make money so please i need  so manager hired me on the spot so i was working there for four dollars some changes in our there and i start to apply for graduate school of education but i'm only making four dollars something cents and then when i start to apply the application fee is anywhere between forty five to seventy five dollars for each school i apply for ten schools so i couldn't afford to come up with between four fifty and seven fifty hundred dollars and so i decided i'm going to write a letter to everyone to say could you please waive my application fee because i'm a poor international student and out of ten school everyone said no except harvard so that's why i always say i went to harvard by default because i had no other way to go and now you're the president