Happy New Year of the Rabbit!

30 years in America Anniversary. Looking back and forward.  

30 years ago, on Jan 19, 1993, I said goodbye to my parents, wife, one and half year old daughter, and siblings at the Beijing Airport, heading for a new life in America.  I cried for the first few hours after departure. A Chinese grandmother sitting next to me passed me tissues and said, “I understand.” She knew the difficulty of leaving family, friends and culture, and the high expectations that then fall on your shoulders. 

Everyone knows we should be grateful for good things in our lives. However few understand the importance of being grateful for our struggles.   

From 1949 to 1976, Chinese society was divided into two hard categories: the “good”, (communism and the Party); and the “bad” (intellectuals and the Nationalist Party that fled to Taiwan in 1949).  I was born into the bad side. Three of my uncles were Nationalists and became political prisoners.  Children from “bad” families were banned from higher education and from job opportunities. That was your fate with no option for change.

Rather than feeling defeated, my father changed his attitude and chose to be positive about our situation. He insisted that we should be grateful that we could use our free time to study and prepare in case an opportunity should ever come.

Mao died in 1976 and Deng Xiaoping came to power, changing the policy and allowing children from “bad” families to take the national exam for college. Because I had studied hard, I was the only one in my generation from a bad family who was prepared to pass the exam and to go to college. 

I have applied my father’s example to deal with many challenges in life, including the three years needed to recover from a serious back injury following a bike accident in 2014. For that I am grateful because the injury gave me the opportunity to dig deeper into the wisdom of T’ai Chi and Qigong to heal my back. From this I have been able to develop a program to help others with back pain.

We are now living in a time full of uncertainty and struggle at the personal, societal, and world level. I hope that you may find this perspective helpful in taking on your own challenges and converting them to wisdom and strength.    

May Your Year of the Rabbit Be Full of Happiness and Health!

祝您兔年幸福安康!