What I Learned Growing Up in Industrial China

it’s

1984 in an industrial town in northeast

china

a man brings his wife to the hospital

the wife was in labor but he didn’t

drive her

instead he carried her on the bike with

his bicycle

swerving between other cyclists on the

bumpy roads

filled with potholes and cracks

arriving at the hospital the couple

learned that a c-section was needed

a procedure that was still quite risky

in the area at the time

a nurse handed man a form

the man slowly drew his finger across

the lines

identified each character although he

could barely read

one question was impossible to

misinterpret

if both mom and baby are in danger we

could only save one

whom would you like us to save they

asked

the men thought it over with the one

child policy in effect

male babies would be much more desirable

than females

the man wiped the sweat from the eyebrow

gripping the pen between his fingers he

scrolled

hastily if the baby is a boy

save the baby otherwise save them all

an hour later the child was born a

healthy baby girl

he named her faye a meant to fly

despite being a girl he hoped that she

would rise above poverty

and live a fulfilled life

baby girl was me and that man was my

father

however the character he paid for my

name faye did not actually mean fly

you see my my father never got a chance

to learn to read and write

and he picked the wrong character from

my name

i’ve spent my whole life trying to live

up to the name

my father intended to give me far from

flying

i started low to the ground both my

parents

are children of the cultural revolution

uneducated workers

employed by state-owned factories

we lived in the government-issued

housing where the kitchen

was shared with multiple other families

during meal time

we would take turns to cook with one

family using a stove

while another doing food preparation

the toilet we had was an outhouse shared

between buildings

even in winter we would wait in line in

freezing temperatures to use it

carrying old newspaper in our hands

which served as toilet paper

remember this was the late 80s when many

parts of the world

including all of you here were enjoying

technological innovations such as cd

players

or even personal computers

as a kid i walked around and patched the

clothes and hand me down shoes that were

three sizes too big

so that i could roll into them as my

mother would say

my father would waste what little money

we had on drinking

and my mother was forced to be created

in putting food on the table

for example when the trucks carrying

cabbages to sell

came to our neighborhood she memorized

their roots

and after the trust left she would go

and pick up

the discarded cabbage leaves on the

streets to make us a delicious cabbage

stew

at that time china was one of the

poorest countries in the world

over the past 30 plus years i grew up

china has developed at an incredible

speed

now the second largest economy

as china has moved up in the world so

have i

standing here today a harvard graduate

and the managing vice president

of the world’s leading research advisory

company gartner

i realize that i’m here today not in

spite of the hardship as a child

but because of it i’m immensely grateful

to the gift life has given me and that’s

the gift

of adversity it was this gift that

tommy resilience to me resilience isn’t

just about resenting what’s been thrown

at you

it’s about taking advantage of what you

have no matter how little

and creating opportunities for yourself

it’s about letting adversity propel you

towards something better as a kid even

though we were constantly at shortage of

food

my father’s drinking meant there was

never shortage empty bottles in the

apartment

when i was five years old i had a big

discovery i discovered that i could give

these bottles to the trash man

in change for a few cents of coins

soon i took a step further i expended my

trash collection to the same empty

bottles

littering the neighborhood streets at

bus stops and inside the public trash

tent

imagine a five-year-old girl walking

down the street with oversized basket

wobbling on her back

her hand reaching into the public trash

cans some which

taller than she was that was my first

job

then when i was nine years old the

government house in religion

finally got flush toilets installed that

was a big deal

but it wasn’t long before this new

toilet started to give us trouble

you see people were used to throwing all

kinds of trash into the old

outhouse toilets and the delicate

plumbing of the new

flush toilets just couldn’t handle that

here again with my opportunity when i

figured that my small hand

could fit down the joint to unclog

whatever was plugging it up

i went into business i traded my labor

for an apple

piece of fish eventually money

but old business attracts competition

right and when mine came along

i had an ingenious plan to feed it

to distinguish myself from the

neighborhood nail plumber

i offered free toilet cleaning instead

in addition to planting them and to

demonstrate how thorough i was in my

cleaning

i took a drinking cup dug it into the

toilet bowl and joined the water bottom

up

no one questioned my work ever again

looking back at these first jobs as a

little girl

i created them out of necessity to film

my stomach

but also to prove to my parents that

girls were not inferior to boys

i say adversity was a gift for had been

a boy

i would have taken my parents love for

granted instead of

feeding the need to earn it had i come

from a comfortable upbringing

i wouldn’t have needed to create these

jobs to support my family and therefore

not having had the opportunity

to build resilience through them

to me resilience is also about focus and

discipline

when i reached school age another major

opportunity presented itself

education thanks to the law that

mandates

nine years of education for every child

in china

past only two years after i was born i

would be getting the same education

as a kid whose father was a manager in

the same factory where my father was a

worker

that was my way out and i was determined

to seize it

in a brutally competitive academic

environment while other kids could

afford

additional exercise books or extra

tutoring i realized there was only one

thing that was equal for all of us

time to maximize study time i run to

school instead of walking

saving time each way for lunch my mother

will often make me

porridge instead of dry rice which for

for our family made the rice at home

last much longer and for me was much

faster to gobble down

than plain dry rice again saving time

while other kids were playing during

race at recess

i realized if i stayed in class to study

i would not be thirsty from playing and

therefore not needing to drink water

which in turn reduce the need to go to

the bathrooms

again saving time i was not smarter than

anyone else in class

but through pure discipline and focus

i started to get ahead then one day

a bully smashed my calculator for

refusing to

help him cheat on a major exam he then

mocked at me

for not being able to afford another

calculator therefore

almost certainly failing at the upcoming

exam a rare one where a calculator was

allowed

that served as few to light the fire

inside of me

the fire to fight back because the more

someone tells me i can’t do something

the more i need to prove them wrong

so instead of hiding in the corner and

fighting i saw an opportunity

an opportunity to throw away the

crutches and do everything without a

calculator

for the weeks following that through

pure labor i memorized multiplications

and square roots i figured out

mathematical tricks

and by the time the test came along i

could do the math much faster in my head

than would have taken to punch numbers

into a calculator

on the day of this exam when the proctor

was kind enough to try to loan me a

calculator i declined

i was ready to fight this one looking

back

that was probably a questionable

decision but a week later

after the scores and the rankings were

published on the big wall outside the

classrooms

out of the 600 students in my grade my

name

was at the very top

i’m thankful to the curveball that’s

been thrown at me

i was pushed too hard i had so much to

prove too much to lose

to me resilience resilience means if you

set a goal for yourself

nothing can stop you

when i entered high school another

problem came along

for many years the chinese education

system had everyone

overly focused on exams and for the

subject

english the exam only had reading and

writing components

it never had had a speaking part of it

and so when our high school finally

hired the first native speaker

an american english teacher i discovered

to my dismay

that my verbal english was non-existent

i couldn’t communicate with the actual

native speaker

so i decided to change that i asked the

teacher where he looked so i could

come and practice english after class

not surprisingly he refused to tell me

i had a bike at that point the teacher

hired the car that took him home every

day

so one day after school i decided to

follow the car with my bike

but last time after less than a mile the

next day i picked up where i left off

waiting ahead at the intersection where

i lost the car the prior day

the third day i did the same after five

days

i was finally able to figure out where

he lived and knocked on the door of the

american teacher

when he opened the door eyes widened in

disbelief

i simply said in my broken english hi

i want to practice looking back

it was that solo relay that i designed

for myself years ago that enabled me to

stand here today

talking to all of you in your language

the stories i shared with you today are

from my childhood

these childhood experiences though

trivial compared to life-changing events

eventually led me to college one of the

best in china

where simply due to sheer size of the

chinese population

the admission rate was one in every 1500

people applied

from there i made my way to the united

states with

fifty dollars in my pocket and two

suitcases full of books

to start grad school but i didn’t want

to just go to any grad school

i wanted to go to the one that even my

uneducated

unsophisticated parents had heard of the

only one they knew about outside china

so i went to harvard from there i

entered the business world

and was fortunate enough to have taken

leadership positions

in companies such as mckinsey and google

fast forward three years ago in a

hospital in connecticut

my aging parents held another baby in

their arms

their grandson my son then only about

nine months ago in the same hospital

they held another baby girl

their granddaughter my daughter except

that this time

my father could not be more pleased

yeah inadvertently my parents had led me

onto a path

that prepared me for life’s challenges

now that i’m a parent

i often find myself wondering how i can

help my own kids

build resilience in this ever-changing

world they likely won’t be needing to

fumble toilets for a living

or picking bottles out of the trash can

and it comforts me to know that they’ll

always have each other to call brother

and sister something i never had

and my daughter will have all the same

opportunities that my son will have

but no matter if it’s the 1980s china or

2020 america

the key to a better life is somewhat the

same for example

the value of hard work the courage to

take on risks

the entrepreneurial spirit to create new

opportunities

and the audacity to not run away from

adversity

but run towards it

i don’t know what’s lying ahead for my

young kids as they try to open their

wings

and learn to fly but i do know that if

we teach our children these values in a

day-to-day

through our own actions through things

big or small

one the inactive storm does comfort them

they will rise above it and fly

to unthinkable heights thank you