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