Coming to America (1) (初来美国 1)

Time flies. It has almost been 12 years since I came to America. Like many Chinese students coming to America in those days, my life was hard initially. It all started in 1994 ......

Back in the early 90s, Chinese students who graduated from college were not allowed to go abroad if they didn't have relatives living there. To get away from the policy, some of my college classmates were talking about dropping out of school before they graduated. But the policy changed around 1993/1994, which allowed anyone to go aboard as long as:
- They worked in the country for N years after their graduation (N is the number of years they received higher education).
or
- They paid back 2,500 RMB ($300) per year to the country for the higher education they received if they couldn't fulfill the N years requirement.

So my dad immediately decided that I should go to America for graduate school after college. The plan was taking TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) in 1994, taking GRE (Graduate Record Examination) in 1995, applying for graduate schools as soon as my GRE score became available ......

The Internet was still not available at the time to ordinary Chinese. So the only research tool I had was the library. Someone had told my dad that there was a book called "Peterson's Guide" or something like that in the Beijing Library. In it, hundreds of universities in North America were listed. So I went to the library and looked through the book quickly. Having no clue which school was good, which school was relative easy to apply, I applied some of the best / famous graduate schools in America. In addition, I also applied anyone that didn't require an admission fee to save on application cost, caring little about who they were or where they were. L University belonged to the later group.

In Spring 1996, I started to receive admission letters from the universities I applied, but none of them offered a scholarship. I started to worry if I could go to America this year, since there was no way that I could afford to go to school there without a scholarship. I couldn't even get a visa. The U.S. embassy in Beijing was notorious for declining student visa applications if the applicant didn't have a full scholarship, which meant tuition waiver plus ~$1,000/month living expenses.

Finally in May 1996, I received a letter from L University, saying that I was admitted to their Master's program, I would receive a tuition waiver from the school, but I had to come up with $9,000/year living expenses. Commonly known as a half scholarship, this rarely could get pass the scrutiny of U.S. visa officers, because Chinese students were known to find employment in restaurants outside the school, earning money to support themselves, which is illegal for student visa holders. Everyone was telling me that I had no chance at all in getting a visa, but I was determined to try it anyway. I didn't want to go through the application process again and wait another year.

Within the next month, I paid over 10,000 RMB ($1,200) to the Chinese Department of Education for the years I needed to work in the country but hadn't, so they would let me have a passport. The next step was  getting a visa.