A Boy from China

Richard T. Cheng

Description

No About the Book information available at this time.

Sujets

• Biography
• Autobiography
• Cheng

Informations

• Publié par: Xlibris US
• Date de parution: 13 mars 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781669870081
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

A BOY FROM CHINA
 
Volume II In the U.S.A.
 
 
 
 
 
RICHARD T. CHENG
 
Copyright © 2023 by Richard T. Cheng.
Library of Congress Control Number:
2023904482
ISBN:
Hardcover
978-1-6698-7010-4

Softcover
978-1-6698-7009-8

eBook
978-1-6698-7008-1

 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
 
 
 
Rev. date: 03/13/2023
 
 
 
Xlibris
844-714-8691
www.Xlibris.com
846672
CONTENTS
Preface
Part I. Struggle in the U.S.A.
Chapter 1My First Impressions of the USA
Chapter 2My Friends and I Almost Lost Our Lives
Chapter 3The Proud Owner of a Cadillac
Chapter 4A Near-Death Trip to a Frozen World
Chapter 5New York’s Finest—Cops
Chapter 6The Chinese Wild Man
Chapter 7Tiger, Tree, Boom
Chapter 8The Mountain Road
Chapter 9An Unusual Encounter
Chapter 10Near-Fatal Penicillin Reaction
Chapter 11Hamburgers Only for Three Years
Chapter 12The New York Experience
Chapter 13All Deans Trembled before Him
Chapter 14How Small the World Is
Chapter 15Meeting the Challenges
Chapter 16The Saudi Programs
Chapter 17Winning the USIA Contract
Chapter 18Lecture Tours in China
LIST OF FGURES
Figure 1 Dr. and Mrs. Ray Wigen
Figure 2 My first car
Figure 2.1 In the dorm, Lynwood Hall
Figure 2.2 Dorm mates at Stout
Figure 2.3 Wei-Kao Lu in 1961
Figure 2.4 Wei Kao Lu also in 1961
Figure 2.5 Testing my rifle at a range
Figure 2.6 With Mike Tibbetts in 1961
Figure 2.7 In Lynwood Hall
Figure 3 My proud Cadillac
Figure 3.1 Portrait by a classmate
Figure 3.2 Mr. Chuan Kai Deng and Mr. Su Hun Lai
Figure 6 With Stanley Kay
Figure 6.1 At Racine Technical Institute
Figure 7 Jim and Ray in 1964
Figure 7.1 With the Wang family
Figure 7.2 Jim in 1964
Figure 7.3 Jim and Ray with Dr. Wigen
Figure 10 Billy, Uncle, and the family
Figure 10.1 With Billy in 1966
Figure 11 With Bob Seaward and Ray Dignam
Figure 11.1 My first Mercedes-Benz
Figure 11.2 With Jim, Ray, and Billy
Figure 11.4 With Chen Kwan Chou and Da Wei Chen
Figure 13 At the office of RIT
Figure 14 One of my poker buddies, Joe Chu, Rochester
Figure 16 With Dr. Abdulaziz al-Sagr
Figure 16.1 With Saudi officials
Figure 17 With ECI senior members
Figure 18 Beijing Forbidden City, 1985
Figure 18.1 At the Fuzhou airport, 1985
Figure 18.2 With Muslim leaders in Beijing
Figure 18.3 Lecture in Beijing, 1985
Figure 18.4 Technical lecture in Wu-Xi
Figure 18.5 With Wu-Xi mayor Huang
Figure 18.6 With Wu-Xi scientists in 1986
Figure 18.7 With a group of scientists in Beijing, 1987
Figure 18.8 With Governor Yi Chen of Fujian
Figure 18.9 With scientists in Beijing, 1988
Figure 18.10 With Rae Whun Li in 1997
PREFACE
A Boy from China: Struggle in the USA describes how I overcame the language barrier and a shortage of funds when I first landed in this country. I was not well prepared for English, and with only thirty dollars in my pocket, I had to face the day-to-day dealings with people and face my daily expenses.
Within a week of being in the United States, I found a part-time job repairing radios, doubling as an electrician for the college. This arrangement sustained me, providing daily living expenses from that point forward.
In the first few years, I struggled to meet the daily challenges of making a living and at the same time finishing my studies. I worked and studied and sent between ten and twenty dollars back home to my wife every month. In the beginning, I endured many hardships being a young person in this totally strange country. But people here were so nice, very sincere, and friendly. I fell in love with this country, so I asked my wife to come and live here temporarily.
After we had lived here for a few years, we really liked what we had seen, so we then wanted to become citizens of this country. In 1971, we were sworn in as US citizens. I worked in this country, teaching in colleges as a lecturer and an assistant professor. Because I wanted to teach and I knew how to teach college, I determined that I needed a PhD degree to be promoted to professor rank, so I asked my family to eat hamburgers for three years to allow me to pursue the PhD degree.
After I received the PhD degree in 1971, I started to build new computer science departments for the University of Wisconsin at Whitewater; Hunter College; Rochester Institute of Technology; and Old Dominion University.
From 1971 to 1975, I was promoted from assistant professor to associate professor, then to full professor rank, and in 1979, I was appointed eminent professor (a highly honored title), which string of promotions were unusually fast. At that time, Virginia State gave out eminent professor titles only to very few people.
I was appointed by the United Nations Development Program as a lecturer, and I went to China to give talks to groups of scientists, visiting Beijing, Shanghai, and Wuxi, among many other cities, to give these talks. I also was appointed the senior consultant to the Ministry of Interior of Saudi Arabia, consulting them on the national network. At the same time, I established a computer science college as part of King Saud University.
In 1985, I took a leave of absence from Old Dominion University and started a small company, a computer business. After a tough start-up, in 1988 the company finally reached the goal of multiple millions of dollars in revenue.
In 1987, I decided to resign from Old Dominion University, at which point I began devoting my time to running the business, thereby ending my thirty-five years of academic life.
PART I Struggle in the U.S.A.
CHAPTER 1 My First Impressions of the USA
As I entered the country, I felt like a water lily uprooted and floating on a vast new pond. I had to find a place to anchor myself.
It was Menomonie, Wisconsin—the place I had known only from letters I received from the college. I had come through high waters, and now I was on my way to my destination in the United States. Hope, excitement, and worries all presented in my mind. I was not intimidated but knew I’d have to resolve any matters confronting me one at a time in this totally new land.
The Greyhound bus ticket agent was an African American. That was the first time I had ever talked to a black person face-to-face. He was nice and helpful. My fear of the people in this new country diminished rapidly as the day went on. With my immediate goal being to go to Menomonie, Wisconsin, to report to the school, now, I was not certain what lay ahead of me. Until I was registered with the school, I would not feel secure in this country.
I was impressed by how clean and how well equipped the Greyhound bus was. The seats and the curtains were first class as I saw it. Finding an open seat near the front row next to a window, I took it since the seats were not numbered. The bus was about half full that day. Most of the passengers were older folks. Of course, at the age of twenty-seven, I considered people older than forty to be elderly. I did not try to talk to anyone on the bus throughout the trip, not knowing how people conducted casual conversations in this country.
The Greyhound bus was very roomy, quiet, and comfortable. To my surprise, it was also heated! Compared with what I had experienced in China during and after the war, against Japan this Greyhound bus was most luxurious and enjoyable to ride in. Of course, I could not forget the charcoal-burning stove on the truck at home that provided the fuel to run that selfsame truck, or in wartime China, that winding, wet, muddy road where the danger of rolling off and falling to the bottom of the valley was always present. Here in the United States, the contrast between what I saw in front of my eyes and what I recalled from China was like heaven and earth—and this is an understatement.
It was amazing to me that this huge bus had only one person who handled everything, essentially serving as the ticket person, the baggageman, and the driver. The uniformed bus driver was very polite, authoritative-looking, responsible, and confident. I felt quite safe riding on the bus and was also comfortable with giving him my luggage, being sure he would not run away with my belongings!
Looking through the side window constantly as the bus headed eastward, I was trying to learn as much as I could about this new country. The bus entered the expressway after about ten minutes of winding through the city streets. That was the first time I had ever seen such wide four-lane highways with all the cars going in the same direction. Across the nicely trimmed median was the same wide highway with all cars and trucks going in the opposite direction. At that moment in time, traffic on the expressway was light. Everything I saw along the road was magnificent, clean, and orderly. I was in awe of what I had seen in the short few hours that morning in this completely new lan