Chinese professor recounts past
By Kerney Williams
The Metropolitan
Coming to America has been a long march for Xiansheng Tian, one of the newest members of Metroâs History department.Tian, who was hired in August 1996, felt he was discouraged from teaching history the way he saw it happen in his native China. The Chinese government wanted professors to teach the ãofficialä communist party history of the nation and world, a history that excludes the human rights violations incurred during the Cultural Revolution, he said.
ãThe government doesnât want me.ä
Tian seems more amused then angry about that.
He points out that if he wanted to teach in China from his perspective, he would have to tell a very different version than what heâs seen firsthand.
Tian grew up during the decade-long Chinese cultural revolution that began in 1966. He was a member of the Red Guards, a government-sponsored militaristic youth group trained to seek out and report people who seem to resist communists values.
Members of the Red Guard were authorized to search peopleâs houses to look for anti-Communist evidence. He describes those times as miserable. Suspicion was rampant during those years, he said.
His mother was arrested and had to undergo a ãself-examinationä and millions were forced to ãconfessä what theyâd done to undermine the government. This involved writing a letter of confession after a long interrogation, sometimes (though not in his motherâs case) including physical torture, and reading it publicly. She was put under government surveillance after that.
By the time Chinaâs government ended its programs seeking out the unpatriotic in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Tian was a student at Henna University in Kaifeng, China.
Tianâs first taste of the west came in the in 1985 when he joined a program at Yellow River University in Zhengzhou, China. His course work there was a post graduate program, taught by westerners, many of them Chinese Americans. It was an experiment in introducing Chinese students to the west, and it was very successful.
ãEighty percent of my classmates are in the United States,ä He points out.
He came to America in May 1989, only a few months before protesting students were massacred by the Chinese government in Tiananmen Square.
Tian finished his post-graduate studies at Oklahoma State University. But he said everything isnât perfect in the United States.
Tian often talks about the differences he sees in Chinese and American culture and points out that American students have a very limited view of the world and often take things for granted.
ãThe student body doesnât know the outside world,ä he said. He said he feels that the news reports in the Western press are often biased against the Chinese government.
He points to the fact that China is perceived as having a poor human rights record. The fact is they define rights differently. To the Chinese government, it views the fact that they are feeding 22 percent of the world population as a human rights achievement. Human rights are more basic there, he says.
As for the future of his new homeland, he is optimistic.
He said that America will continue to benefit from its freedoms and immigration.
ãThe best come here,ä he says, ãand create opportunity. That is a strong appealing force.ä
