Red Azalea (32 page)

One day in 1983 an overseas letter came from a young friend whom I used to know in film school. She had left China three years before and was now living in Los Angeles. She asked me whether I had ever thought of coming to America. The idea was as foreign to me as being asked to live on the moon, the moon as my father described it—icy, airless and soundless. Yet my despair made me fearless. Though I spoke not a word of English, though I
hated to leave my parents, my sisters, my brother, and to fight for permission to leave would take all my energy, I knew that escaping China would be the only solution.

I fought for my way and I arrived in America on September 1, 1984.

Chicago, Christmas 1992