Chapter 22 New Wave of Immigration

When I met Li Wanruo, she was already in her early sixties, and her husband Chen Baohe was older than her.But when the two of them are together, it makes people feel very happy, because they are sometimes as affectionate as young boys and girls.For example, when the husband goes out, his wife Li Wanruo always walks with his arm; it seems that Li Wanruo's monopoly has always been to add vegetables to meals.The husband is very obedient, and every time he behaves well, his wife Li Wanruo will step forward to hug him warmly, and tiptoe to reward the nearly 70-year-old man with an intimate kiss.

During the lighter part of the interview, I asked the female politician: Why are you still so radiant? She laughed happily after hearing this, and said mysteriously: This is a woman's secret.But I told her another secret I discovered during the ten days I was with her: your radiance is because your blood is full of political passion.Being active and taking on challenges keeps your life looking young forever.Li Wanruo was very pleasantly surprised after hearing this, and then exaggeratedly came to hug me: Jianming is the one who knows me. ...No, those who know you are Baohe.Seeing Chen Baohe standing aside, I quickly pulled him over and stuffed him into Li Wanruo's arms.Ah ha ha ha... I saw the old couple embrace each other warmly, and Li Wanruo kept feeding: of course, this is the eternal self-knowledge...

Li Wanruo and her husband are a loving couple. Their romantic love and poetic and magnificent wedding ceremony are enough to explain it.But neither of them belonged to the same category at all.Li Wanruo has been a flamboyant, talkative, lively and social woman since she was young. She also loves to dress up and be able to show her charming demeanor in public.However, her husband, Chen Baohe, is the complete opposite. He doesn't like to talk, and always wants to hide from the public and do something very practical and specific by himself, and he is not interested in politics.A very bright topic will have a completely different taste in his mouth.

For the interview, I spent ten or twenty days with Li Wanruo and his wife.This pair of couples with a basic American lifestyle and a pair of Americans with very different personalities can't help but make me interested in the romantic life of romantic Americans. Li Wanruo had a relative who came to her house for a short period of time for the first time, and then he couldn't go any further.Li Wanruo felt very puzzled, and felt that she was meticulous, diligent and considerate enough.In the end, the young relative told her that everything in your house is good, the kitchen is big, the room is spacious, but life is too monotonous!

I can't stand it, and I can't believe it's so close to Hollywood, and you're the mayor, high society, why don't you see any romance in your family?For example, nightclubs, for example, is there a boy asking you out on a date or something... The young relative asked this question, but Li Wanruo didn't know how to answer at that time. This is absolutely true.In the United States, once you get married, whether it is a man or a woman, you must fulfill the duty of loyalty to each other.It’s not that there are people who are bothered, but before you get married, no one will gossip. You can live together, you can get pregnant before marriage, you can be the father or mother of a child without a father or mother, but you can’t do it casually after you get married. With which third party.This kind of relationship between husband and wife and the concept of family is no longer a simple form, but everyone pays attention to its mutual responsibility.This is the American style of wave grant.Li Wanruo was shocked after hearing my introduction to the large number of abnormal sexual behaviors that exist outside of family and marriage in China. In her opinion, this has gone far beyond the level of American-style romance.

In fact, the average American family life is very fixed or rather rigid.In addition to work, he is busy with the life of his own family.In addition, each family has its own home theater, and the TV programs are relatively rich. It is almost rare to go to nightclubs and casinos on the street, let alone the boring and frightening red light district.Mutual social conversations are generally various associations, or family and family-style interactions between friends.At least not as serious extramarital affairs and scandals as in some countries in the East.Li Guiruo looked at me with disbelief, and revealed some of her privacy.

I have lived with my husband for decades, almost every possible opportunity to act together, we have always strived to act together instead of going out alone.We also often go to house parties between friends, but that's about it.In fact, life is really monotonous.And the more you have status in the United States, the more you must keep yourself upright, otherwise your voters will be disgusted with your bad virtues.If you are a politician, you have to be more disciplined, or your romantic affairs that you think you have hidden for a long time or are very hidden will be exposed sooner or later.I ran for the first time and ran to my friends to ask for their support.My friend said, Lily, we definitely support you, but you have to tell us if there are any dirty clothes in your closet!The dirty laundry they were talking about was asking me if I had any indiscretions in my private life. If there were any, it would be difficult for people to support and vote for me, because when a scandal broke out, everyone would be very embarrassed.For example, in the 1988 presidential election, Democratic candidate Hart was very hopeful to become the new president. Unfortunately, at a critical moment in the campaign, a reporter disclosed that he had a night with a woman named Donna romantic affairs.Hart, who has always had an opponent in front of his political opponents, when someone asked him about his relationship with Donna in a TV debate, Hart said incoherently that Donna sat on my lap by accident...such stupid things.It's not that Hart is bad at speeches, but he knows that once such an affair is revealed, it will mean the end of his political destiny, so great politicians and orators like him suddenly panicked.In the end, Hart did give up the presidential campaign at the begging of his wife, and has since disappeared from American politics.

Hart is not familiar to the Chinese, but Clinton is too familiar to us.It is very appropriate for someone who understands American politics and is very familiar with Clinton to talk about the Lewinsky incident-I must seize the opportunity to force Li Wanruo to speak out on this matter. Wow, Clinton's personal charm is unparalleled. I don't want my interview subject, a dignified Chinese-American female mayor, to brazenly exaggerate the personal charm of the president in front of me. When I first met Clinton, he was just a presidential candidate.We met at the Democratic National Convention.When someone introduced me to him as the mayor of Monterey, Clinton rubbed my hands tightly, stared at me, and said repeatedly: Oh, you are the mayor!I was very interested in the city of Monterey...my immediate feeling was that this Clinton is so charming!His eyes and expression can make the hearts of all the women who have dealt with him sway and be distracted... It is an irresistible charm. I rely on my instinct as a woman, because at that time I was actually more than He was more than ten years older, and as a woman, I could relate to how my fellow sisters felt after meeting Clinton.Li Wanruo told me wittily and accurately all my impressions of my relationship as a woman with Miss Lewinsky, the 42nd President of the United States and the female White House intern who later made the world laugh and watch.

Mr. Clinton was young, full of words, and a gifted orator.Whenever he stands on the podium to give a speech, his eyes and enthusiasm will make you feel his presence is by your side, his smile can inject your heart, his voice can ignite your blood, his eyes It lifts your spirits.In short, he is one of the few American presidents who is young and easy-going, the kind of admirable person who has charm for men and women, old people and young people.Because I served as the chairman of the National Defense and Foreign Affairs Committee of the party program revision committee of the Democratic Party and the leader of Asian Americans, I became acquainted with President Clinton later and had many opportunities to meet.Every time he saw me, he always said to me very enthusiastically and sincerely: Oh, mayor, I am very interested in Monterey Park...

The scandal between Mr. Clinton and White House intern Monica Lewinsky is probably not unknown to the Chinese, and they also find it very amusing.It must be interesting to meet someone who knows Clinton well and hear her take on this.But when I asked Li Wanruo what she thought of this scandal, she actually looked regretful. how to say?I really feel that this is a very shameful thing for the United States, just like letting a woman talk about the bad man she loves, and President Clinton is not bad, but he did something that makes women who love him feel unforgivable But have to face the wrong thing.Let me first talk about my husband Chen Baohe's opinion of him.

Li Wanruo gave a roundabout answer to this extremely sensitive question.Chen Baohe belonged to the Republican Party, and their party was the happiest when Clinton's White House scandal broke out. At that time, almost all Republicans hoped to use the intern Monica Lewinsky to get the president out of office.Moreover, we in the Democratic Party later felt that Clinton was very unlucky and suffered a lot.You don't know that in the United States, any means can be used in the struggle between political parties.I've always thought that a man as attractive as Clinton, who is suave himself, is a lover.While the political opponents, the Republicans, want to attack him from below, it is difficult to be effective with Clinton's personal charm and work ability.It is a pity that the president has really slipped into the trap of his political opponents.There would be no good fruit to eat in the first place, but after the scandal was revealed, the president couldn't show the free and easy confidence of a French man. He resisted at first, and then retreated step by step. In the end, there was no way out— —Step by step, he followed the traps designed by his opponents, and was finally forced to bow his head and review in front of the citizens of the whole country.In the end, the whole country talked about the president every day, which made Americans feel ashamed.Even my husband Chen Baohe felt a little pitiful for Clinton, and felt that someone had gone too far.Therefore, Republicans like him have gradually changed their attitudes, thinking that it is enough to have a decent review of this matter.On that day, the largest TV station in the United States broadcast live the president to answer the judge's question about having sex with a female intern in court. I saw that the president, who was always handsome in the past, was so embarrassed that I and many people in the country dared not watch it. One scene... really.You in China think that someone is using Fei to explain the ugliness of Clinton, but in fact this is just a superficial article.Behind it is a fierce struggle between the two major political parties, the Republican Party and the Democratic Party.President Clinton and intern Monica Lewinsky were just casualties between the two parties.Not only all Americans, but even people all over the world know that during the 8 years in office of Clinton with a background of the Democratic Party, the U.S. economy has experienced a rare sustained development, which makes it difficult for the Republican Party to return to the White House.So some people took advantage of Clinton's weakness and began to create various scandals about the president, slandering the performance of the Democratic Party and the president himself, so as to achieve the goal of retaking the White House.Although President Clinton is almost facing the crisis of being removed by Congress, the political system of separation of powers has been completely shaken, and the federal and local governments continue to operate without any influence. This is the value of American politics. Regarding the dangers of the political situation, perhaps only those people in the political vortex can really feel it.When Li Wanruo talked to me about this aspect, his face showed a bit of solemnity. During the years when I was in charge of the city, the city has undergone earth-shaking changes. It can be said that it has become a new type of city with influence in the United States and even the world from an unknown small city in the past.And it has been promoted by the White House federal government as a model of immigration and minority self-government.What makes me particularly proud is that since my time, Montenegro has become the center of Chinese politics and culture in the United States.Now Montgomery is a city with the highest proportion of Chinese and Asians in the local population, and it is also the most important Chinese media center in North America, so Montgomery is called Little Taipei.When I was the mayor, it coincided with the period of the fastest development of Sino-US relations, and it was also the year when the Chinese immigrated to Montenegro the most. Because the mainland just opened up, batches of international students came to the United States. Those who settled in California, one is the Silicon Valley area of ​​San Francisco, California, and the other is our Los Angeles area in Southern California.Montenegro belongs to Southern California and is very adjacent to Northern California, so mainland immigrants began to pour in here.Due to the changes in the development of China and the United States, Taiwanese people became nervous. After the large-scale immigration from Taiwan to the United States in the 1960s, there was another high tide of large-scale immigration to the United States in the mid-1980s.After Taiwan's new immigrants came to the United States, they were the first to turn to their relatives and friends, which made Montreal accept a group of Chinese compatriots from Taiwan.After the Chinese government signed the Hong Kong Handover Agreement with the United Kingdom, Hong Kong people were afraid of the changes after 1997, so they also flocked to the United States.In this way, Mengcheng became the world of Chinese people.In the words of our local old residents: they saw the star-spangled banners all over the street when they went to sleep the night before, but when they opened the door the next day, they saw Beijing roast duck, Taiwanese glutinous rice balls and Hong Kong fresh seafood signs. ... When Li Wanruo said this, he couldn't help but widen his eyes and said: I felt the same way at that time. The Chinese immigrants in the shield in the 1980s were not like our generation. Some of them had a good economy. Once they arrived in the United States, they bought houses and cars, and the cars were the best.This made the old residents dumbfounded and felt very uncomfortable, because although the Americans lived a rich life, they had never been as grand as the new Chinese.The most unbelievable thing for the old residents is that as soon as the Chinese bought the house, they began to make a big fuss, turning the grass garden in front of the house and the back of the house into concrete floors, and building high walls.This makes Americans who advocate the environment and greening shake their heads.What angered the old residents the most was that the Chinese moved to Vinh with their living habits intact. Taste it, but once you enter the restaurant, the loud yelling of the Chinese people clinking their fists and clinking glasses is really disgusting; as for the bad habits of spitting everywhere, bumping into people and justifying themselves, etc., it makes the old residents miserable.When there are too many people, it is necessary to build houses, so tall buildings rise from the ground one after another, and the space of the villa-style buildings that the citizens are accustomed to is increasingly submerged among the towering buildings... Old residents They finally got angry.Li and the others' first target of anger was me.In their view, it is because I, a Chinese, became the mayor that there are so many new immigrants in Montgomery, and that the Americanized Montgomery has so many Sinicizations that they cannot tolerate today... Li Wanruo is not without emotion . Yes.That was a real struggle.Li Wanruo recalled with a heavy heart: In the past hundreds of years of history, the Chinese have always been absolutely disadvantaged in the United States, but the situation is different now.Perhaps it is precisely because of the rising power and status of the Chinese that the old residents are even more terrified, because I am the mayor of a city, and they see me as the leader of the Chinese and the chief culprit of all the sins brought by the Chinese.So it naturally formed a situation that unless I, Li Wanruo, was quick. It just so happened that an important event happened at this time: you are a writer, and you must know about it, which is the famous killing of Jiangnan in Taiwan.To put it simply, Mr. Jiang Nan, a Taiwanese writer, wrote a book about Mr. Chiang Ching-kuo. Some of the things revealed in the book made Mr. Jiang very embarrassed. Later, Jiang Nan was killed, which shocked China and the world.The whole of California is a gathering place for Chinese, and it is also the most sensitive place for various Chinese political forces to reflect. As long as there is a slight disturbance, there will be people here to make trouble.The Jiangnan incident is no exception.In addition, gang forces from Hong Kong and Taiwan have institutions and members in California, especially in our city of Montenegro. As soon as the Jiangnan incident occurred, the hostile elements among the various gangs fought and created several vendettas between each other. The local area has brought a very bad influence, especially the image of the Chinese and the image of Montenegro.And this happened to be exploited by the extreme right anti-Chinese forces.They thought their opportunity was here, and bombshells started dropping on me.And the head of the local police station who rang this blockbuster... Recalling the past made Li Wanruo's face moved frequently.This bureau chief had confronted me several times before on the job.Once he asked to adjust the working hours of their policemen, saying that the original five-day working hours system should be changed to a six-day working hours system, saying that this would give each of their policemen an extra salary.As the mayor, I did not agree, because doing so would put an additional burden on the federal government, and I asked them to do their jobs well during their effective working hours.This counts as his revenge on me.After that, there were several incidents of disputes between the police station and the Chinese people. For example, the police repeatedly stopped Chinese drivers on the grounds of traffic violations, and asked the drivers to check their passports or green cards in addition to handing over their driver’s licenses. It is not allowed on the ground, and only the Immigration Bureau has the right to check passports and green cards, so of course I am speaking on the side of new immigrants, and in the name of the government, I demand that the police station should be self-disciplined when performing official duties.The police department thought that I was deliberately making fun of their police colleagues, rather than make trouble.Residents were increasingly dissatisfied with the police department, often taking them to court.While the citizens are complaining to the police, they also continue to give our government their opinions, hoping that the government can introduce measures to regulate the behavior of the police.So I started planning to set up a police committee to supervise the behavior of the police station from time to time.The planned police committee is composed of residents of different ethnicities and will mainly play a supervisory role, so as to regulate the behavior of the police.When my plan was still in the making, one day I disclosed the plan to a city councilor. Unexpectedly, this dude won votes for his next election, and finally disclosed the matter to the police station.And when I planned to establish a police committee, I received a strong condemnation letter from the president of the police association to the city council. The police committee was not established, but I became the deadly enemy of the police, and the conflicts began to intensify. The chief of the police department took advantage of the opportunity to attend the hearing of the Asian criminal group sponsored by Congress in Washington, D.C., and presented so-called a large amount of evidence hoarsely at the congress meeting, saying that a backbone member of the Bamboo Federation in our city, code-named White Wolf People open restaurants in Montreal to prove that many criminal activities and criminal groups from Asia are induced from our city.Moreover, based on his so-called personal experience, he affirmatively claimed that Mengcheng is the center of the ethnic criminal group.With his testimony, the city of Montgomery, which had a good reputation in the United States, suddenly became a terrifying place where people turned pale when they talked about it.The old residents of Meng City were already angry, but when they heard that the chief of the police station released the so-called internal information in the Congress, it caused an even more uproar.They marveled that they were living in the dark den of an Asian criminal group!The shock and horror can be imagined. At this moment, I saw that Li Wanruo, who was called a strong woman, was full of frustration—her heart must be a pain that others cannot experience. The problem is far from as simple as I imagined.She said that after the police chief returned to Montgomery from Washington, he held a private press conference without the consent of the city manager and the city council. He claimed to be an expert on Asian crimes and exaggerated his so-called testimony in Congress.The relationship between the ethnic groups in Mengshi was originally like a pile of hay. When he ignited it, the anger of the old residents intensified.And I know that someone is turning the truth upside down, taking this coincidental incident as a point of view to negate the good situation of the whole city of Meng.At this time, my term of office as mayor and my career as a city council member are coming to an end. To be honest, with my work performance and recognized ability, I can be re-elected. expected by the general public.The climax and decisive battle of the struggle unfolded in full swing with the election of the new city councilor... What annoys me the most is that in order to bring me down, the extreme right forces have adopted very despicable means, creating and throwing out some so-called ugly things out of nothing at the last moment of voting to influence voters' perception of me.For example, a Chinese in Mengcheng opened a supermarket, and the name was exactly the same as my English name, Lily's Market. This was a complete coincidence, and I didn't even know it. Make a big fuss and frame me as the mayor of using my power for personal gain.Residents do not understand the truth and believe it. Another thing is that at the time of the city celebration in Mongolia, the city government invited Chen Tingting, a famous Chinese skater, to the city to participate in the celebration.Since the municipal government does not have a special invitation fee, Chen Tingting accepted our government's invitation purely because her family lives in Montreal.After the city celebration, I invited Ms. Chen Tingting to have a meal at the restaurant together with two other councilors and the other two Miss Montgomery elected by the Montgomery Chamber of Commerce to express our gratitude.A representative of the municipal government who accompanied him at the time said that since it was a thank you to the distinguished guests of the city celebration, the meal should be reimbursed by the municipal government.This was originally considered a trivial matter, but during the campaign, extreme rightists used this incident to maliciously attack me for abusing public funds to treat guests. In fact, the income and official expenses of the city government and city councilors are public, and anyone can ask for it.Those with ulterior motives took advantage of this matter to find my official expenditure report after I became mayor, and made unreasonable comments to confuse the residents. However, even so, I still believe that the eyes of the general public are discerning, and I naively believe that the power of justice will surely defeat evil.Just at this time, the "Progress" of Mongolia, which has an authoritative analysis of the election situation, also published an article saying that I should be re-elected because of my brilliant achievements in the past four years.This also made me misjudge the real situation, so in the early days of the election campaign, I neither held a fundraiser nor devoted much energy to preparing for my own campaign, but was still immersed in my work .It was not until the last two months that he took leave of absence from the county government to devote himself to campaigning.And when I turned around and entered the campaign, I suddenly realized that I was under attack.But at this time, my campaign manager left without saying goodbye at a critical moment because he found a high salary, leaving my campaign committee without a leader.I was later told that this may have been a deliberate conspiracy by my opponents.But conspiracy or not, chaos in my campaign is a fact. There is a saying that misfortunes never come singly.At this time, my husband, Chen Baohe, who had taken several months of leave for my campaign, also received a notice from the company asking him to go back to work immediately, because he was obliged to lead a research project.When my husband saw that the election was coming, he immediately rejected the company's request.But the consequences of this are very obvious-the fate of our whole family is tied to this unlikely general election.This kind of pressure that only our family members know is like a big knife hanging above our heads every moment, making me and my husband so nervous that I can't breathe... I finally fell ill because of the pressure from all sides and the internal fire. .But despite the besieged songs, I saw that there were still so many citizens and Chinese compatriots who supported me, and I was even more reminded of how proud the Chinese in Mongolia were when I was the mayor. So I forced myself to stand up, return to the front line of the campaign, run as many residents as possible, and win more votes.I asked what was that like?Even I dare not look back, what about that scene?Compared with the tragedy of the battlefield with bullets and bullets-I mean the physical and mental pressure and the situation I faced at that time. On April 8, the voting day to determine the outcome arrived.The atmosphere at my campaign headquarters reached its most tense moment. To be honest, I had a premonition that I was going to fail, but everyone didn't think so. They firmly believed in the visible and brilliant achievements I brought to the city of Montenegro during my tenure as mayor. Enough to counteract the intentions of those extreme right forces.My supporters are more naive than I am. They are mostly honest citizens and my relatives and friends.I am so grateful for their unwavering support.What left me with endless aftertaste was Mr. Zhang Ping, a retired old diplomat who was a campaign volunteer for me at that time.The old man has been to many countries, can speak Mandarin, Cantonese and Shanghainese, and is proficient in English and Spanish.He made a huge contribution to my campaign.Come to the campaign headquarters early every day, always the first to arrive, and then open the door, more conscientious and responsible than those who are paid.For nearly half a year, every day.After going to work, he would sit by the telephone all day and make calls to citizens. When he heard that the other party was from Cantonese, he would chat in Cantonese, speaking warmly to the other party; An Allah is also from Shanghai.When the other party was a Latin businessman, he would talk about his experiences and insights in Spain.Anyway, he's such a lovely old man.On the polling day, we were all waiting for the final result at the campaign headquarters. Since this competition was mixed with many political factors, I was already feeling more melancholy than hopeful, and was preparing to accept a harsh outcome of the struggle.As for my brother Zhang Ping, before the vote counting results came out, he was shaking his head and reading the inauguration declaration he had written for me.That cuteness is not to mention how touching!After the counting of the votes came out that day, I came in fourth with a margin of more than 600 votes and lost the election because there were three places for the election of new councilors and mayor.The three candidates recommended by the extreme right forces defeated our three current city councilors, and finally won the lost ground they dreamed of regaining. Political campaigns are brutal.When the final results came out, my supporters cried with each other.And the saddest thing is my husband, Chen Baohe, who has been firmly supporting me and has been my good wife for nearly ten years in politics.When he was about to return to the company he had worked for for many years after I lost the election, the other party sent him a dismissal letter.The sight of him standing there in a daze when he received this letter made me feel so sorry for him, my family, and our beloved two children.I couldn't bear it anymore and threw myself into my husband's arms and wept bitterly.But my husband hugged me tightly in his arms with his strong arms, and said to me like comforting a wounded child: Lily, it’s okay, just let it go, I will find a job again, and I will help you get back together. You have the ability to participate in the election, and you will definitely defeat them. Aren’t we Chinese in the United States the first female mayor of you?You have done a great job as mayor for a few years!I've heard people say that, really, you've done a great job, I'm so proud of you, always proud... My husband is never good at talking and coaxing, and he told me so much that night Words, every word makes me feel warm, like gurgling water, watering my heart that has been cracked by the sun.That day was another night that I will never forget. I nestled in his arms, crying for so long like a wronged child under his affectionate comfort, as if I wanted to vomit all the futile humiliation and bitterness accumulated in my heart. Thoroughly... The next day, I saw that the local "Los Angeles Times) and the World Journal and other important media made such comments: The three incumbents, including Li Wanruo, have been wiped out, and the city of Meng will enter another world. The failure of the politician Li Wanruo, the scapegoat for the sudden change in Mongolia, the red light for Chinese to enter politics in the United States again.I looked out of the window again and saw dark clouds over Mengshi...