Richard Perkins Hsung: I Am Living Proof Of The American Dream
An Interview With Jake Frankel
Giving back: Fast forward to the early 2010s: I felt I had finally mastered, at least, the scientific part of writing, because it’s repetitive and canonical with a standard set of terms. So, I contemplated how I could help make a difference in the world as an American and decided to follow in my American grandparents’ footsteps. I spent some time in China helping a university build a medicinal chemistry program, an honor. The people there seemed to accept me with welcoming arms as if I were a prodigal son returning. They were in awe of my American-ness and lauded my flawless English.
Is the American Dream still alive? If you speak to many of the immigrants we spoke to, who came to this country with nothing but grit, resilience, and a dream, they will tell you that it certainly is still alive.
As a part of our series about immigrant success stories, I had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. Richard Hsung.
Richard P. (Perkins) Hsung was born China, the son of Jean Tren-Hwa Perkins, MD, who was raised by American medical missionaries. In the early 1980s, he and his mother immigrated to America, and he was among the first teenagers to leave China legally after his country reopened to the West. In Boston, Richard attended the prestigious Milton Academy, then went to Calvin University in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and the University of Chicago, where he received a Ph.D. in chemistry. He was a Camille-Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar at the University of Minnesota–Twin Cities, where he received a National Science Foundation Career Award. Before retiring, Richard was the Laura and Edward Kremers Professor of Natural Products Chemistry and the University of Wisconsin–Madison Vilas Distinguished Professor. He spent ten years compiling and editing Spring Flower, written by his mother, who could not complete it before she died in 2014. This three-volume memoir, published by Earnshaw Books, chronicles Jean Tren-Hwa Perkins’s life, spanning 83 years. Adopted as an infant in 1931, shortly after the tragic Yangtze River floods that killed millions of people, Jean became a respected ophthalmologist and translator in China and then in the U.S. Learn more at Yangtze River by the Hudson Bay (https://www.yangtzeriverbythehudsonbay.site/mini-series.html).
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Can you tell us the story of how you grew up?
I lived in China until I came to the United States with my mother in the early 1980s. I was born at the onset of Mao’s Proletarian Cultural Revolution, a singular moment in modern Chinese history. My father was branded anti-revolutionist for having criticized the government a decade earlier and sent to a Stalinesque labor camp. So, my mother had to raise my sister and me by herself while working full-time as a doctor and contending with my sister’s Cerebral Palsy, about which little was known in China at the time.
My mother was adopted by American medical missionaries at the age of one. During the Japanese occupation of China in World War II, she and her parents had to relocate to Yonkers, NY. Going to school there reinforced her sense of herself as an American. The family moved back to China after the war, but not long after the Communist revolution, Dr. and Mrs. Perkins had to flee China, leaving Jean behind. When the Cultural Revolution came in 1966, Jean’s American and Christian background made her a target. As a result, she was frequently away, being “reformed,” and whisked off to the countryside as part of Mao’s “rustication program.”
So, I had to grow up fast. I became close to my sister, who is six years older than I am, and it felt like “us against the World.” It wasn’t easy being seen as children of anti-revolutionists, not to mention my sister’s disability. I did everything I could to protect her and help my mother. But as much as I wish to claim I was a hero during that chaotic time, I wasn’t. I was neither strong nor streetwise and became mostly a problem rather than a solution for my mother. I sometimes wonder how we made it through.
While compiling my mother’s memoir, I found myself reflecting on the many “guardian angels” who helped us in those years. Some were our neighbors, others seemed to come out of the woodwork, and many of them risked their lives by helping a small family that was at times regarded as enemies of the state. They gave us food when we were hungry, walked my sister and me to school when the streets weren’t safe, and offered support in countless other ways. They were the heroes and heroines of the first ten years of my life.
Was there a particular trigger point that made you emigrate to the U.S.? Can you tell us the story?
The decision to come to America was entirely my mother’s. From the moment her parents fled China in 1951, she dreamed of returning to America. Throughout those challenging years, that dream was one of the things that got her through. After Mao died in 1976 and the Cultural Revolution ended, China reopened to the West. By 1978, Westerners began to filter in as diplomats, delegates, scientists, and physicians. China began hosting international conferences and qualified translators were desperately needed, as foreign languages had been suppressed during the Cultural Revolution.
Having been raised by Americans, my mother’s spoken English was nearly fluent, and the government asked her to be a translator for many of these visitors. At one international conference in 1978, she was the personal translator for Chairman and Premier Hua Guo-Feng. He was China’s Gorbachev, a historical transitional figure who ended the Cultural Revolution before handing over power to Chairman Deng Xiao-Ping.
During one medical conference in Shanghai, Dr. Arthur Grove, an ophthalmologist from Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, noticed my mother’s perfect English with a slight New York accent, and he asked her about it. She shared her story of being adopted by American missionaries and living in Yonkers during the war. When he returned to New England, Dr. Grove was able to locate her American family and arranged for her to come to the U.S. as an exchange scholar at Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary (MEEI).
Can you tell us the story of how you came to the USA? What was that experience like?
We first flew to Tokyo on Japan Airlines (JAL) from Hong Qiao Airport in Shanghai. After a brief stay in Japan, we flew to JFK International Airport via Pan Am. I knew nothing about Dr. Grove or even about my mother’s past (she’d had to keep her American connection secret during Mao’s time). You could say my mother literally “Shanghaied” me onto a plane.
While not knowing where we were going or what was happening, I sensed that I might not see my father or sister again. To get to the plane in Shanghai at the time, you had to walk about 100 yards on the tarmac, and when my mother and I got about halfway, I turned and ran back toward my father and sister, who were still standing at the gate. My mother had to literally drag me onto the plane. I didn’t want to leave the other half of my family, regardless of what was waiting on the other side. The trauma of that moment still lives in me.
My mother and I were picked up at JFK by her American cousin, Evelyn Perkins Ames, and we stayed in a big hotel in Manhattan the first night (the Empire Hotel near Lincoln Center). I was told not to push any buttons, but no one said not to pull anything, and in my curiosity, I pulled the red lever on the fire alarm, causing a mass evacuation of the 10-story hotel. We and all the guests were out on the street, and I was mortified and a bit scared. Just then, having heard that a boy who had just arrived from China was the culprit, a New York policeman came up to me, tipped his hat, and said, “Welcome to America, kid!”
Is there a particular person to whom you are grateful who helped make the move more manageable? Can you share a story?
After a brief stay in New York, we settled in Boston, where my mother began her new life as a Research Fellow in an MEEI lab specializing in glaucoma. I attended Boston Language School on Arlington Avenue to learn English. My mother was instantly busy and told me to take care of my own lunch at school, but I hardly spoke English. On Day One, while standing by a food truck, I froze and couldn’t mutter a single word of what my mother had told me to say to order food. The guy inside the truck was talking fast and shouting, and many people in line were waiting for me to order.
Just then, a young man came over and asked me in Chinese what I wanted. I pointed to what I now know as a bagel with cream cheese, and he ordered my lunch for me. Later, seeing me eating alone in the Public Garden across Arlington Avenue, he came over and sat with me. It turned out he also had just arrived from Mainland China and was about to attend graduate school. I never saw him again, but I ordered a bagel and cream cheese every single lunch for the rest of my time at the language school.
So, how are things going today?
Memories of those days more than 40 years ago are still fresh. I am grateful to so many people who helped me transition to this strange, new world, and I acknowledge many of these in the epilogue I wrote at the end of my mother’s memoir, Spring Flower. Today, I feel comfortable being in America, but it took me decades to feel that way.
How have you used your success to bring goodness to the world?
I had the opportunity to teach chemistry at a college level for almost thirty years, and was able to interact with students from all over the world in lectures and laboratories. I learned a lot about life through teaching. I believe my perspective as an immigrant who had to begin anew in an entirely different setting has helped me be available to others.
You have first-hand experience with the U.S. immigration system. If you had the power, which three things would you suggest to improve the system?
My mother and I spent hours on end sitting in the dimly lit rooms of the JFK Building in the Government Center, Boston, along with dozens of other newcomers to this country. We would sit or stand nervously and clutch tightly onto a paper ticket, listening intently for our number to be called. And before it was our turn to walk up to the front counter, I heard frustrated pleading from others petitioning for citizenship. Time after time, we were shouted at, told the forms we’d filled out following their instructions were inadequate or incorrect, and turned away.
It took my mother 18 years before she was granted citizenship, even though we had the help of attorneys, congresspeople, and our own determination. She was heartbroken since she had already been recognized as a legally adopted daughter of Americans in the U.S. Supreme Court in Shanghai in 1940. She should have been accepted right away. But the paperwork from China simply didn’t hold water here.
When humans uproot from their motherland and abandon their mother tongue, it is often because they are facing war, persecution, or another kind of disaster. The Statue of Liberty represents America’s documented history of welcoming those in dire straits. People risk their lives to come here, and the U.S. government, especially its immigration system, needs to recognize that today’s migrants at the border are no different from their own ancestors.
I believe the U.S. immigration system, overall, has come a long way from those dreadful days my mother and I saw inside the government building in Boston. Immigration officers have become more humane and empathetic. So, my only suggestion would be for lawmakers and the immigration system itself to show more heart to each applicant, taking pride in the fact that this country is where these people want to be.
Can you share the “5 keys to achieving the American dream” that others can learn from you?
My mother was brought up by Americans in China. For her, the American Dream represented a beautiful and free world, even when my father challenged that ideal, going on about American Imperialism and other transgressions. For many, the American dream is the gold standard for measuring a good life. Although finding my way continues to be a work in progress, here are five keys I have discovered.
1. Language: Shortly after my mother and I arrived in Boston, I accepted the urgency of her suggestion that to succeed, I had to learn to speak English flawlessly, without an accent. She spoke nearly perfect English, as it had been her language since she was a year old. I worked hard day and night, and she grilled me to my bones, trying to get me from zero to sixty in a flash, in part because I had been accepted at the prestigious Milton Academy. Based on my age, I was a 9th grader, but I struggled in 5th grade English class and even had to be transferred to 3rd grade English. It wasn’t until the late 1980s, as a graduate student in Chicago, that I suddenly felt, “Hey, I got it. I can now speak well, without an accent (from my ears).” That very day, a man I didn’t know asked where I was from. Without a thought, I told him that I was from Boston. But he shook his head and said, “No, I meant the accent; where is that from?”
2. Culture and history: I persevered, thinking that as long as I could acquire sufficient knowledge about American culture and history, I had a chance to assimilate and become American. By the early 1990s, I was able to blend in pretty well with my American peers, playing softball or hanging out in a bar. But I was always a few seconds late getting their jokes, and it turned out that humor is the last hurdle in finding your way in a new place with a new language — especially jokes that reference history or culture or use idioms or words with double meanings. But I didn’t lose hope. With my tiny grad school stipend, I subscribed to cable T.V., and after working all day in the research lab to earn my degree, I’d watch hours of T.V. comedies to get the hang of both the language and the culture.
3. Career: By the mid-1990s, I felt I’d finally succeeded and handed in a well-written PhD thesis. Not long after, I was told by my mentor and senior lab members to rewrite its entire 700-plus pages because it was not how a native speaker would have written it. That was hard to take. I had chosen science, expecting that writing would be mostly scientific terms and expressions. I didn’t know that the teaching profession I was about to enter required general writing, not just scientific writing.
I was still determined to pursue an academic career. With the trust and confidence of my many mentors, that dream came true. However, when I told my mother I was about to become a professor at the University of Minnesota, she asked rhetorically, “Richard, remind me, Minnesota is a state school, unlike Harvard, right?” She always held me to the highest and, oftentimes, least reasonable expectations. So, fifteen years after immigrating to America, having achieved an amazing dream, I still disappointed her and was left to wonder why we ever left China. Sadly, those were the last meaningful words she said to me before she succumbed to dementia. Still, I moved forward and succeeded in teaching chemistry with the help of many dedicated and brilliant students.
4. Giving back: Fast forward to the early 2010s: I felt I had finally mastered, at least, the scientific part of writing, because it’s repetitive and canonical with a standard set of terms. So, I contemplated how I could help make a difference in the world as an American and decided to follow in my American grandparents’ footsteps. I spent some time in China helping a university build a medicinal chemistry program, an honor. The people there seemed to accept me with welcoming arms as if I were a prodigal son returning. They were in awe of my American-ness and lauded my flawless English.
But soon enough, I realized they didn’t need my help. Nor did they think I was a real American when the real Americans showed up at the same school. Instead, they were quietly disappointed, if not saddened, that I wasn’t Chinese enough. I could no longer speak Chinese or remember much about Chinese history and culture. I couldn’t catch their jokes or understand the songs they were singing in the karaoke bar when they bade me farewell. At that moment, I wanted to redo (or undo) everything that had happened since 1981. But I couldn’t find a rewind button in the karaoke bar, and time travel hadn’t been invented yet.
5. Take a baseline, them compare your progress against where you started: A few years later, my mother passed away. She was the only person who could, at least, validate my effort to achieve my dreams in America. So, I began the long and arduous process of compiling and editing her unfinished memoir, Spring Flower, because I had promised her I would. Despite knowing this immense burden could end my teaching career as it was so time- and energy-consuming, it was a journey I needed to take in order to discover who I am. In the process, I was forced to recall all that my family and I had been through, and I recognized that attaining the American Dream is different for each person. For me, reviewing it all and restarting again and again, I feel some completion and satisfaction, and feel my story can be a resource for others. I’m grateful to be here; I have a good life in the American Midwest.
We know that the U.S. needs improvement. But are there 3 things that make you optimistic about the U.S.’s future?
Diversity: America is one of the most diverse countries in the world, and I believe it is not as broken or polarized as the media portrays.
Character: I have found that most Americans, regardless of orientation or beliefs, are decent and kind and act with an open mind and common sense. These attributes are imperative for Americans to accept one another and embrace their unparalleled diversity.
Adaptability: America is one of the few societies on earth that has remained fluid and malleable, which allows it to correct itself over time. This flexibility is an essential trait because accepting others who are different takes time — sometimes more than a century. But Americans have shown they can adapt, self-correct, and change over time. Even when the U.S. government has acted against the interests of ordinary people, the people have prevailed, harnessing creative and innovative energy from a vast and diverse immigrant-based population. These qualities have stood the test of time.
We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, V.C. funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world or in the U.S. whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might see this, especially if we tag them. :-)
For me, that would be Bill Simmons, the Sports Guy, founder of the Ringers, a sports and pop culture website and podcast network. He and I grew up around the same time in the Boston sports world and share a similar self-deprecating humor and mindset about historic moments in Boston sports. Even when I could barely speak or understand English, I could pronounce “Beat LA” as well as any native-speaking Bostonian.
For my mother, it would have been Alan Alda, who played Hawkeye Pierce on the T.V. show M*A*S*H. After we arrived in the U.S., my mother encouraged me to watch a lot of T.V. to help me learn English. Mostly, she left me alone with my programs, but she was quickly drawn to M*A*S*H. I couldn’t follow most of the dialogue, but she would laugh and laugh, appreciating the humor in what I saw as a depressing and violent war story. Over the years, particularly when compiling her memoir, I realized that the Alan Alda character was, for her, her father, my grandfather, Dr. Edward C. Perkins.
Dr. and Mrs. Perkins built a hospital in 1931 in Kiukiang (Jiujiang), a port city on the banks of the Yangtze River. It was there they adopted my mother and where she spent her first 10 years. When the Japanese invaded the area, the Perkins family had to flee China, and they moved to Yonkers, New York, for three years. After World War II ended in the Pacific, she and her American parents returned to China. Then Mao Tse-Dung’s communist army defeated Chiang Kai-Shek in the Chinese Civil War (1946–1950). My grandparents kept the hospital open and continued working under the Communist regime. Postwar China desperately needed physicians. My mother left for the capital city, Nanking, 300 miles downriver, to attend an English-speaking women’s college. But the Korean conflict, a proxy war between the U.S. and China, gave rise to rampant anti-Americanism in China, and in December 1950 my grandparents had to leave the country quickly, leaving my mother behind. It took her more than 30 years for her to return to her beloved America. And in Hawkeye Pierce, my mother saw her father.
What is the best way our readers can further follow your work online?
My mother’s memoir, Spring Flower, published by Earnshaw Books, touches upon many of these questions raised here. This three-volume memoir is available from online retailers and brick-and-mortar bookstores. I have also set up a website to honor my American grandparents, Dr. and Mrs. Edward Carter Perkins, who served as medical missionaries in China between 1910 and 1954 (https://www.yangtzeriverbythehudsonbay.site/home-page.html).
This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for joining us!
Thank you very much again for interviewing me. I am grateful for this valuable opportunity.
