Long journey from China
When Gong Jiang Qing landed in Ottawa with her 15-month-old son in 1985, it felt as if she “had just fallen out of the sky.”
Now working as a secretary at Spokane Falls Community College’s Multicultural Office, she recalls the 22-year journey that started in central China and eventually led her to Spokane.
“It took me two minutes to respond to what people were saying to me at that time,” Gong said of her English skills. “By the time I figured out they were just saying hello, they were long gone.”
She did not speak one word of the new language.
“All I knew was a little grammar. I had never heard English spoken before.”
The alienation she felt, the confusion with the language and the culture was not just overwhelming, it was downright humiliating. At 31, she had been a college teacher herself before she left China to join her husband in Ottawa. She was just settling down to a life of academic pursuit and stability in her native country, and now here she was, trapped in the cocoon of a foreign tongue, a culture she was brought up to reject, alone in a rundown apartment filled with cockroaches. She was terrified by the elevator and puzzled by all the buttons on every kind of machine, and most frustratingly, could not even say hello to passers-by.
Her husband, who had been a student at Ottawa University since 1981 on a Chinese government scholarship, was sympathetic but not much help. He was preoccupied with his intense studies.
“I called him all kinds of names then,” Gong said laughing. “I called him a traitor to our country, a capitalist, and an anti-revolutionary, everything I was taught. I did not like what I saw in the West at all.”
She added, “Remember, I was brought up on the communist ideology, and I love my country.”
But like it or not, Gong realized the key to her survival was the language. In order to learn, she sought out free English classes offered through churches and attended several, making sure she had lessons every night of the week. During the dayshe also enrolled in a community college. She went on an all-out assault on the language, as if her life depended on it.
For two years, she immersed herself in learning the language while taking care of her child, surviving on the meager stipend her husband received from the Chinese government.
“Everything in the apartment was salvaged from other people’s garbage,” she said.
As her command of English progressed to complete fluency, she enrolled in Ottawa University to pursue a teaching certificate. In just one year, she finished 30 credits while working odd jobs and taking care of her family.
It was during this time that she also started a dance troupe in the Chinese community in Ottawa. “TaiTai Dance Troupe” was born out of her loneliness and yearning for the things she left behind. Because she majored in physical education and had some experience with kung fu, she incorporated a lot of what she learned in school into traditional Chinese dance. And before she knew it, “TaiTai Dance Troupe” was selling tickets at $10 a head, performing at events in Ottawa and being broadcast live on a local TV station. Former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney’s wife had even enjoyed their show.
“We were making our own costumes,” Gong said, still marveling at the memory today. “And I had never even touched a sewing machine before that. The success of this troupe really gave me great satisfaction.”
Gong moved with her family to Chicago and Atlanta, leaving a trail of success stories behind her, reinventing herself along the way as a preschool teacher and data program developer “whose talents and commitment are exemplary,” according to one of her former bosses.
“I did not want to come to Spokane at first. It is hard to start all over again and again,” she said of her family’s last move in 2002. But in a short time, she found her footing and emerged as a leader in the Chinese community here. “I was forced to be aggressive,” Gong said.
Looking back at the journey of the last 22 years, Gong mused modestly, “I had no other choice.”