The Americanization of Garry Guan

Written and photographed by Steve Mellon

His first name would be a problem, and he knew it. "Xuejun" was simply too difficult for Americans to pronounce and spell. So, one October night in 1987, he sat in his Beijing apartment, picked up an American magazine, spotted a picture of actor Gary Cooper and decided on a new identity.

Xuejun Guan became Carry Guan (he added the extra "r" for individuality). For a 32-year-old man about to travel thousands of miles from home -- to a different country and culture -- the process of becoming" American" had already begun.

It was one of many changes. In his three years in the United States. Guan (pronounced Gwan), a University of Pittsburgh doctoral student has immersed himself in this country's culture. From auto mechanics to tap dance, Guan can’t seem to get enough of what makes one an American. He's not only learned to survive but to thrive.

"One of my friends says 'You're more Americans than many Americans are,' " Guan says.

The transformation began years ago.

He grew up in a northeastern Chinese city where temperatures can average minus 30 to minus 40 degrees in winter, became a devoted communist, and spent seven years in a labor camp being indoctrinated in the benefits of physical labor. Guan eventually rejected communism and became an outspoken critic of it.

In that respect, he was ahead of his time. Thousands of younger Chinese with similar gripes took to the streets last April to demonstrate democracy in Tiananmen Square. That protest came to a bloody end on June 4, when army tanks and troops attacked the crowd, killing hundreds of civilians.

The event caused a few anxious weeks for Guan -his younger brother was among the protesters. After hearing of the massacre, he phoned his family in China but could get no word. He later learned his brother was safe, although he was forced to leave college because he had missed a final exam.

Another brother, Xuebin, 24, is a member of an army tank unit. Luckily, Guan says, that unit didn't take part in quashing the uprising. He believes Xuebin would have refused to take part in the massacre of unarmed students. "I know he would have been killed. He would not have obeyed the order."

Different from others

Guan, 34, came to Pittsburgh in 1987 as a doctoral student in Pitt's Department of Anthropology, where he's studying archaeology. Guan is one of 202 Chinese students at Pitt, with another 85 at neighboring Carnegie Mellon University.

In many ways, he differs from his fellow Chinese students. First, he doesn't need to worry about being sent back to China. Although the Chinese government usually makes students return for at least two years after earning a degree, Guan's boss in China had the requirement waived. Guan hopes to find a full-time job in the United States.

Also unusual is Guan's outspoken nature. He has been a critic of President Bush's handling of measures that would have protected other Chinese students from being forced to return home. He says he often sounded off in political meetings in China but realized he was "doomed to get into trouble sooner or later. Either you leave the system or you prepare to be punished."

Guan grew up in Harbin, a city forged from two separate cultures. Harbin was settled at the turn of the century when Russia and Japan were constructing a railroad stretching from Siberia to the South China Sea. Now a city of 3 million people, it still reflects styles of Russian and Japanese architecture. He is the oldest of five brothers -- "a full basketball team," he says -- and though his parents both worked, there wasn't always enough money. He remembered getting up early before school and sifting through ashes to search for pieces of coal large enough to be used for heating and cooking. During harvest, he would sometimes spend weekends on his bicycle, scouring the countryside for surplus potatoes, corn, and wheat.

Despite the hardships, Guan believed in the communist system. After high school, he spent seven years in a labor camp, which was required of all young Chinese. "But it was also Mao Tse-tung's call. I was a leader in the Red Guard, and I wanted to set an example."

He and more than 500 other youths built a huge farm and collectively worked the fields, raised animals, and made bricks. He remembers using a sickle to harvest wheat by hand in a field that seemed to have no end and working 48 hours with no sleep. Workers lived without electricity and slept in small buildings made of mud and grass.

"In that seven years, I could have learned so much more than in a normal education," Guan says. "That taught me what hardship was. That gave me the ability to handle any situation.”

He also began to question the Chinese system. Because in the 1930s his grandfather had been a police officer in Manchuria, then ruled by a Japanese puppet government, Guan was rejected by the Chinese army and refused membership in the Communist Party. (Years later, however, a less restrictive army allowed his brother to join.)

Then there was the 1971 death of Lin Piao, a Chinese leader who split with Mao. Piao planned a coup that failed, then died in a suspicious plane crash while fleeing to the Soviet Union. Piao and Mao were "both kind of like Gods" to young communists, Guan says. "What's going on?" Guan began to ask. "What is right? What is wrong?"

Comparing countries

By the mid-'70s, the shortcomings of the Cultural Revolution, which began in 1966, became apparent. "The Cultural Revolution was really cultural destruction. Not only that but economical, industrial, everything.”

About the same time, China began opening itself to the outside world, which allowed Chinese people to compare their country to others, like Japan. Guan believes both countries began the post-World War II era with an equal chance of success.

"One was run by socialists; the other by capitalists. Now, one is one of the poorest in the world, the other is one of the richest."

After seven years on the collective farm, Guan earned a degree in archaeology and history from Beijing University, where he met several Americans. He went on to earn a master's degree in cultural anthropology from the Central Institute of National Minorities.

Guan got a job at a state commission that collected artifacts from Chinese cultures, but he'd already decided he wouldn't be able to thrive in China. "My own character and personality fit more into this culture than into the Chinese culture."

One American he met was Ceinwen King-Smith, a Pittsburgh resident on one of the trips to China to teach English. Because Guan I wasn't one of 10 students originally chosen for the class, he couldn't actively participate. Still, like many others, he attended and sat silently. He met with King-Smith during free time, hoping to learn about the United States.

To King-Smith, who teaches English at the Connelley Skill Learning Center in the Hill District, Guan was just one in a sea of young Chinese she had met. Then one day he came to her door, breathless, and said he had a present for her. King-Smith, who is blind, held out her hands in anticipation of receiving a watermelon, a common gift. Instead, he handed her two sheets of paper.

Guan had ridden his bicycle several miles to a school for the blind and I figured out how to compose a poem in Braille. "I'll never know how he did that in one morning," King-Smith recalls. "That really impressed me."

Later, she again witnessed just how quickly Guan could learn. The first time the two played Scrabble, she beat him soundly. "Is this what you call getting creamed?" he asked. The next game he won.

Guan and King-Smith remain good friends and she played a role in helping him get financial aid at Pitt.

Guan has moved quickly to absorb the culture. A self-taught mechanic, he's repaired everything from brakes to tailpipes and even cut a sunroof into his car. He took tap dance lessons and learned to hang glide, but he also has picked up more important aspects of life in America, like establishing credit and learning his way around the city.

Not all of his lessons were easy. Two weeks after arriving, Guan found out one of his former Beijing professors was catching a connecting flight at Greater Pittsburgh International Airport and had a few hours to wait.

He wanted to see her, but his only transportation was a bicycle. So he rode it from Squirrel Hill to Downtown, through the Fort Pitt tunnels to the airport. And back.

He was stopped by a police officer and told what he was doing was illegal. Pointing to the emergency lane, Guan says, "I thought this lane was for bicycles." After explaining he was new to the country, Guan was allowed to finish his journey.

Family respect

Stories of Guan's successes have reached his homeland. King-Smith, who visited his family in Harbin, says Guan's brothers respect his accomplishments and the youngest, Xuehong, "worships his older brother." He, too, is outspoken.

Guan phones his parents every few months, but King-Smith says his mother expressed concerns her son is still single. "They're also worried he'll drive too fast," she says.

Guan says it may be 10 years before he visits. First, wants to become a U. S. citizen, so it will be safer for him to travel to China.

Though he's far from family, Guan has made several friends in the United States, and he remains close to two families he met while working at a summer job in Maryland in 1988.

One friend is fellow Pitt student Francis Allard, a doctoral student in Chinese archaeology. He says Guan makes friends easily because "there's less of a cultural barrier with Garry.

"He'll tell me about a new radio he put in his car, or about putting a new sunroof on his car without spending any money on it."

Guan will begin a summer job as an archaeologist in a week or two. Last year he worked as a crew chief in a large-scale excavation conducted by a Maryland company. He hopes the experience will eventually pay off with a full-time job -- and further acceptance as an American.

"I just want to be viewed as a person, not just a Chinese," he says. "That's why I'm trying hard to work myself into this system."

Originally published on Pittsburgh Press on April 30, 1990, Reposted with permission of the author