For the love of their daughter. Chinese couple sacrifices to give their child more opportunities

STORY BY KARA SPAK | Daily Herald Staff Writer
PHOTOS BY PATRICK KUNZER | Daily Herald Photographer

Jiaxi Li surprises her dad, Gang Li, as he works his Friday night gig playing piano at Regina’s Italian restaurant in West Dundee. In China, Gang composed symphonies that were performed in the grand concert halls of Beijing as well as in his native Tianjin.

MCHENRY COUNTY - Amid the dimmed lights and wine-filled glasses in the bar at Regina's restaurant in West Dundee, Gang Li's hands dash up and down the piano keys.

An oversized brandy snifter, two dollar bills stuffed inside, sits atop the piano, its top shut to mute the sound.

A waiter recommends the osso buco to a customer, speaking over the varied tempo and volume of Gang's music.

The 52-year-old Gang is far from the Beijing and Tianjin concert halls where his music brought him and his family respect, money and the ultimate symbol of success: a car.

"Sometimes he really gets into it," said bartender Lora Kott, looking toward the piano. "He just forgets where he is."

While many Chinese immigrants journey to America for an MBA or a Ph.D. and the lucrative jobs that follow, Gang and his wife, 54-year-old Ying Ying Wang, came to give those academic opportunities to their daughter, Jiaxi, 22.

In 2000 the three traveled from Tianjin, a city of 9.6 million people an hour and a half drive from Beijing.

They left behind a life of status and wealth they have been unable to recreate in America, in part because their age, work experience, English skills and education in the Chinese system have limited their career options and choices here.

With the help of an elderly McHenry County couple who let them live rent-free in their basement, they have carved out a fulfilling life nonetheless.

Gang teaches piano in his basement home, along with working in the Italian restaurant. Ying Ying works six days a week running a watch repair shop in Algonquin's Meijer. Business is slow.

The family is among the nearly 52,000 Chinese immigrants in the Chicago metropolitan area, the fifth largest immigrant group to settle here.

It would have been easier to settle for their prestigious life in China, yet that's not the family's way.

"We just give ourselves a challenge. Come here. Try a new life," Ying Ying says.

She pauses.

"It's hard," she said.

They're committed to staying here and succeeding.

"If you go this way, it's hard to go back," Gang said. "So we keep going. Myself, I think I will feel like a failure, people will think I'm a failure if I go back. We are already going this way."

A gift with limits

Jiaxi (pronounced Jaw-shee) was 5 when her father, Gang, started teaching her to play piano in their Tianjin apartment.

Gang didn't last long as his daughter's teacher.

"It's hard, a father teaching a daughter," Ying Ying says today, sitting in the living room of the home they share in McHenry County. "She didn't want to listen."

Jiaxi did listen to other teachers - and learned. And she practiced, and practiced, and practiced.

Ying Ying Wang helps Rosemary Warren bundle up before leaving a restaurant for the home their families share in unincorporated McHenry County. Ying Ying helps Rosemary, who suffers from Alzheimer’s, and her husband Dave, with household chores in return for living there rent-free.

Like her father, who won acclaim in China as a symphony orchestra composer, Jiaxi had a gift. Her tiny hands raced up and down the keys, her eyes seeing the next notes before pressing each key.

Jiaxi's talent set her on a path toward years of musical instruction - an intensity of focus that's common for Chinese children who have a special talent, whether musical or athletic.

While American children her age test out piano, ballet, soccer and T-ball, Jiaxi focused on piano and only that.

"In China, it's impossible to switch from one field to another," Jiaxi said. "The music schools don't teach math."

It was a life with limited freedom to choose for yourself that her father knew well. As a junior high-age music student, he was sent to live near the China-Russia border when the Cultural Revolution broke out in 1966.

The revolution forced students, artists and intellectuals into manual labor in rural China. He was assigned by the government to perform with a folk music group in the countryside. He started composing music there.

After four years of government service, Gang was released from duty and selected to study in a university-level music conservatory, skipping high school. He never studied science, literature or math in school.

Like her father, Jiaxi loved piano. But she wanted options.

She knew if she studied music through high school, it would land her in one place: a music conservatory. Not a bad place to end up, but somewhere she wasn't totally convinced she wanted to go.

For young Jiaxi, only one path would lead to more choices, but it wouldn't be an easy road to take.

Her parents had talked about it on and off for years.

Moving to America.

"Everybody at home dreams of America," Ying Ying said. "Twenty years ago when we were young we had dreams of coming here but we didn't have the opportunity. My daughter wanted to come."

The landlords

In 1981, Dave and Rosemary Warren of McHenry County committed themselves to becoming secular Franciscans, a lay Catholic religious order that advocates charitable works.

They promised God they would live the gospel as St. Francis of Assisi did and took vows of obedience, chastity and poverty.

The parents of six grown children, they lived these promises in a dramatic way when Ying Ying, then 48, emigrated here on a visa to study English more than five years ago.

Ying Ying's older sister lived in Chicago's Chinatown and cared full-time for Dave Warren's 94-year-old mother. When Ying Ying arrived, she took over the hospice care so her sister could move to New York.

The woman died weeks later, so the Warrens invited Ying Ying to move into their home.

Back in China with her father, Jiaxi applied for a student visa, two acceptance letters from American high schools in hand. The United States government denied it.

So Gang asked the U.S. government for permission to go to America as a "man of special talent." His request was granted and he, Jiaxi and Ying Ying received coveted green cards, a big step toward becoming U.S. citizens.

Dave saw the family's arrival as "an opportunity where you can make yourself useful and help." So as they arrived just days before Jiaxi's 17th birthday, he and Rosemary asked them to stay in their home.

"It's a pretty lonely place to have a home and two old people sitting in it," Dave said. "If you bring in a family, we each can help each other. It's a mutually supportive kind of thing."

Though she didn't speak English well, Jiaxi said she knew instantly that she and her family were welcome here.

"My landlord's family gave me a huge birthday party," she said. "In China, my parents would just cook me dinner. There's not a tradition of giving presents. So I got quite a few presents. That was neat."

Her piano skills earned her a scholarship to the Chicago Academy of the Arts. She rode the 6:40 a.m. train from Crystal Lake to Union Station, then hopped a bus to school, where she studied and practiced until evening. She was determined to make the most of her opportunity and her parents' sacrifice.

"I was clueless," Jiaxi said of her first months in America. "I didn't know English to start with. Being an hour and a half away from home was kind of hard for me. It was really intense. I was nervous all the time."

Her English improved, and her piano did, too. She made friends first with two Asian students, then with others of all races.

Senior year, Jiaxi was elected prom queen and was accepted at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.

The family has lived with the Warrens for five years now, Jiaxi sleeping in her own room on the first floor where Dave, Rosemary and their adult daughter, Annie, stay.

Ying Ying and Gang stay in the basement, where Gang teaches piano.

They help with groceries and utilities, but don't pay rent. They'd like to move out, but don't have enough money to do so.

"If we didn't know them, I don't think we could stay so long," Gang said of the Warrens. "If my family was going to rent a house, rent an apartment, that's a big payment. Many, many things Mr. Warren help me, help my family."

Warren said he and his wife are committed to Gang and his family succeeding here.

"He came in as a man of special talent," Dave said. "The idea is to keep him in music, not cutting celery in a back room."

Now, with Dave's wife, Rosemary, suffering from Alzheimer's disease, two extra family members are two more pairs of helping hands.

The Chinese family wants to succeed. The American family wants to help. They've built an unusual cross-cultural life together.

Off to college

Jiaxi was raised with xiao, respecting her parents, Dave and Rosemary and their family. It is as much a part of her as the piano.

She had come to America for a broad education, but in college she was majoring in what she knew best, piano.

She was practicing three hours a day. She still liked performing but wasn't really enjoying the rest.

Two years into college, Jiaxi made a bold choice she feared would disappoint her parents. She didn't want to spend her life playing piano.

"I just couldn't stand it anymore," she said.

Her parents had moved here to give her every opportunity they didn't have. Jiaxi knew it would be hard to tell them, especially her father.

But she knew now was the time to get the most out of her college education.

"I felt my parents were far away from me," she said of living in Madison. "I felt like I could try and see if I could make myself into something else."

She switched her major to international and Asian studies and is working to graduate in less than four years.

She's also working as a supervisor at a catering job and is enjoying her newfound free time.

"I can go for a run," she said. "I can watch a movie," with time that otherwise would be spent practicing piano.

Jiaxi doesn't know what she'll do next, but hopes to use both her English and Chinese language and cultural skills.

She wants to stay here, as do her parents. Right now, she's working on getting a job that will make all the sacrifices worthwhile.

Jiaxi doesn't know what her future will hold, or what type of family she'll have. And family, after all, is important.

"I am proud of my family," she said. "I know it's probably hard for my parents at their age to come to a new country and merge in."

It was all worth it, her parents say.

"I tested myself" by moving here at 47 years old, Gang said. "I learned myself. I'm still excited.

"We live in America. We also live in China, too. Both are great countries."

Continue:
• Family first
• Pressure fierce on China's children
• In China, more than one child isn't a choice
• China: Soup to nuts