Dispelling readers’ myths about China

To answer the letters of Bill Malloy’s “Chinese Christians” in the Bangor Daily News of July 19 and that of Sharon I. Rideout’s “Boycott China products” in the BDN of July 21-22, I am

writing this commentary.

First, I am a democrat, and foremost I am a loyal patriotic U.S. citizen. China has more than 5,000 years of history. The culture, arts and literature of China are superior.

The Communist Party has taken over China since 1949. China has 1.3 billion people, and each and very one of them has a share of food, and a place to live. It requires a tremendous effort of the government to accomplish this miracle. The major traditional religions of China are Taoism, Buddhism and Confucianism; the imported one is Christianity (Protestants and Catholics).

I have been back to China four times: visiting my relatives in July 1979 in Wugan, in the province of Hunan; as a distinguished visiting professor at Hwa-Chung University of Science and Technology in June 1985; as a speaker at the International Computational Physics Colloquium in Beijing in September 1993; and as an invited speaker at Changshai Institute of Science and Technology in June 2000. All I have seen and known is contrary to the criticism of Molloy and Rideout. I am a Catholic, and I went to the Catholic churches in Beijing and Changshai. The atmosphere in the church is friendly and joyful.

I was born in an old-fashioned family of five brothers and six younger sisters. I am the only male to survive, but my six younger sisters are all healthy and happy. My first younger sister has only one son, but she has grandchildren and great-grandchildren. My second sister has three daughters. Her second daughter, Liu Hong-Zhong, has been a visiting scholar at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and is currently a professor of English at Beijing University; her youngest daughter is a high school teacher.

My third sister has three daughters, the second one, Zhu-Wen-Chun, earned a Ph.D. of electrical engineering at Oregon State University and is the principal research engineer at General Electric at Schenectady, N.Y. Her younger daughter, Zhu Xiao-Chun, earned a Ph.D. of biology from Brandise University and works in New York City.

My fourth sister has two sons, the elder one, He Guang Liang, earned a Ph.D. in physics from Oregon State University and he works in New York City. My fifth sister has one son, Yin-Hai, a computer scientist and one daughter, an architect, both work in China. My sixth sister has two sons, the elder one, Teny Tao, is a computer scientist who works in Beijing, the younger one, Teng-Yu, is an architect who works in Cheng-tu, China. All my relatives never had any abortions. They love their daughters as much as they love their sons, as mentioned by Rideout.

Of course, I cannot generalize that there is no abortion in China. Look at the real situation in the United States. We cannot deny that there has been abortion in every state.

I have taught in the Department of Aerospace Engineering for five years at West Virginia University jointly, and received a quarter-million dollars of Research Award sponsored by the Department of the Navy, every year from 1967-1970, and supervised five students of master and doctorate degrees. I also have taught at the University of Maine at Orono for 22 years, and was awarded the Summer Faculty Research Award three times during the summers of 1976, 1980 and 1990.

I was also awarded the Summer Faculty Fellowship by NASA and American Mechanical Engineering Society the summer of 1987 and 1988 at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and in the summer of 1989 at NASA Langley Research Center. Thanks to the government system of America, the research award has been determined by excellent teaching and the research performance of each individual, not judged by the origin of nationality.

I hope that my honest writing can clarify some of the misconceptions of those two writers.

Yu Kao Hsu, Ph.D. is a professor emeritus of mathematics at the University of Maine.