In telling a little about my life in Britain I hope to dispel any idea that this country is racist or anything but too tolerant for its own good.
My last article ended with China ruled by Deng Xiaoping, who later announced his ‘open door’ policy, in 1978, when China was a poor, backward, mostly rural country far behind the West in every way imaginable. At first the open door concerned only industry and inward investment, but gradually it also led to free, or freer movement though it was still difficult to get a passport and an exit visa to leave China.
By 1983 I had graduated in English, and a government work agency, the foreign enterprise service, appointed me to work for a Chinese government joint venture with a well-known French company in Beijing, as an administrative secretary.
In those days everyone belonged to a danwei (单位) or work unit, something like a government-controlled company union, from which you had to get permission to travel or get married. It was not possible to get married without an ‘unmarried’ certificate issued by one’s danwei. (To get married, a certificate to show that you were not already married was required.)
After starting work I had to meet with a danwei official and somebody from the foreign enterprise agency every three months, to tell them what was going on. Not spying really, but they expected to be told of anything suspicious.
I became aware that some Chinese people, ordinary people, were leaving China to study abroad. I had always wanted to travel and had started learning English by secretly listening to VOA broadcasts, taking a risk in doing so. It took well over a year to get everything prepared. First, I needed somewhere to go. My mother had been in a rehabilitation camp with the last emperor of China’s brother, Pu Jie, and they had become friends. Pu had married a Japanese woman during the Japanese occupation, and through this connection one of this lady’s family agreed to become my sponsor. That was the first hurdle cleared.
The next was to get a passport and an exit visa, as it was not possible to leave China without one, and then find a college in Japan that would accept me. After many bureaucratic problems all was set and I took my first flight, to Tokyo, beside myself with excitement.
In Tokyo I lived in a dormitory with other female Chinese students. I had signed up for a three-year course at a Japanese college, the first year at a separate Japanese language school, followed by a two-year business studies course. My Chinese money didn’t last long, but I quickly found jobs. I occasionally helped the college organise the Chinese students, most of whom could speak neither Japanese nor English, but I also got a job from 6am to 8am cleaning an office building and, in the evening after college, as a waitress in a Japanese restaurant.
The Japanese were not exactly welcoming, but I had no real problems with them and was anyhow too busy to become involved much in Japanese society. Halfway through my first year in the Japanese language school I met the Englishman who would become my husband. He was attending a short intensive course at the school.
At first, we thought about getting married in Beijing, but this proved impossible. Among many other problems was that he was unable to provide a certificate from his danwei in UK proving that he was not already married. My danwei refused to understand that in UK no such certificate exists or that there were no danwei, so we went to Hong Kong where, to my surprise, we were married with no fuss at all.
During a trip to Beijing in June 1989 the Tiananmen demonstrations began and because of rumours about revolution, army mutinies and the return of the Cultural Revolution, we left. But as my Japanese visa was about to expire, and because both Hong Kong and Singapore, where my husband frequently worked, wanted nothing to do with mainland Chinese, we had to go to UK.
Applying for a residence visa at the British Embassy in Tokyo was my first experience of a government office that was friendly, helpful and efficient. I got my visa, and we flew to London.
On arrival we went to stay at the Merchant Navy hotel in Lancaster Gate, where I had another culture shock. In the morning, at breakfast, I felt very uncomfortable and was sure something was wrong. Everybody ate in absolute silence. Nobody spoke or looked at each other. Why? It turned out that nothing was wrong. That’s just the way they were.
Another little confusion arose on the rail journey from London to Newcastle. Our train stopped at York, and I noticed a group of men standing on the end of a platform with binoculars, cameras and notebooks. I nudged my husband, ‘look, secret police’ I said. When he had stopped laughing, he explained to me about Train Spotters. I still don’t understand about Train Spotters.
Next, I met my new parents-in-law. I was very nervous about this, as mothers of sons in China can be cruel to their daughters-in-law. But I need not have worried. This working-class couple from Sunderland, who had never met a Chinese person, immediately welcomed me to their family and we became firm friends. I came to love them and respect them greatly. They are gone now, and I miss them very much.
So, I have lived in UK now since 1990, apart from a few years in Singapore and then Greece, almost twenty years in total. Apart from the occasional misunderstanding of the North East accent, I have had no problem at all with the British people. Of course, there has been the occasional rude one, but they were rude to everybody, not just me. Almost all have been friendly, helpful and very polite. I have no complaints. I have been treated just like everybody else and almost always been made welcome. I cannot think of a single time when I was subjected to anything remotely racist or discriminatory.
After going back to London, where my husband had found a new job, I found a job myself, after three days. Within a year or so I had my British passport. I was a proud British citizen, and still am. My husband’s job involved a great deal of travel, but even on my own I never had any real worries. Most people went out of their way to help me.
I was not interested in politics though, like most mainland Chinese, I had a great respect for Madam Thatcher. I voted Conservative, with great pride. I could vote. My vote counted. I could criticise the government and vote for whomsoever I pleased. It was a good feeling.
We bought a house, children came along and I was busy with family life. No time for anything else. I had given up my full-time job, but started to teach Chinese language, mainly to children of English couples who had adopted Chinese girls. These couples were very caring. They had promised to bring their adopted children up with an awareness of their Chinese heritage and were determined to respect their promise. I admired them greatly.
Later, I decided to take a course in London to get a certificate as a teaching assistant. I lasted only three months. I learned nothing about teaching, but a great deal about racial awareness and how to avoid offending non-white people. I was truly amazed. I had not imagined anything like this could happen in England. The attitude of some of the non-white students in the class, all women, was very aggressive and unpleasant. So I left.
Since then my awareness that something was wrong in Britain grew. People I knew started grumbling about immigration. Not about immigrants themselves, but the government policy of swamping the country with non-white, often non-Christian people and then not only failing to make them comply with British values and traditions, but trying to force the British to change their society to accommodate the foreigners.
This is so obviously wrong I simply do not understand what I now think of as ‘The Party’, the ruling establishment, is thinking about. I have stopped voting Conservative, and now vote Reform. I do not know how many immigrants have moved to Britain since I came here in 1990. Six, maybe ten million people? The difference is very noticeable now, especially on visits to London. I have seen, in the space of just over thirty years, a major transformation in British society. And what has surprised and disturbed me, as a trusting believer in British democracy, is that this transformation has been made by a small elitist group with no democratic approval and against the wishes of the British people.
Even worse, this small elitist Party, so very reminiscent of the Chinese Communist Party, has made it difficult to criticise their policies by hate laws and the denouncement of critics as racist. This infuriates me, as I know first hand how unracist (is that a word?) this country is, and I get even angrier when I see the Party apparatchiks and their friends countering non-existent racism with all too real anti-white racism.
I do not understand why it is racist to say that you do not want a huge change of race, religion and culture. The Indians were perfectly justified to say that they wanted the British to go. It was racist, but so what? They wanted their country back and got it. Why is it dangerous and unacceptable for the British people to say the same?
I am very sad to say that over recent weeks free speech in Britain has been restricted – in effect – to a point very similar to that in China under Xi Jinping. In fact, in some ways we have less free speech here. Nobody in China would be jailed for saying that Islam can be a troublesome presence, or that China should put the Chinese people first and that foreigners should not be allowed to settle in large numbers. But here?
When I see middle aged ladies jailed for writing something on Facebook and 11-year-old boys arrested for taking part in demonstrations, I feel a cold shiver run down my spine. Is Britain now a dictatorship? Is free speech dead? Why?