Freedom on Her Face

Yaqiu Wang has devoted her life to the cause of human rights in China. It is a great and important cause. She has worked for Freedom House, Human Rights Watch, and the Committee to Protect Journalists. Currently, she is a fellow at the University of Chicago’s Forum for Free Inquiry and Expression. Her website is www.wangyaqiu.com.

She was born in a village in southeast China. Her family was a peasant family. That’s what it said right on the registration card: “peasant.”

Yaqiu grew up in a relatively liberal, relatively lenient period. The word “relatively” is very important. The atmosphere seemed stifling at the time. But under Xi Jinping, Communist rule would become much worse.

Yaqiu’s education was doctrinaire—ideological—and she always saw through it. She knew that Communist China was a kingdom of lies.

One day, she found a book—The Private Life of Chairman Mao. This is the memoir of Mao’s personal physician, Li Zhisui. It is an eye-popping book. Yaqiu Wang read it in amazement, as many of us did. It contradicts the mythology surrounding the “Great Helmsman.”

(I relied on this memoir in the Mao chapter of my book on the sons and daughters of dictators: Children of Monsters.)

Wanting to leave her homeland, Yaqiu came to America, studying first at the University of South Carolina. What did she think of America, when she got here? I will paraphrase her:

I felt what many Chinese feel, when they see America: People have freedom on their face. If you’ve grown up in China, you see the difference immediately. Americans carry freedom with them when they walk on the street, when they talk to you. They have no fear.

In China, there are many things you can’t talk about. You can’t express your feelings. You are disciplined. From a very young age, you know that you are supposed to say certain things and not say certain things. You become a person with fear written on your face.

When you come to America, you see people without fear. There is freedom on their face.

Does she worry about her security? Even on foreign soil? Of course she does. The Chinese government doesn’t care where you live. Mainly, though, she is worried about her family back home. She cut off all communication with them, in the hope of sparing them repercussions from her human-rights work.

“That must be incredibly painful,” I say. Yes, it is.

I have a question for Yaqiu Wang: “Did you choose this work or did it choose you?” Again, I will paraphrase her answer:

I really feel it’s a calling. …

I was born the third child of my family. At the time, China had a one-child policy. The first child, my brother, had a disability, so my sister, the second child, was legal. I was the illegal child. My mother had to hide all during her pregnancy. My birth itself is a human-rights story.

When I was growing up, I always heard the propaganda that extra children—that’s what they called them: “extra children”—were a burden to society. I didn’t dare go to school with my sister, because people would then know I had a sibling, which would bring shame.

I carried that shame until I came to America, where I realized that having siblings is normal.

Before we sign off, I ask Yaqiu Wang whether there is anything else she would like to say—whether there is something she would like people to know. She cites two things.

First,

I really want Americans to know that what they have is very good, and they should cherish it. They should fight for the freedom they still have. Americans are accustomed to freedom and democracy—they have had it for 250 years. Americans have always been lucky, but maybe your luck is running out. So, please defend the freedom you still have.

Second,

I want Americans and the rest of the world to know that Chinese people want freedom and democracy. It’s just that the repression is so severe, they do not express it. Their fear is internalized. But if you spend enough time with them, privately, they will let you know: they do want freedom and democracy.

Once we were off the air, Yaqiu and I kept talking for a bit. She said, “Have you heard about people who feel they were born in the wrong country? That they were really born with an American mind and heart?” Yes, I have. “Well, that’s true of me,” she said.

She also thinks it is “crazy” for Americans to oppose immigration, given our history and our character.

Yaqiu Wang is a real individual, an independent thinker and spirit. It was a privilege to listen to her.

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