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Mr. Liu, A Modern-Day Feudal Warlord
When living in Vancouver, BC, I met a Taiwanese businessman who had immigrated there with his wife and two sons one year previous. They lived in a high rise apartment in Burnaby overlooking Metrotown, the biggest shopping complex in the area. I tutored their sons in English for over a year, and became fascinated by the dynamics of this jet-age family.
Mr. Liu owns several factories in eastern China that produce electronic parts, and spends a better part of the year shuttling between Taiwan, Shantou, and Kunshan, an electronics manufacturing centre half way between Shanghai and Suzhou. That is a relatively clean and interesting middle-of-the-road city called “Little Taiwan” owing to the fact that 85% of the businesses there were started by “Tai Shang” the word they use for Taiwanese investors on the mainland. He travels to BC one or twice a year for at most a couple of weeks at a time. Meanwhile, Mrs. Liu holds up the domestic front in Canada and is responsible for the children. The boys attend the local high school.
This kind of cross-Pacific family unit is common in all immigrant countries, but especially prevalent in the Vancouver area. My best friend who taught at a private high school there told me one third of his students have a similar domestic arrangement. Parents who spend so much time flying across the Pacific are known in Chinese as “astronauts”. Many of the children literally live off their parent’s credit cards, and some drive around in automobiles far more luxurious than those of their teachers.
As with many Asian families transplanted in Canada, the major motivation to move across the Pacific to the New World is to educate their offspring in an English-speaking environment. This is the case as well for the Liu family. However, as good a future investment as it may sound to the parents, there are many difficulties. Mrs. Liu for example, could not speak much English at all, and had to rely on her adolescent boys for simple matters of communication and daily living that posed so much challenge for her. The children were not at all used to the freedom and flexibility of the western education system, and seemed not to know what to do with themselves outside of class. In Taiwan and in Singapore where they had been studying previously, they had very strict teachers, a curriculum they were not allowed to fall behind on, and more than enough homework to occupy most of their free time. The older boy began getting involved with some of the rebel students in his school, and started skipping class, ignoring his studies, and not caring about his marks. His reasoning was that he planned to be an entrepreneur like his dad, and an education was not needed for that, and what did anyone care anyway, his father was never there. The younger brother had a much more introverted personality, isolating himself in video games, movies, and martial arts novels in Chinese, and snacking constantly on Doritos and Frito-Lays.
While the family appeared set financially, the stress created by moving to an entirely alien environment and by an absent father figure made for a very difficult adjustment period. Most noticeably, Mrs. Liu told me it was nearly impossible to discipline the boys, and she longed for their younger days back home before they were teenagers, and when the extended family was there to add support and authority. She herself had taken to going out gambling several evenings a week with her Taiwanese housewife friends as a coping strategy and way of relieving the stress of single parenthood. I suggested a healthier pursuit like taking them to the gym might be better for everyone, but that idea never made it very far. That side of the family was unfortunately on a downward spiral when I last saw them.
Upon returning to China in 2001, Mr. Liu was very keen on inviting me to work with him to create a new trading company and help drum up business for his electronic parts factories. Jennifer and I were his guests for ten days, and I learned about his operations on the mainland and how he thought we could work together. While I reckoned I knew him fairly well from our meetings in Canada, I was shocked and dismayed by his behaviour away from his family. I asked him why he always had two cell phones hanging around his neck, and he said matter-of-factly that one was in case his wife called, and the other one was reserved for business purposes and for his local girlfriends. Right in front of my wife Jennifer, he said he wanted to set me up with several “little wives” so that I could enjoy the “good life” like him. While hardworking and business savvy, his conduct was that of a dirty old man, and his perverted sense of humor harped on crude jokes that often belittled women. At his factory compound, his personal secretary, a girl of about 20, was also his private mistress, and they slept in the next room to us on the top floor of the worker’s dormitory. We could hear them plain as day having sex next door, and almost every night he had her get up at 2 or 3 am to make him a meal. Jennifer and I were getting more and more turned off by his wanton behaviour, and simply could take it no longer. I decided there was no way I could work with a man with such loose morals. I thanked him for his hospitality, made the excuse that Jennifer did not like it much in that part of the country, and told him we were deciding to pursue our future back to her hometown of Chongqing. His disappointment was evident, and I am sure he could not understand how I could turn down such an enjoyable and potentially lucrative partnership with him.
last modified Aug 28, 2004 at 19:11
Kevin,
Good for you for sticking to the moral high road and turning down a lucrative business partership with someone of low character. After all, it's not how much we make for our living...it's how we live.... that counts. Like you, I would rather have less in my bank account and know that I am wealthy in integrity. God will bless you for staying true to your convictions..................Bo
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