A featured article in AsianWeek (July 4-10) tells stories of seven immigrants from Asia. Reported in AsianWeek, "Their stories tell it all: violence, hardship, luck and a surprisingly large amount of joy. In this issue, we celebrate their lives and their struggles to make it in the United States." One of the seven is Annie Yang, 46, from China. The story about her is summarized as follows:
Looking back, she is not regretful of her move to the United States. "My family is here and our shop is here," Yang says with a smile. "We're pretty happy." After her husband arrived, he applied to have his new wife brought over. Now, 17 years later, Yang and her husband have raised two sons and own a Kearny Street café on the edge of San Francisco's Chinatown. When I first arrived in America and I saw all the conveniences available here, I was very excited and relieved," says Yang. "While in China you can only make 30 yen a month, here we could make $50 a day. We thought it was great."
Yang also has had to take care of her two children and take night school classes to learn English. Although she knew it would be difficult moving to a new country where she did not speak the language, Yang was not deterred: "I had my heart set on coming here. Not knowing the language was not about to stop me."
Even though Yang enjoys her life in America, she sometimes gets homesick and still carries with her the traditions of her homeland. She believes that one of America's problems is its large massing of radical and ethnic diversities, which can make living together difficult. She has had her share of racism. Yang recalls her children being picked on at school when they were young for being Chinese. She wants to teach her two sons about their heritage so they can be proud of who they are. She is planning a trip back to China at the end of this year so that they can see the origins of their culture.