My Brother, My Opposite: A Tale of Two Fates
Bill is my only sibling. We haven’t seen each other in 27 years—our lives split by fundamentally different choices. Bill joined the Chinese Communist Party and worked for the government. I left China 31 years ago and later became an activist for human rights in China. Our parents, deeply scarred by the Cultural Revolution, gave us a childhood steeped in confusion and fear. That brutal movement led to the deaths of two million intellectuals. Our mother, a political science graduate from a prestigious university, was sent to work as a secretary in a car manufacturing plant. Our father, who dreamed of becoming a nuclear scientist, was forced into a coal mine thousands of miles from home for a decade. He was only transferred to a post near Mom when malnutrition-induced illness left him seriously ill. In their eyes, academic brilliance was a curse—a mark for political persecution. Though Bill and I excelled in math and science, our parents feared for us. To protect us, they enrolled us in a...