New Year’s Day is an arbitrary date. Nothing magically happens that changes things from Dec. 31 to Jan. 1, but in our minds we feel permission to reset, start over.
This month, I think about a new beginning in my family that set the course for my entire life: Jan. 3, 1976, the day my mother immigrated to the United States from China.
It’s been 50 years since she set foot in Washington, D.C., escaping the Communist regime that took power in 1949. My family’s home was raided by the Red Guard, my grandfather was detained, and after middle school my mom and her older sister were sent to a labor camp as a part of the Down to the Countryside movement; she had been separated from her two other siblings. She had to get permission to see her parents, and as a preteen city girl she was expected to figure out how to cultivate crops and raise animals to feed herself.
After three attempts, my mother escaped from the camp and made her way to Hong Kong to her grandmother’s house, and eventually came to the United States as a refugee. As a journalist, I’ve tried to document her story for our family; often she says “It’s too soon to talk about it.”
I did ask her what it was like watching me have a completely different life than she did. She wasn’t allowed to do ballet because she was too short, while I had the chance to dance and do martial arts because it was a hobby, not a potential job. While she was being separated from her family, I was going to Girl Scouts meetings and having sleepovers with my friends. At the age she was detained for attempting to escape from a labor camp, I was crying over boys whose names I’ve since forgotten.
She managed to rescue herself—a mix of grit, luck and the kindness of strangers—and start over. She and millions of other youth are called shīluò de yīdài, or the forgotten generation, whose education was disrupted. In the United States, she studied music, because “it’s a language everyone speaks.” She met my father in Washington, D.C.’s Chinatown when she was a waitress at a restaurant. He visited with her cousin, who told my father “She’s too Chinese for you.” One time she was on the phone with him when she was held at gunpoint; she calmly told my father “I’ll talk to you later, I have to go.” She didn’t bother telling him what happened until she got off her shift that night.
My parents dated for four years before getting married and having three children, traveling the world for his work. I remember at his retirement party, my father called my mother his partner, before it was cool. They’re still a team built on friendship and love.
I think about what it was like for her, as a mother in a new country, to learn about Christmas—you hang socks from the fireplace and put small toys in it while the kids are sleeping—or Halloween: The kids will dress up and go to strangers’ houses to ask for candy.
At each of our weddings, we had a tea ceremony, where we kneel and serve tea to our elders to show our gratitude. My parents are now grandparents to a little boy and girl, with another girl on the way this spring. They take hong baos, or red envelopes, with chocolate coin candy for their classmates for Chinese New Year, dressed in traditional Chinese clothing. They’re learning how to fold dumplings with her, like my siblings and I did.
All because 50 years ago, she decided that the life she had wasn’t good enough for her, and that she deserved better.
Happy New Year, everyone, and happy anniversary, mom.
This story is from the January 2026 issue of Boca magazine. For more like this, click here to subscribe to the magazine.
