I am Chinese, a visitor from far away, forced to return to the country of my roots, a home I can no longer stomach. 

A scant five years ago, I gave a young filmmaker a lift to his rented room in Hollywood. Traffic was thicker than the La Brea tar pits and the 25-minute drive took an hour. Strange. He cried. He loved this country so much that he begged me, as if I somehow had the power, to not let America become his oppressive home, where you needed government permission to pick a house or town in which to live. He wondered what it would be like to have a brother or sister. 

Socialism’s central planning stipulated all parents could have only one child. Animated, he rapidly chatted about California’s beauty. Gone, temporarily, was the omnipresent feeling of watching what you say or think, lest a thought inadvertently escape and be dragged off to authorities. It might have been the first time I rooted for someone to become an illegal alien. This enthusiastic young Chinese filmmaker loved our food, our scenery, the abundance, energy, creativity, and, above all, that freedom to become the man he was supposed to be. I still wonder. Did he get that chance to become himself? 

I am all my teachers, souls ranging from divinely gifted to profoundly mediocre, who taught me to speak, think, ponder, express, clock watch or not understand geometry. I did memorize one Hart High limerick, created in a geometry teacher’s honor: “Who is........

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