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To this day, almost everyone I meet, after I tell him or her that I was born and raised in China, asks me the same question: “How did you get out?”

Sometimes I say, “Easy!” and other times I say, “It’s a long story.”

Some would know to ask, since it was long after the border between China and Hong Kong had been closed, “Did you get out legally or did you swim out?”

I reply, “Yes, legally. I got a visa to go to Hong Kong, but my brother was not so lucky, he had to swim out.”

It was “easy” because I had the process figured out before I applied for my visa. My application was submitted at the right time to the right place, and so there was a bit of luck involved as well. At another time or place, to obtain a visa to Hong Kong from China could seem like the most difficult thing under the sun.

It was in 1962, shortly before graduating from high school, I was 16 and I was worrying about my future. My desire to get higher education was overpowering. But because my family background was not passable under the prevailing system, I knew I could not get into any university in China.

My father was a businessman in Hong Kong who had left the mainland because he was a mayor of our home town under the pre-communist regime. That classified our family as petty bourgeois. Living in a society that literally dictated a person’s future – about going to school or where to work – having the wrong family background could be a debilitating handicap.

The school I attended, the Canton Overseas Chinese High School, was one of the most prestigious high schools in Canton (now Guangzhou), and I was one of its top students. For the last three years of senior high from Grade 10 to 12 I earned straight As in all my subjects. But that still did not guarantee me a seat in any university. The communist government promoted education for the proletariat, that is, sons and daughters of peasants and blue-collar workers.

To complicate things further for me, the PLA (People’s Liberation Army) had started to recruit for new soldiers in the cities instead of the countryside. A few years before my graduation, they had started to set their sights on top high school students. Because the army needed soldiers with education who were smart enough to learn to handle modern weaponry, the traditional way of recruiting sons of farmers in the countryside was no longer working. And since I was a top student, physically fit, but not suitable for university, I was a prime target.

Therefore I made up my mind that if I could not go to university in China, I would go to university somewhere else.

In those earlier days before the Cultural Revolution started, there was still some sense of decency under the communist government. The policy stated very clearly that if the parents of a student did not want their child to join the army, the army would not accept him because of his “family baggage.”

However, among the high schools, there was a kind of unofficial competition each year to produce the most qualified students for the army. The winning class was honored and the school was honored. In the case of unwilling parents, the school sent a “lobbying team” to the house to try to convince them it was a ‘glorious’ thing to let their kid join the army. The “lobbying team’ would absolutely not stop their offensive until the parents gave in. So theoretically there were no “unwilling parents”.

Having observed these events and after talking to some adults and senior classmates, I had the whole process figured out and set into action a plan to get myself out.

Three months before school ended, I wrote a letter to my father in Hong Kong, asking him to send me a telegram each week until I told him to stop. The telegram was to repeat the same message over and over: “Don’t join the army, come to Hong Kong.” The telegrams were sent to the school so that the school would have a record of them. At the same time, he sent me letters explaining why I should go to Hong Kong instead of joining the army.

Sure enough, shortly before graduation, a representative from the army came to our class and gave a recruitment speech, emphasizing the great prospects, the benefits and the pride of becoming a PLA soldier. The whole class was hyped up and many students signed the application. At the time when all jobs were assigned by the government and there was a high possibility that you could be sent to the remote countryside to work as a farmer, joining the army was really a positive alternative for high school graduates. But I did not sign.

After the initial screening, only two students in our class were academically qualified because the grades of the rest were below the required standard. However, these two top students in our class went on to fail their physical test and so our class did not produce even one qualified student to join the army.

My class teacher sent for me. He knew, if I applied, I would be accepted. He asked me why I did not sign the application and why I did not want to join the army. I told him that I was torn between the army and my family. I really wanted to join the army, but my father did not allow me. Not only that I could not join the army, I must apply for a visa to go to Hong Kong. Then I produced all the telegrams and letters from my father to show him.

My story appeared authentic because the letters and the telegrams were sent long before the army came to the school to recruit. After reading the 10 telegrams and few letters, he sighed, “What a pity! You can do well in the army and the army can really use someone like you!” Modesty aside, he was probably right, but I wasn’t going to elaborate on that. I had to hit the iron while it was hot.

So I said, “Now that you have read my telegrams and my father’s letters, I would like to have a report from you, indicating my situation and my intention of going to Hong Kong are authentic, so that I can take your report to the principal’s office for endorsement.”

He thought for a few minutes and replied, “I would like to talk to your mother first.”

I said I would arrange it. I went home and told my mother what happened at school and asked her to say exactly the same things my father said in his letters.

The meeting between my mother and my teacher went well, from my perspective. My teacher wrote the report for me and I took it to the principal’s office. From there I took it to the local police station. Six weeks later I got my visa to Hong Kong.

During those six weeks, school had ended and I had written my university entrance examination knowing that I would not be able to get into any.

I knew my plan would work because I had understood the process – all I had to do was to convince one person in the whole wide world: my class teacher.

The process went like this: the visa to Hong Kong was issued by the Provincial Public Security Bureau (PSB). But the PSB did not know me, so it based its decision on the report from the local police station in our neighborhood. The police station did not know me either, so it based its report on the report from my high school principal. Our high school was big and there was no way the principal would personally know me, so he in turn based his report on the report of my class teacher. Once I convinced my class teacher, the rest of the steps would follow.

That’s what I meant by “easy” at the beginning of this long story.

In retrospect, I always felt that I had a good time in school in China and there were times later I regretted coming out to Hong Kong, especially over the next few years when I fought to survive and to obtain a higher education under totally adverse conditions. But my struggle in Hong Kong and how I managed to go to Canada is another long story.