An Immigrant Today

by Luc

LREI NY- On 2/8/17 the LREI fourth grade had a visitor. Her name is Wen. She is an immigrant from a village in China. Her village is called Xiapu. The fourth grade was very interested to hear her story. She said a lot of interesting things. This is is her story:

Wen came to NY in 1985 from Xiapu when she was 12 years old. The village she came from only had about 50 people. They were all friends. It was about the size of Sixth Avenue and Bleecker Street. You could tell what village someone lived in by their last name. The village had no heat or electricity. The teachers knew how cold the kids were so they had recess after every class so they would run around and get warm. They would play a game where they stood in a line and tried to push each other out of the line.

That kept them warm because they were pushing against each other. The windows had no glass. Instead they used paper! The village would glue the paper to their windows with rice. They had rice for every meal. It may sound bad but they played with each other a lot. They would play hacky sacks and they played ping pong. They would take off their doors and use them as ping pong tables! Sometimes they went to a plastic factory near their village and played with rubber bands.

When Wen got to NYC she was shocked. She had never seen anyone who was not Chinese.

It was crazy for her. Wen’s mom and her worked at a sweatshop as seamstresses. Wen’s whole family worked there. She thought it was fun. “Looking back it wasn’t so safe.” Wen said. “The fire escapes were blocked, and there was no elevator. It was still better conditions than where I was from.” Wen said her boss was nice but had a temper. “She was stressed because of all the work,” said Wen. Wen s first American meal was chicken pot pie and she loved it.

Now Wen has her own clothing company. In the sweatshop she worked as she learned about clothes and she said that was a great experience for her. Now Wen lives better than she did before, in NYC USA.