On my arrival in America the last week of August, 1962, I met up with a college friend, Leo Lee, in San Francisco. We had each bought a ‘See-USA-in-3-months’ Greyhound bus ticket for $99 before we left Hong Kong. We had planned on doing a little sight-seeing along the California Coast, before heading northeast towards our respective final destinations, Leo to the University of Missouri and I to the University of Michigan. Here is what I have written in my books: My memoir (The Life of a Pharmacognosist…) and my combined book (Memoir + my Newsletter) titled, “My Life & Rollercoaster Career…”
The following is from my memoir.
Chapter 4. Adulthood in America
IGNORANCE IS BLISS!
San Diego was the last and southernmost California city Leo and I visited. While there, we decided to make a side trip across the border to see a bullfight in Tijuana, Mexico. We must have seen ads or something during our trip and decided to see a bullfight. I don’t remember whether or not the Greyhound bus went to the border at that time and if not, I think we might have ridden a taxi to the Customs & Immigrations checkpoint and walked across the border to Mexico. Once on the Mexican side, taxis were everywhere. We got on one taking us to the bull fight. We each had all our money and valuable belongings in our small bag. I had 200 dollars cash that was supposed to be for my living expenses until my first paycheck from my teaching assistantship. Leo was from a better-off family and had more cash than I. Since we had no idea where we were going or knew anything about Tijuana, what if the taxi driver took us someplace and robbed us? For a while I panicked. I had watched too many American cowboy movies with banditos in them! But then, we got to the bullfight arena soon enough. We paid the driver and got into the arena and watched the bullfight. It was not as spectacular as I had thought. Still, the event that followed was so etched in my memory which made whatever happened after the bull fight and the little tourist stroll in downtown Tijuana become non-events.
How we got back to the border checkpoint is a blank. All I remember is we were immediately detained by U.S. Immigration/Customs. An officer took us into a room and explained we didn’t have the proper documents to enter the United States, because our visas were for a single entry only. We used that up when we landed at the airport or the pier when we first arrived in the States. After maybe 30 or 45 minutes, or maybe an hour, of questioning and reviewing our papers, including university contacts such as correspondences and my teaching assistant appointment, among other papers, the officer was satisfied that we were legitimate students. He released us after giving us a stern lecture about immigration rules. He didn’t even call our school contacts, as far as I know. I was 24 years old and Leo perhaps a year older, obviously both naïve and innocent. Young people at this age now can be high-level executives in government or industry. And we were just starting graduate school and traveling like greenhorns. I shudder at the thought of this episode fast forwarded to now. What could have happened?
When I was a teenager in Hong Kong, there was a widely known case of a homeless European living on the Hong Kong – Macau ferry. I don’t remember the details, but he somehow got himself onto one such ferry without immigration documents. Neither the Hong Kong nor the Macau immigration let him land. For a long time he was living on that ferry as a homeless person without a country. This was the same ferry line I used to take to visit Uncle Siu and Aunt Pauline in my high-school and college days. It usually took three hours. Now the Hong Kong – Macau hydrofoil takes only one hour. I have never found out how the story with the homeless European ended. Regardless, I am grateful for the compassion of that U.S. immigration officer to let us back in.
Having been brought up in an environment encompassing some of the world’s most profound religions and philosophies (Taoism, Buddhism, Confucianism, and Catholicism), I believe in fate and luck. I have been certainly lucky on more than one such occasion.
In present-day America, I wonder anyone dumb and naïve enough as Leo and me to have crossed into Mexico and got back in the States without a visa. Was I lucky!!