In 1968, my uncle David Poon swam from Mainland China to Hong Kong to escape the Cultural Revolution. At the time, the British government welcomed these “Freedom Swimmers” because they were a source of inexpensive labor for the colony. After working for a number of years in Hong Kong and sending his wages back to his family in Guangzhou, my uncle immigrated to the United States in 1976 as a political refugee. Through the next decade, he brought my family to New York City one relative at a time, first my grandmother, then my grandfather, and finally, my father and mother. In 1992, I was born, and in 1994, my sister. All of our lives in America and future generations of our family’s experiences are a product of my uncle’s seven-hour swim on that warm summer night in 1968 along the border of Hong Kong.>> Back to Many Faces
