Meet the People

Xinjiang Lao Li is the pen name of Cliff Li. Cliff Li was born in 1957 in Shanghai. He went to Xinjiang when he was five with his parents, who was sent there as Xinjiang reconstruction teachers. Li spent most of his young life in Xinjiang. Li’s whole family suffered from Cultural Revolution and the Red Guard in Xinjiang. Due to Up to the Mountains and Down to the Countryside Movement during the Cultural Revolution, he was sent to countryside in Xinjiang for farming. In 1977, when college entrance examination was resumed, he took the exam and got accepted by Xinjiang University to study Geography. After graduating from Xinjiang University, he worked in Xinjiang University and went to Glasgow University and got his master in Demography. When he returned to China, it was 1988. After seeing what had happened in Tiananmen Square in 1989, he determined to leave China and applied for PHD in the U.S.

He got accepted by University of Hawaii in 1990 and was offered Teaching assistantship. He never finished his PHD degree and transferred to a master program in Biostatistics. After graduating from University of Hawaii, Li worked in a medical research facility in Hawaii and applied for his green card. Li is now working as a research consultant for the Department of Education in California, Sacramento.

He is an active Chinese community leader for years. When he first came to U.S., he was the president of Chinese Student and Scholar Association in University of Hawaii. He was also the former president of a Chinese school in Sacramento and the chair of Chinese Engineer Association. He is passionate about making Chinese Americans’ voices heard. He did not describe the discrimination in workplace as discrimination. He believed bias towards government employees with foreign backgrounds still existed. He recalled filing a complaint with his Chinese colleague in question of a promotion to managerial level given to a Caucasian co-worker. He and his colleagues held that their female co-worker from Mainland Chinese should have been promoted to that manager position given her communication skills, working ability and better education background. Nevertheless, his supervisors did not respond to the complaint.

He used difference to describe the treatment to Chinese American as he saw in the workplace. Now, Cliff Li refers himself as Xinjiang Lao Li. (新疆老李) He wrote about his life in U.S. and his opinion on politics, society, education and culture on China News Digest and World Journal. He likes to write in Chinese because it would provide him the chance to reach out to more Chinese in U.S. and help them understand currents political, social and cultural issues in U.S.