“It is the American sound … as we raise our voices to the God who is the Author of this most tender music… dedicated to the dream of freedom that He has placed in the human heart, called upon now to pass that dream on to a waiting and hopeful world. God bless you and may God bless America.”

The voice from the TV uttered the last few words of President Ronald Reagan’s second inauguration speech. I sat in front of the TV, holding my breath, my tears flowing down quietly. 

On a late afternoon of January 21, 1985, I heard these words in a Holiday Inn near the White House. The first thing I did after I entered the room was to turn on the TV and wait for the replay. Because of the cold Arctic air mass that day, the inauguration ceremony was forced to move indoors.

My English listening skills were poor, and I could fully understand just a few sentences here and there. However, I could hear the words “freedom” and “dignity” that were repeatedly emerging from the speech, and I felt the accompanying passion. It was precisely because of these two words, because of pursuing freedom and dignity, that I had paid a price unimaginable by the people here. These two words have always echoed in my dreams during the long, humiliating years that began at the bottom of the coal mine.

At the end of 1983, I had left China for Canada and worked as a visiting professor at the University of Toronto. Soon after, I connected with my American counterparts. They were interested in my work in Toronto, but even more interested in my book Thermodynamics in Geochemistry, especially in how I had it published shortly after the Cultural Revolution in China. Subsequently, we arranged an academic trip for me along the East Coast of the United States. Professor Greg Anderson, my host at the University of Toronto, provided the main financial support for the trip. Washington, D.C., was the fourth stop on my trip, and the day after the presidential inauguration I went to the U.S. Geological Survey.

The last stop of my East Coast trip was the University of South Florida at St. Petersburg, where Professor Robert Garrels was my host. In my mind that Bob, a recognized pioneer of modern aqueous geochemistry, was my mentor whom I had never met. Thanks to the thoughtful arrangements of Bob and his wife, Cynthia, living in their house and working in Bob’s lab, I had a few days that were both rewarding and relaxing. We also shared a lot besides geochemistry and thermodynamics. 

“We are not going to the campus tomorrow; I want to take you to a special place,” Bob told me at dinner one day. 

“Where?” 

“You will know,” he answered with a mysterious smile.

The next morning, he took me to the Salvador Dali Museum, close to their home. The artwork Bob specifically showed me was a special book. Each page was an embroidered image of a person’s head:  in order, Marx, Lenin, Stalin, and Mao. The book’s title referred to the world’s richest capitalists.

“What do you think?” Bob asked.

“This is a smart way of expressing his ideas. I am glad that there’s someone in the free world who realized the essence of communism,” I said. “Thank you very much for bringing me here!”

“I thought you would be interested in this,” Bob replied.

“You are right,” I said. “In fact, I always thought there might be only a very few people in the free world who could see the actual situation of ordinary people under the communists’ rule.” 

“Perhaps I have to agree with you,” Bob nodded.

His reaction encouraged me to go on. “After I arrived in North America, I had a feeling that for people who have always lived in this kind of normal human society, it’s very hard to understand the situation of people in George Orwell’s books. His books are fiction to the people in the free world but have been the reality to all Chinese. The reality over there is worse than the books. So, it is easy for me to understand you, but it may not be so easy for you to understand me. No offense here.”

“I understand your feelings—trust me, my friend,” he said with his arm around my shoulders. “But the situation is getting better in China. Right?”

“I hope so.”

From the collapse of the Gang of Four till the time that Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang were in power, Chinese people saw hope. And because of this, I had quietly given up the opportunities that could help me stay in North America. I could not suppress my desire to do something for the Chinese nation. I had decided back to China and, with the help of my counterparts in Europe, was planning another academic trip on my way back there. 

Before I left the Garrels’ home, Cynthia brought me a ticket to Disney World, which provided the most relaxing three days of my adult life. That gigantic sign, promising“ If you can dream it, you can do it!” always lingered in front of me during my subsequent journey. It seemed I would return to the sunny world outside the rainbow that my mother showed me in my childhood. 

In the fall of 1985, my academic trip in Western Europe started at Oxford University, England, and ended at the University Louis Pasteur in Strasbourg, France, where Professor Yves Tardy was my host. We discussed a plan for a global environmental modeling joint study between the French National Science Research Center and China. I needed to find an academic institution in China most suitable for the plan as soon as possible. Yves and his colleagues were mobilizing our peers around the world, especially getting financial support from inside France and from NSF in America.

As for the theme of the academic seminar within our small circle, it was still inseparable from the application of thermodynamics. “You have an exceptional artist, Auguste Rodin,” I began my talk. “I have heard a story about him. The story says that someone asked him, ‘How can you carve out such a magnificent work of art, Sir?’ Rodin replied, ‘It is simple. I just picked up my chisel and cut off everything that is unnecessary.’” I continued with my comparison, “The thermodynamics is the chisel in our hands. It can help us cut off everything that is impossible….” I was sure that all scientists were full of confidence in this chisel.

When I boarded the plane to Beijing a few days later, my mood was strange. Aside from the excitement of the upcoming reunion with my wife and children, I seemed lost. I was not sure if I had enough confidence for the road lying ahead of me. In China the impossible, judged by the people in the free world, might become possible at any time. And there was no magic chisel as well over there.

I sat quietly, staring out the porthole. The clouds outside the window gradually turned black and denser. The airplane began to shake, and the flash of lightning outside the porthole ripped apart the dark sky.