In the 1930's, a wave of anti-Chinese activity peaked in Mexico's Northern Territory and even the leading Chinese residents of Mexicali were forced from their homes. Gathering up family and possessions, they went their separate ways. Some tried to make it to the U.S. and other countries while others, growing tired of living away from their homeland, harbored dreams of returning to China.

Ou-yang Min's father was an example.

He Sold a Row of Stores: He left his home in Chungshan County in Kwangtung Province at the age of 14 crossing the ocean to arrive in Mexico. He started work as a laborer on a coffee plantation and he married a Mexican girl and worked his fingers to the bone saving money to open his own grocery store. Shoulder to shoulder the couple gradually advanced their fortunes. Before leaving Mexico in 1933, Ou-yang owned a row of storefronts lining an entire street which supplied matches, coal, beer, coal oil, and other staple items to the residents of Mexicali.

The business brought stability and happiness, yet as long as he was living under a foreign roof, Ou-yang felt insecure. Also his children were growing up without an understanding of Chinese culture and without a feeling for their ancestors. Ou-yang decided to sell off a large portion of the business and bring his Mexican wife and his six children--ranging between the ages of 4 and 11--back to Chungshan in Kwangtung.

Upon their return they purchased some land and built a business. Their lives were quite stable except for an occasional conflict of cultures. Ou-yang Min's older brother Ou-yang Hui who has served as the Chairman of the Mexicali Chinese Affairs Hall recalls that when the family had just returned to Kwangtung his mother, brothers, and sisters had their hands full trying to learn Chinese and get used to the conventions of the village. Also, his Mexican mother insisted that her children speak Spanish in the house. It was hard to avoid problems in accommodating the different cultures, but, as Ou-yang Hui recalls, "during her 18 years in our village my mother not only learned to speak perfect Chinese; she also fell in love with China."

Life in the village was very peaceful and the Ou-yangs' experiences in Mexico gradually faded from memory. When World War Ⅱ broke out travel by sea and land was cut off, and the course of events seemed to dictate that they would remain in mainland China concentrating on the growth of the family without other hopes or plans.

Once More They Became Wanderers in a Foreign Land: There were quite content with their plain and practical lives, and while they had accepted being the object of jealousy as a Chinese family living in Mexico, it was inconceivable to them that they might be similarly ostracized in their own homeland.

Yet, like many other overseas Chinese families who returned to build businesses in China, after the Chinese Communists took control of the government in 1949, the Ou-yang's were labeled members of the landlord class. The parents were put in jail for a year where every day they were forced to kneel on broken glass and "confess their sins." Even the Mexican-born matriarch was unable to escape punishment. After experiencing all types of torment and cruelty, the Ou-yang family finally sold off their final overseas holdings to buy their way out of their predicament. In early 1950, they escaped to Macao and renewed their struggle to survive under the control of a foreign government.

Although the Ou-yang family never dreamed of returning to Mexico, at the end of 1950 the Catholic Church in Mexico wrote a letter to Mexican President Mateus requesting that those Mexican citizens dispersed through Southeast Asia during World War Ⅱ--including those born in Mexico or those with at least one Mexican parent--be assisted in returning home.

In 1960, the Mexican government spent between US$1.6 and 1.7 million to rent four airplanes to fly more than 100 Mexican families from Hong Kong back to Mexico. These families, the majority of whom were Chinese, came from China, Macao, the Philippines, and other parts of Southeast Asia. This is how the Ou-yang family came to return to Mexicali and to the life that had seemed so remotely buried in the past.

China and Mexico Are Both Home: Returning to the land where he was born, Ou-yang Hui used his academic credentials as a graduate of Canton's Chu Hai University to get a job in the field of financial insurance. Today he is a professional consultant at the largest American insurance company in Mexico. Ou-yang Min who was born in China and who received an excellent education in Chinese language and painting became a teacher of Chinese culture. Old man Ou-yang whose life had already taken so many unexpected twists and turns took over a small grocery store resuming the work he had learned so many years before. Until the time of his death he never once returned to his Chinese homeland.

Thirty years later, the Ou-yang family can talk openly and painlessly about the past. They consider both China and Mexico their native countries even though at times they were abandoned by both lands. Nowadays, the free and open Mexican-American border is a reality and the nightmare of the expulsion of Chinese is a thing of the past. The Ou-yang's still have family and friends in the Mainland and their business contacts with the Mainland are growing closer. The anger of the past has been replaced with a new hope for the Chinese people.

The experiences of the Ou-yang family were typical of the Chinese living in Mexicali. Once floating between China and Mexico, they now stand on steady ground building a future of their own making.

[Picture Caption]

To ensure that the Chinese don't forget the struggles of their forefa thers in developing the city, the Ou-yang brothers have written the dramaDesert Dragons, which they have recorded on video tape.