Leaving China to Find Freedom, Fresh Air, and the Good Life in Eastern Europe

Li Bing Zhi left his native China to become a goat herder in the village of Lacusteni in southern Romania. His animals produced milk and cheese for Chinese restaurants in the capital Bucharest.  He traded his forceps of an OBGYN in China for a shepherd’s staff. His wife, a mathematics professor, and his son are still in China.

He tried his hand at raising pigs first but the business went belly up because the pigs were not gaining weight fast enough in spite of the nutritious feed. In China, pigs gained 100 kilos in six months. He decided instead to grow Chinese vegetables, cabbage, and to raise 150 goats with his associate’s father.

Constantin Dragan and Dan Mihalacea, reporters for Realitatea TV, interviewed Li Bing Zhi in February 2011. In broken Romanian and a jocular mien, Li Bing explained that he paid his workers well when they showed up for work. After they drank their pay at the end of the month, they returned to work sheepishly. Since they were so undependable, Li Bing bought a few dogs that he trained himself. Li Bing gave his goats Romanian names like Monica, Tantica, and Tapul.

Most villagers accepted their new neighbor with open arms and called him “our Chinese.” A small group, however, were not impressed with him and resented the fact that his goats ate the grass that nobody used or needed anyway but that was not the point. He was intruding on no man’s lands, grazing his goats in the woods and other pastures, and he did not belong in their village. Besides, he worked very hard and earned good money, a source of envy and discord.

Three years ago, Li Bing Zhi opened a business in Bucharest. When it failed, he moved with one of his associates to her native village of Lacusteni de Sus. What was his explanation for settling in such an unlikely place, far away from his native China and his family?

Li Bing traded the pollution and restrictions of communist China for fresh air, freedom, and a good life in the formerly communist country of Romania, more capitalist today than many countries in Western Europe. He said, he wanted to settle there permanently - “Where else could I go? Maybe the cemetery?” I was a doctor in China but I now raise goats in Romania.”

The case of this Chinese doctor fascinated me because he fled from a totalitarian state to a formerly totalitarian state. I judged his move through the prism of my experience. I have moved from a totalitarian state to the United States, which was the beacon of freedom at the time in late seventies, the “shining city on the hill.” Today, considering the accelerated change towards socialism/Marxism and welfare dependency in the United States, would I move again to my adopted country, or would I choose perhaps a newly emerging capitalist country like Romania?

Freedom, fresh air, a good life are very tenuous gifts from God in any society. In 1989, when communism fell, Li Bing would not have chosen Romania as his permanent residence because it was just as oppressive, polluted, and poor as his native China was.

Change for the wrong reason and blind faith in an omnipotent government can take away fragile freedoms and an abundant life. Will we be able to keep our exceptional country based on successful capitalism and Judeo-Christian values? Will Romania be able to keep its fragile newfound capitalist freedom, good life, and fresh air?

Communist agitators and community organizers are on the rise, supported by European socialists and communists that never went away; they just hid in plain sight and re-emerged in larger and larger numbers who are quite well financed.