In the far northeastern part of China (Manchuria), the well-known 1900-km long Song Hua Jiang flows through the heartland of Manchuria. Originating in the Ever-White Mountain region near the Sino-Korean border, it passes through a village in Kirin Province where my parents were born. My father was truly a Manchurian while my mother was a Han. They gave life to me so I could write this autobiography Song Hua Jiang and share my story with you, my readers. My tale starts in 1946, soon after the end of World War II, when as a little boy, I travelled home from Beijing to Manchuria with my mother and sister. The civil war in Manchuria between Chinese Nationalists and Communists had just begun and I saw the fighting first hand. I will describe in Part I of the book the war wounds and the rubbles left as well as the atrocities committed by the Russian troops in Manchuria. As the civil war heated up and accelerated subsequently, like a rolling thunder at unbelievable speed, the Nationalists were defeated in 3 years. As a result, we all had to flee the mainland to Taiwan in haste. Details of our escape from the Reds as well as seeing the emotional suffering experienced by our relatives when they realized that the separation meant there will be no hope of seeing each other again will also be told. My story also includes our years in Taiwan. After finally settling in Taiwan, we were able to enjoy relative peace for the first time in a number of years. This period of my life was sweet as I grew up and developed into a young man and met and fell in love with my future wife. However, the major portion of this book is centered on life in the US from 1962 through the present day. I arrived in America as a penniless foreign student at the age of 25 and had to take a menial job as a live-in houseboy to earn money for college. Later, while pursuing difficult degrees in Electrical Engineering (EE) for a number of years, I tasted all kinds of hardships and frustrations. After 10 years my dream of obtaining a Ph. D in EE was finally fulfilled. Working in industry and teaching in colleges for the next 40 years, with the eventual pinnacle of becoming the president of a private college, gave me chances to learn and gain experience in many things. The road has been long and hard, but the experiences and lessons learned are worthwhile to be shared with my readers. My story reflects true events and I hope that I have offered something valuable to you so that you can live a life more in full. That is my original goal and objective of writing this book.
About the Author: Francis C. Wang was born in April of 1937 in the Rockefellers Memorial Hospital, Beijing, China. In June of 1949, he came to Taiwan with his family after fleeing the Chinese mainland as the result of a complete defeat of the Nationalists by the Chinese Communist forces in a civil war. He graduated from National Cheng-Kung University in 1960 with a BS in Transportation Management. In 1962 he came to America as a student. In the next 10 years he worked hard to get an education in Electrical Engineering. Eventually in 1972 he obtained a Ph. D from University of Minnesota. From 1972 through 1990 he worked in industry and the companies he worked for include Bell Telephone Laboratories and the Boeing Company. For the following 25 years of his career, he became an educator at several universities as professor, department head, dean and president. After retirement in 2002 when reaching 65 years of age, he continued to teach part time at various Universities in the Puget Sound area. He currently teaches in the EE Department at University of Washington. His major writings and publications include: Digital Circuit Testing: A Guide to DFT and Other Technique, ISBN: 0-12-734580-9 and other articles on the subject of testing and metrology.