Huaibin Lu
“My birth and early years were miserable,” begins Huaibin Lu, simply. A native of China, Huaibin immigrated to the US in his forties, leaving nearly everything behind to build a better, freer life as an American citizen. During his career, he encountered oppression and political pressures in China, and racism in the US. But a steady internal compass guided him. And by the measures that matter -- a happy and productive family, a successful career, and community connections built on kindness and volunteerism -- Huaibin has quietly and unquestionably succeeded.
“I was born in 1946 in the east part of China, in the middle of war,” he explains. “My parents were in the communist army, fighting against the nationalists. My older sister went to live with our grandmother, but my parents took me with them, on the marches, to the battles. There was not enough food, no milk, a potato sometimes. My mother said I nearly starved.” Huaibin is glad he has no memories of this.
“People Just Did What They Were Told”
The communists took the country in 1949 and established the People’s Republic of China, and Huaibin’s parents rose through the ranks of the party. To fulfill their duties, they moved the family repeatedly, first to Shanghai, where Huaibin started school, tagging along with his sister despite their age difference. “My mother said I should go with my sister,” he recalls, “and my school bag dragged on the ground because I was so small.” The family – which eventually grew to include seven children -- moved to Beijing, then to northeast China, and then back to Beijing. “That was very common in China,” says Hauibin. “People just did what they were told.” As a result, he attended six different primary schools in three different cities. “It taught me to be adaptable and independent,” he says.
Huaibin studied hard and got good grades, and his teachers recommended that he attend Tsinghua University in Beijing for engineering. Instead, wanting more challenges and independence, he chose to attend the Harbin Military Academy of Engineering (since renamed the Harbin Academy of Engineering), established by the Central Government in Northeast China as the nation’s premier military academy.
During Mao’s Cultural Revolution, when millions were persecuted and senior officials were purged or exiled on suspicion of disloyalty, Huaibin’s parents were removed from their positions and sent to a “re-education camp” called May Seventh Cadre School, named after Mao’s directive issued on May 7, 1966. The schools were usually located in remote farming areas, and monitored. Because of his parents’ downfall, after college this highly trained engineer was sent to an agricultural area to work on a farm. “I was only one of millions or billions of boys,” he says. “I was sent to the center of China near the mountains.” But because of its interior location, away from the Russian border where there was fighting and the coast where tension from conflicts with the West was growing, Mao’s wife chose it for one of the country’s rear industrial bases, and the place to develop factories with new technologies. (This was known as the Third-Line Construction).
Fleeing Arrest, But Finding His Path
Huaibin started working in a porcelain factory, happy to use his education and glad to be excluded from military service. There, he worked on the development of an early model television. But after a few years, he couldn’t abide what he saw there – the disrespect for the workers and the abuse and mistreatment of young women. “I argued with the leaders,” he recalls. “I said they were doing bad things. They reported me to the public security, and were going to have me arrested.”
He fled and hid in a colleague’s dorm for a week, and sent a message to his parents asking for help. His mother had been recently released from the re-education camp at the request of the Ministry of Petroleum Industry, and led the relocation of an entire hospital from Beijing to Central China to support a newly discovered oil field. She took a train and a bus to get to her son, and convinced the head of his factory to transfer him to the oil field. “It was not legal to transfer me, but he did not know all the rules, and he was afraid, and he agreed to it,” he says.
Huaibin went to work in the oil field, testing wells. It was hard work. “I followed the teams, they moved around all day, you had no place to live, you just set up camp. I never forgot that experience. You had to drink any water you could find in small ponds. I had severe hepatitis for three years, and got malaria twice.” But in the challenge of those difficult days, his career in energy resources was born.
A Glimpse at a Different Life
He moved back to Beijing to join his family, and his parents introduced him to Haili Cui, the daughter of friends, who was studying to be a doctor. “She was a nice girl,” he says, and they felt a connection. “Both of us had parents who were senior communist party leaders, but we began thinking about what route we should pursue for the future, particularly after Mao died, and the regime of the ‘Gang of Four’ collapsed.” Within a few months, they married. In 1980, their son was born.
Huaibin taught himself English by listening to the BBC and the Voice of America. “It was illegal to learn English,” he says. “We learned Russian in school. But I like learning.” Knowing English helped him advance in the offshore oil company he worked for when China began to open up to work with foreign companies. “After Deng Xiaoping took power, and introduced the ‘Reform and Open-Door Policy,’ I was eager to learn more. I took some courses at Tsinghua University.” There, he passed the English exam to study abroad, and was accepted at the California Institute of Technology, but his boss said no. “He had power,” says Huaibin. Eventually, however, the company allowed him to go to Australia for a two-year program to study energy economics at Sydney University and the University of Queensland, and to train in the Australian oil industry.
His time in Australia was liberating. “It really opened my eyes to freedom and democracy,” he says. “I spent a lot of time traveling and making friends. It opened me up to a lot of things I didn’t know before.”
When he returned to China, however, he was cold-shouldered and investigated by his company, because his social activities – instead of maintaining 100 percent focus on his studies -- were regarded as undisciplined and disloyal. He managed to transfer to the headquarters of the China Offshore Oil Company with the help of friends, becoming a planning manager. But he knew that his refusal to join the communist party was limiting his career path. “I could see that younger people who were party members had better opportunities to be promoted,” he says. When Shell Oil came to China to work with his company in a joint venture at Huizhou of Guangdong Province on the border with Hong Kong, Huaibin asked to join the project. “I was the financial manager for the project, and had the opportunity to travel the world – New York, London, Paris, every financial center.”
His Wife, and America, Beckon
As Hauibin was beginning to see the world, his wife was having similar thoughts. “She applied for a year of scholarship at Boston University,” he says. Huaibin and their son stayed in China, but soon they would join her. “She liked it in America,” he says. “When her year was over, she asked us to come.”
Huaibin and his son followed her to the US in 1994. “When I left China, I had to give up everything: my job, my house, everything,” he says. “I had worked in China for 25 years, and had no pension, nothing. But I also had no opportunity in China.” The family settled in Brookline, eventually moving to Wayland in 2013. Huaibin joined Cambridge Energy Research Associates, a consulting firm that advised governments and private companies on energy markets, geopolitics, industry trends, and strategy. After six or seven years there, Huaibin left to start his own consulting firm, employing people in the US and in China, and providing expertise to nearly all the major energy companies before retiring in 2021.
He began to wind down his consulting company when he felt the risks of continuing were too great. “I was warned twice by the Chinese government, because energy information is very sensitive, and it was risky to show your independent views against policies of the Chinese government,” he says. “I could have continued if had been willing to cooperate with Chinese officials. But I refused. I was the person who never wanted to bend,” he says. “The combination of China, and my character…I knew it was time to close the business.”
Giving Back to the Wayland Community
While his wife continues to work as a researcher in Boston Medical Center’s Amyloidosis Center, Huaibin has turned his attention to volunteer work, including delivering Meals on Wheels, and joining Wayland’s Community Emergency Response Team, the Friends of the Wayland Council on Aging Board, and the board of the condo neighborhood where he lives. There, he chairs the Hospitality Committee, and looks for ways to build relationships among neighbors. “People like their privacy,” he observes, “but connection is always good.”
Huiabin’s story is one of challenges, determination, and resilience. His thoughts on aging reflect a hard-earned optimism. As one grows older, he says, “If you stay involved, you will find you still have energy, you still have potential, you can still contribute.” In his story’s current chapter, Huaibin shows us how.