Two Chinese Americans and their American Dreams

ABOUT     AMERICAN   DREAM

	I.M.Pei(Leoh Ming Pei)	Feng  Shan  Ho
Where r their ancestors from?	China (He moved to the U.S. in 1935)	China (He went to Munich University in 1926, and received his Ph.D in political economics in 1932.)
What makes them famous?	He is a Chinese American architect, often called a master of modern architecture.	He was a Chinese diplomat in Vienna who saved more than one thousand Jews, risking his own life and his career.
How did they get to have the A.D?	As Pei neared the end of his secondary education, he decided to study at an overseas university. He was accepted to a number of schools, but finally decided to enroll at the University of Pennsylvania. Pei's choice had two roots. While studying in Shanghai, he had closely examined the catalogs for various institutions of higher learning around the world. The architectural program at the University of Pennsylvania stood out to him.The other major factor was Hollywood. Pei was fascinated by the representations of college life in the films of Bing Crosby, which differed tremendously from the academic atmosphere in China. "College life in the U.S. seemed to me to be mostly fun and games", he said in 2000. "Since I was too young to be serious, I wanted to be part of it ... You could get a feeling for it in Bing Crosby's movies. College life in America seemed very exciting to me. It's not real, we know that. Nevertheless, at that time it was very attractive to me. I decided that was the country for me."	After his retirement in 1973, Ho settled in San Francisco in the United States, where he wrote his memoirs, 40 Years of my Diplomatic Life (《外交生涯四十年》) published in 1990.
What did they do to achieve it?	In 1935 Pei boarded the SS President Coolidge and sailed to San Francisco, then traveled by train to Philadelphia.  He decided to abandon architecture and transferred to the engineering program at Massachusetts Institute of Technology(MIT). Pei received his Bachelors of Architecture degree in 1940. He planned to return to China immediately afterward, but the Second Sino-Japanese War forced him to change his plans. Pei's father urged him to remain in the United States, and he worked for two years at the Boston engineering firm of Stone & Webster. Pei was thus introduced to members of the faculty at Harvard's Graduate School of Design (GSD). He was excited by the lively atmosphere, and joined the GSD in December 1942. Less than a month later, Pei suspended his work at Harvard to join the National Defense Research Committee, Pei spent two and a half years with the NDRC. Pei returned to Harvard in the autumn of 1945, and received a position as assistant professor of design. Pei received his master's degree in 1946, and taught at Harvard for another two years In 1955 Pei's group took a step toward institutional independence from Webb and Knapp by establishing a new firm called I. M. Pei & Associates. (The name changed later to I. M. Pei & Partners.)	Ho Feng-Shan died in San Francisco, California at the age of 96. He was survived by a son, Ho Mon-to (何曼德), an American scientist, expert in microbiology, virology, and infectious diseases.