Every traveler dreads being beckoned into the airport security backroom. Jinhua Zhong and his family arrived in America last August, but not before first being held for three hours at the origin airport in Shanghai. Questioned for hours by security because of his activities as a human rights lawyer in the country, he was finally allowed to depart, only barely making his plane.
It’s for reasons like this that he was escaping his country to seek political asylum in the USA. More than a year later, still afraid of returning to China, he and his family have since settled down in the Windsor Ponds community.
When asked why he chose West Windsor, Zhong cited the safe, clean environment, schools and easy access to New York City and Washington D.C.
Originally from a village outside Wenzhou, a 3-million resident port city roughly 300 miles south of Shanghai, Zhong’s father was a farmer, accountant and village director. His mother was a homemaker. He graduated from Beijing’s Minzu University of China and became a senior judge in Wenzhou. Prior to moving to America, he worked as a lawyer in Shanghai and his wife was a hotel manager in Wenzhou.
Now, Zhong says he travels a few times a week to New York, participating in seminars as a visiting scholar at NYU Law School. His wife looks after the two children, the youngest a boy of two.
Their daughter recently completed third grade at Dutch Neck. Zhong proudly talks about how quickly she has adapted to her new environment and no longer needs ESL classes for the next school year.
When he is not in New York, Zhong himself takes ESL classes at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Trenton.He also reads and takes his family around the area. The nearby Mercer County Park and its fields, playgrounds and BBQ are already a family favorite.
While he has found refuge from political retribution back home, Zhong and his wife are in a different kind of limbo.
They arrived in America on a tourist visa. Securing safety in America was the first goal. Offered a visiting scholar position by New York Law School, Zhong could have switched to an academic exchange visa but the conversion required leaving and then re-entering the U.S. Zhong decided against the venture, having already made it in.
His tourist visa expired in February, and he has since applied for political asylum. The process is still ongoing and Zhong is hoping it will be resolved quickly.
In addition to clarifying his residency status, he and his wife would receive a work permit that would allow them to seek employment. Zhong emphasizes that as a family of four, he has rent and other bills that need to be paid.
Aside from his human rights and political statements that drew ire from many quarters back home, Zhong adds that he has also done commercial work in Shanghai. With an understanding of Chinese business and regulatory law, he expresses interest in doing similar work in the United States.
