On an acre of land behind the East Alabama Medical Center in Opelika, Fu Zhao is living out his dream.
While he spends his days devoting himself to cancer research at Tuskegee University, the Chinese international's passion for helping others can be found just outside the four walls of the East Alabama Medical Center.
Although he holds a doctorate degree, Zhao's dream is in the dirt of Lee County, where the sandy loams of the Coastal Plains meet the red clay of the Piedmont Plateau -- thousands of miles from his near-Siberian birthplace in the northern Chinese province known as Inner Mongolia.
Zhao wants to be a farmer.
"I have opportunities here to work the land here and follow my dream," Zhao said with a smile.
Zhao talks of growing onions and garlic, staples of his homeland's cuisine. He remembers Chinese cucumbers and beans as long as rulers.
He sighs and stares off in the distance as he talks about the amount of land he currently farms in Opelika. The gears of a larger dream turn in his head.
"I have a farm of almost one acre now," Zhao said. "I need more money, but not for me. I want to help young Chinese students here who were just like me."
Zhao came to the United States in December 2008 with his wife Ting. Both received degrees in entomology, the study of insects, from Huazhong Agricultural University in central China. Zhao's specializes in the study of blowflies, and Ting specializes in mosquitos.
Those who know Zhao find it strange that a man with so much education would trade the research field for the vegetable field, but they know they cannot stop him.
His dream is about more than growing vegetables -- it is about growing relationships with Auburn's growing Chinese community.
"I want to support Bible study groups with young Chinese students here who don't have scholarships and can't afford to buy food all the time," Zhao said. "I want my garden to be able to give these students food each Friday night."
He pauses, thinking back to his first days in the United States.
"There are many students who were like me in the Auburn-Opelika area. I want to help them because we all need each other."
Zhao is one of seven children in his family, which grew before the Chinese government began stricter enforcement of its family-planning policy.
"When I was young, my family was poor," Zhao said. "Education is important to my family, but it was hard for my parents to get seven children through school."
Today, two of Zhao's siblings have doctorate degrees, and four are high school teachers.
As his wife began her education on the Plains, Zhao had no clear direction to his new life in America.
"When I came here, I had no job, no friends and no English," Zhao said.
That all would change in 2009, when he and Ting were invited to a Chinese Bible study taught by Auburn industrial design professor Tin-Man Lau.
When Zhao first came to the study, he wanted nothing to do with Lau's message.
"I remember when Ting brought him to our gospel class on Friday night for the first time -- obviously not by his own choice," Lau said. "We circled in a room, and Fu turned around his chair so that he literally turned his back on me. I guess it was a kind of protest that he was not willing to come."
As time passed, he continued to go to the Bible studies and free conversational English classes at Lakeview Baptist in Auburn.
"When I first came here five years ago, I had to learn my ABCs here like a small child," Zhao said. "I am grateful for my great teachers and the people who brought me here. Now I have a regular job."
Zhao said he also noticed how Americans treated one another, and he came to realize his life in this new country would not last as a solo effort.
"I saw all these people around me who had this smile that was so, so sweet," Zhao said. "It was totally different than people in China, like me. I came here thinking, 'Oh, where can I get a lot of money? How can I get another promotion in my job? How can I make my life better and better?' But I saw the people here were different, and I wanted to find out why they were different."
Five years after his first visit, Zhao still goes to English class every Wednesday night and Chinese Bible studies every Friday night.
"Although he has a full-time job, he has this odd passion to be a farmer," Lau said. "I have actually talked with him several times that he should put more effort in his research, which is his job. However, farming obviously is where his passion resides."
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