China’s third-generation leader Jiang Zemin and fourth-generation leader Hu Jintao share many similarities: Their ancestors fled from Anhui to Jiangsu, settling in the neighboring cities of Yangzhou and Taizhou. Both left their hometowns at the age of 18, became engineers, and eventually become leaders of the Party and the state. Yet their attitudes toward their hometowns were starkly different. Jiang Zemin loved his hometown of Yangzhou all his life. Although his family later moved to Shanghai, he would return to Yangzhou every year and brought many benefits to the city. Yangzhou officials described Jiang as “Yangzhou’s closest kin forever,” while Jiang called Yangzhou “his beautiful homeland forever.”

Hu Jintao’s family had lived in Taizhou since his great-grandfather, yet the Hu family was always treated as “outsiders,” facing discrimination and bullying. During the Cultural Revolution, Hu’s father endured severe hardships and died in 1978. At that time, Hu was a deputy department-level official. Though not a high rank, he was already a central government cadre. Hu returned to Taizhou — a place he had not visited for many years — and asked local officials to restore his father’s reputation so he could receive a proper memorial and burial. The Taizhou officials simply ignored him. As a result, his father could not be mourned or buried normally. Hu left in anger and never returned to his hometown again. By the 1990s, it was widely known that Hu Jintao would succeed Jiang Zemin as China’s next leader. The Taizhou government in a panic begged for Hu’s forgiveness, but Hu ignored them. He altered his official records to erase any connection to Taizhou and instead declared that he was from Jixi in Anhui — his great-grandfather’s original hometown. Unlike the hometowns of other Chinese leaders, which eagerly publicize their connection to the top leader, Hu forbade Taizhou from mentioning any link to him at all.

Be kind to immigrants—you never know what they might become in the end.