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Tsui Chi Hsii was a small boy in 1945 China when the U.S. Marines arrived to guard a base near his home. He first met up with the Marines of Love company (4th Marines, 1st Marine Division) when he brought kindling for their fires, a provision much appreciated as the chill, late fall wind swept in from the Gobi Desert.
Tsui soon returned with eggs and roasted peanuts which he swapped for K-rations, Spam, tuna fish, and beans.
The Marines nicknamed the little boy “Charlie Two-Shoes” because they could not pronounce his name. Charlie swapped food and firewood everyday, and with his parents’ permission, eventually moved into the barracks. The Marines gave him a uniform and taught him how to spit-polish his shoes. They also sent him sent Charlie to a school for American’s where he learned to speak English from Catholic nuns.
Charlie’s life with the Marines continued. He kept his bunk straight and his uniform pressed. He got a Marine haircut!
In 1949, the Marines left China, but Charlie never forgot them. He remained loyal to his American friends, and when the Bamboo Curtain dropped, he refused to renounce the U.S. and the Marines.
In 1962, an adult Tsui was fired from his job and arrested. He was tried and convicted of espionage and sentenced to seven years in a labor camp and ten years under house arrest.
In 1972, after President Nixon’s visit to China, relations between the two countries improved, and Tsui began to think about going emigrating to America. He wrote to some of his old Marine Corps buddies, sending letters to addresses he had memorized all those years earlier.
With the help of those former Marines, he arrived in the U.S. in 1983. His friends helped him get a car and found him a place to live and work.
Tsui was in the United States on a visitor's visa. In 1885 when the Immigration and Naturalization service refused to renew it, a congressman plead Tsui’s case before President Reagan. Tsui then received an indefinite stay of deportation.
When asked why the Marines are so dedicated to Charlie, Don Sexton (former corporal with Love Company) answers: “He was persecuted because of his relationship with us Marines. We consider him a brother. And you just don’t desert a Marine brother.”
In 2002, Charlie Two-Shoes became a citizen of the United States. Today he is owner of the Tsing Tao Restaurant and lives with his family in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
REFERENCES:
Charlie Two-Shoes and the America Dream,David Perlmutt, Reader's Digest,
February 1993
Charlie Two-Shoes finally is a U.S. citizen, Paul Newell, The Associated Press
LINKS
 Charlie Two Shoes and The Marines of Love Company
Tsing Tao Restaurant
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