The play “Ascent” comes as a bittersweet reminder of the long history of anti-Asian sentiment in the United States. Yet it also reminds us that the story of Asians and Asian Americans often requires Asian Americans to raise their voices.
“Ascent” is about the life and career of aerospace engineer Qian Xuesen (钱学森), missed opportunities and the consequences. Currently playing at the Skylight Theatre in Los Angeles under the astute direction of Diana Wyenn, Henry Ong’s final play makes a point that shouldn’t be so timely in 2026.
With a four-person cast, we meet Qian (Trieu Tran) already ascended into the stars, preceding his wife Jiang Ying (Iris Liu) before flashing back. Russell Edge and Jorge-Luis Pallo fill in for various people in Qian’s life, including his father. If you’re not aware of the sweeping historical events, there are some things you might miss which I delineate below. Tran captures the young, shining optimism of a scholar embarking on an adventure as well as the awkward charm of a genius in love. Liu’s Jiang Ying is a woman who gives up an uncertain opportunity of stardom. Together, they have a gentle and comfortable chemistry. Yet we know how things ends. Qian’s children might be US citizens by birth, but Qian becomes a captive, neither trusted nor found guilty of treason to a country where he lived but did not have citizenship. In the end, his American dream is crushed by McCarthyism.
Overall, the production is certainly worth seeing. For Asian Americans and science enthusiasts, it is a bittersweet depiction of the journey of Chinese in the US. If the US had been less racist and less fearful of Communism, Qian might have remained comfortably at Caltech and in Pasadena. 
Qian Xuesen (11 December 1911 – 31 October 2009)–also romanized as Tsien Hsue-shen–graduated from the National Chiao Tung University in Shanghai in 1934. That year (17 April 1934), the Japanese warned foreign powers to stop giving military aid to China as the last Qing emperor, Puyi, had just been crowned Emperor of Manchukuo (1 March 1934). China was in the midst of a civil war with Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist forces fighting the Chinese Communists under Mao Zedong.
- The Chief of the Division of Far Eastern Affairs to the Secretary of State (26 April 1934)
- The Long March (3 December 2025)
Qian came to the US to study at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1935. By 1936, he received a master’s degree in aeronautical engineering. That year, he joined Theodore von Kármán’s group at the California Institute of Technology. If you’ve lived in Pasadena, you have to be familiar with that name.
While the US wouldn’t join World War II until December 1941, China was already engaged in World War II from 1937. The year that Europe would enter World War II, 1939, Qian would earn his doctorate in aeronautics and mathematics. He became an assistant professor at Caltech in 1943. That was the first year Chinese nationals could become naturalized US citizens (Magnuson Act repealed the Chinese Exclusion Act). Indians nationals also were eligible in that year (Luce-Celler Act of 1946). While the Philippines was a US territory (1899-1946), Filpinos could travel in the mainland US (as non-citizen US Nationals), but they could not become citizens with a limited exception for Filipino nationals who served for three years in the US Navy or Armed Forces. Japanese nationals would have to wait until 1952.
While at Caltech, Qian helped co-found NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. In 1945, he would work with the US Department of Defense as a consultant, even given the rank of colonel in 1945. He was an associate professor at MIT in 1946, then a full professor in 1947 before returning to Caltech in 1949.
It was only a year before, in 1948, that SCOTUS had struck down some specific provisions of the Alien Land Act of 1913 that discriminated against US citizens of Japanese descent (Oyama v. California). Fred Oyama was the US-born son of a Japanese national and land had been purchased in his name by his father.
In April 1952, the California Supreme Court found that the law violated the 14th Amendment. This would have allowed Asian immigrants like Qian to legally own and lease property in California. The law was officially repealed in 1956. But developments in Qian’s homeland would make things difficult for Chinese nationals and Chinese Americans.
In Qian’s homeland, Chiang Kai-shek was leading China in the war against Japan (1937 to 1945), but with the end of World War II, the Chinese Civil War continued. Chiang Kai-shek was defeated by Mao and the KMT retreated to Taiwan in 1949. With the Communist Party of Mao’s takeover of mainland China, Chinese Americans came under suspicion. According to PBS American Experience:
In these early months of 1950, a small handful of Chinese Americans did face persecution, but only because of their association with the US Communist Party or with leftist groups in America.
When the People’s Republic of China entered the Korean War on the side of North Korea, however, Chinese American communities and their politics suddenly attracted public attention in new and unwelcome ways. In late 1950, with China and the US essentially at war, the veteran journalist Gilbert Woo described his fellow Chinese Americans as “numbed with fear” and wrestling with the sense that “being Chinese is itself a crime.” Outside of Chinatown areas, vandals attacked several Chinese-owned businesses, while Chinese Americans, many of whom remembered the World War II government incarceration of the West Coast Japanese American population, scrambled to demonstrate their loyalty to the United States. Businesses withdrew advertising from community newspapers that seemed too supportive of the People’s Republic of China, including New York’s China Daily News and San Francisco’s China Weekly and Chung Sai Yat Po, and readers cancelled their subscriptions. Chinese American veterans’ groups marched in anti-communist parades, carrying American flags and banners denouncing the “reds.” Even children felt the need to prove their loyalty: San Francisco’s 1951 Chinese New Year parade included a girls’ marching band carrying signs urging onlookers to “rid the world of communism.”
Qian returned to mainland China in 1955. Mao’s Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution began in 1966 to 1976 (when Mao died).
Chinese and American Aerospace
This isn’t the first time a person born in China and educated in the United States has helped the US aerospace program. There was the handsome Beijing-born Wong Tsu (王助 Wáng Zhù) who studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, graduating from MIT’s new aeronautical program at the beginning of the summer of 1916. Wong was allowed into the US despite the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 which was given an indefinite extension in 1904 because scholars from China were allowed into the US. Under the Chinese Exclusion Act the six Chinese survivors of the RMS Titanic sinking were not allowed to set food in New York City in 1912.
Wong had already studied naval engineering in the US before entering MIT. While anti-Chinese was obviously present nationwide, Wong Tsu was hired by Boeing in Seattle. Seattle wasn’t a hospitable place of Chinese or any East Asian. The 1880s saw the Chinese run out of cities like Tacoma and Seattle.
According to History.com,
Wong played an integral role in developing the Model C training seaplane, which incorporated several mold-breaking innovations: The wings tilted slightly upwards, with the upper wing sitting forward of the lower wing rather than being stacked for greater stability. Crucially, Wong was also able to test a model in a newly built wind tunnel at the University of Washington and apply his data analytical skills honed at MIT.
Boeing was so proud of the seaplane, that he referred to it as the first “all-Boeing” design. The Model C first flew on Nov. 5, 1916, and an improved Model C, with a bigger rudder, made its first flight on April 9, 1917. Two weeks later, Boeing changed the name of Pacific Aero Products Co. to Boeing Airplane Co.
Wong only stated at Boeing for 10 months. He left to China where he started the first airplane factory in 1917. He became the head of the Aviation Research Academy in 1945. With the defeat of the Kuomintang government in the Chinese Civil War, Wong ended up in Taiwan, becoming a professor at the National Cheng Kung University (國立成功大學 Guólì Chénggōng Dàxué) in Tainan, Taiwan.
Wong ends up being on the opposite side, aligned with mainland China.
Caltech Connection
I’ve written extensively on the problems of the film “Oppenheimer,” in the way it portrays California, UCBerkeley and Caltech. The presence of Qian coincides with J. Robert Oppenheimer. Oppenheimer became an assistant professor of theoretical physics in 1930 at Caltech (spring term) and UCB. He became a full professor at Caltech in 1938. He took a leave of absence from 1944 to 1945 to work on the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos. He left Caltech in 1947.
- ‘Oppenheimer’ and the Obvious
- ‘Oppenheimer’ and the Communist Connection
- ‘Oppenheimer’: A Compartamentalized White -Jewish Male POV
Qian was at Caltech in 1936. He remained in the US until 1955.
Oppenheimer and Von Kármán knew each other. According to Eye on Digital China, Qian and Oppenheimer may have met each other.
Robert Oppenheimer and Qian Xuesen both had an interest in Communism even prior to World War II, attending communist gatherings and showing sympathy towards the Communist cause. Qian and Oppenheimer may have briefly met each other through their shared involvement in communist activities. During his time at Caltech, Qian secretly attended meetings with Frank Oppenheimer, the brother of J. Robert Oppenheimer (Monk 2013).
Considering the current demographics of Caltech (46% Asian American at the undergrad level and 17% at the grad level with 46% of the graduate level international students), Pasadena (15-18% Asian), San Marino (68% Asian) and La Cañada Flintridge (31% Asian), this is an important story for the Pasadena area. With the rise of anti-Asian hate and the increased percentage of Asian Americans in Los Angeles County (14.9%), this is an important aspect of the Asian experience in Los Angeles. Henry Ong’s play “Ascent” is suitable for older children and a good catalyst for talking about race and racism in California and the US beyond a binary of Black and White. At Caltech and in Pasadena, this is the kind of play that should get an annual presentation as a reminder of Asian contributions to the area and how prejudice drove one of the most brilliant minds away and into the arms of the opposition.
“Ascent” continues at the Skylight Theatre until 14 June 2026. For tickets and more information visit the Skylight Theatre.