To There and Back

When I started this book I was in Ningbo, Zhejiang Province, Peoples Republic of China. It was during the great Chinese Spring Festival. Although it is called the Spring Festival it occurs while it is still winter. As I was writing this book and trying to stay warm, I was thinking of many things. One of my first thoughts was “Why on earth am I here?” Unlike the Hobbit, Bilbo Baggins, a Wizard and a group of dwarfs did not visit me to sign me up to go on a grand adventure. As I recall Bilbo resisted going on the journey. I don’t think I ever resisted going on a journey every since my first trip away from home.

My father was a truck driver for Mr. Fred A. Chapman, a farm and rancher in southern Oklahoma. My mother ran a grade C dairy while my father was on the road. We had up to 15 cows that we milked twice a day manually. Yes, we squeezed the cow’s udders with our hands to extract the milk. Even if we could have afforded the new fangled milking machines, we did not have the electricity to run the machinery. Rural Electrification had not yet reached rural Oklahoma that was still struggling from the remnants of the great depression and the dustbowl.

We sold the milk to the Kraft Food Company that made cheese from it. In addition to cattle we had the normal contingent of farm animals to provide us with food and occasional money. We had pigs, chickens, rabbits, a garden etc. It was a fairly large operation for my mom to manage with two young boys and two younger girls. The one thing that we certainly had plenty of was work. There were always fences to mend, animals to be fed and watered and so forth.

I must have been somewhere in the neighborhood of ten years old when my father thought it would be good experience for me to go on a trucking trip with him. It was my first time away from home and on the road. Besides getting a rest from all the chores, I don’t know how my mom managed without me, seeing new country was extremely exciting. I was dressed in my best clothes. We ate in cafes along the highway. I recall some of the waitresses teasing me and saying nice things about me. It was my first “dining out” experience, and I thought it was GREAT!

Dad had to haul a load of cattle from the ranch in Russett, Oklahoma to a ranch in Clarksville, Texas. Not a great distance by today’s standards. But, this was in the days before Interstates and divided highways. It took all day to load up the cattle in the semi-trailer and make it to Clarksville. After we unloaded the cattle, we had supper and bedded down in the bunkhouse. The next morning, the foreman surprised me by cooking breakfast for the whole crew and we had in addition to the bacon and eggs a real treat of my first cinnamon toast made by buttering a slice of bread, sprinkling some sugar and cinnamon on the butter and toasting the bread in the oven where the sugar melted with the butter and mixed in the cinnamon. It was delicious.

The foreman then asked my dad to make a trip to some other place to get a load of feed. My dad had meant to return home to take me back. I was glad my stay got extended. This occurred a couple of more times to my great glee. Then after about three more days, when he was asked to make another out of the way trip without returning home, my father said to the foreman, “Okay, but I want you to take this boy home”. At that time I had reached the point of where the Hobbit, after many trials and tribulations, had begun to enjoy his journey and asked himself if he ever really wanted to see his home again. The wanderlust bug had bitten me.

To the Hobbit, whose book was titled, “To There and Back” and to my grandchildren, I dedicate this book.

Before the Journey

After an early retirement in 1987 from IBM and another early retirement in 1997 as a College Professor from Southeastern Oklahoma State University in Durant, Oklahoma, I became a consultant to help solve the Y2K problem. After three years of moving from one consulting job to another, Y2K came and went and the world did not melt down.

I was doing well financially as a consultant. So, I decided to continue to work. However, I got caught up in the IT slowdown and couldn’t get a position that paid as well as my Y2K consultant position. So, I decided to settle down and really retire and maybe go cook chili in the southwest’s great Chili Cook-off competitions. After some very unsuccessful attempts at cooking chili, I tried my hand at blacksmithing. I enjoyed whacking hot iron on the anvil and joined a blacksmith club. This club was an outstanding group with some of the nicest folks you would want to meet. They even advocated teaching the art/craft of blacksmithing. Teaching was always something that I enjoyed. However, my maladroit malady kept raising its ugly head. That is to say that to be a really good blacksmith required a great deal more skill than I thought. I tried and put some mileage on the old motor home going to blacksmithing events.

My itchy feet begin to ache to go somewhere. I heard that they were looking for English teachers in China. I browsed the web looking at alternatives. I found one opportunity in Ningbo, China. I traded several emails with the person that was to become my mentor and later my nemesis, Ms. Lily Yang.

One of the things I really wanted to do was end up in a warm place. My research told me that Ningbo was in a subtropical part of China. Hmm, subtropical, that meant to me someplace like Houston, Texas or maybe Pensacola, Florida. I was sure there would be cold days but subtropical meant to me that it rarely froze and mostly it was warm. In a quote from an email from Lily, she said, “Oh, you will enjoy Ningbo, it's mild all the year round.”

My wife had ordered an 8 by 12 foot greenhouse that sat in the garage for months waiting for “Some Assembly Required”. My mother-in-law was very ill and we spent a great deal of time going to and fro to the hospital. She ended up having a type of brain surgery to remove a blood clot on her brain. After several weeks of going to the hospital and visiting her in rehabilitation, she got to come home. Her new home was moving in with us. So, my home had become some sort of a rest home. Now, my mother-in-law is a wonderful lady and I love her but her being in my home and watching her slide downhill to the grave made things even less comfortable. In late fall when we finally slowed down from going to hospital visits and doctor visits and medical tests and treatments, my brother-in-law Elvin Benson volunteered to help me put the 10,000-piece greenhouse together. (Well, I am not sure if there were 10,000 pieces, but I have been told a million times not to exaggerate.)

One day after a long day of working assembling the greenhouse Elvin was tired and frustrated at something that didn’t seem to fit, I heard a great flock of geese flying over on their way south, going where it was warm. I always stop and watch the migrating geese and invited Elvin to stop and admire the sight. In a huff he said, “come on, I’ve seen geese before, let’s get this finished”. My feet got itchier.

Several days later more flocks of geese flew over the ranch and I recalled the words of the song of long ago, “My heart knows what the wild goose knows…I must go where the wild goose goes, which is best… a wandering heart or a foot at rest.” I emailed Lily and said let’s go.

The deal was that I was to furnish my own transportation and they would furnish me an apartment, utilities and 4000 Yuan a month. That is about $500 a month. Not anywhere near what I was making as a Y2K consultant. But, I was not interested in making money, but to see new country, new cultures, and new people and to do the job I love most, teach.

China was always a deep dark mystery to me. After the great communist revolution, the United States and China weren’t exactly too friendly to each other. Except for a brief period of time during Richard Nixon’s administration, Mainland China and the United States stayed at arms length.

Only in recent times have the communist party begin to loosen up and allow entrepreneurship within the party that the American/China relationship warmed. It got kind of cold again when an American Navy Intelligence gathering plane collided with a Chinese jet fighter plane and was forced to land at a Chinese airbase on Hainan Island off the southern coast of mainland China. I was later challenged by an angry Chinese student as to why did the United States airplane crash into the Chinese airplane? I asked her how could the American slow lumbering four-engine turboprop airplane run into the high-speed Chinese jet fighter? She had not thought about this but was reacting to the party’s version that she had been told.

Fortunately, this incident didn’t stop the demand for English language teachers in China. I now understand there are private English language schools that are very successful in China and doing what is not so discouraged anymore, making a profit.

Getting Ready to Leave

My wife, bless her heart, whom I then loved very much was dead set against this journey. She had early on when I was considering going to China, gave me a blessing to go. However, I was to find out later that she thought I meant a few weeks and not a few months. She was extremely upset about my trip to China. I missed all the fun of sharing with her the excitement of the planning and packing for the journey. I couldn’t even broach the subject without her getting extremely emotionally upset.

She was under a great deal of stress in dealing with her mother’s health problems and at the same time trying to be a wife to her itchy-footed husband. She was already way over committed with all her avocations. There was little I could do to help her with her mother and I felt guilty taking up her time doing things for me. It just seemed that if I were gone, she would have more time to deal with her mother’s problems and as well as her many avocations.

So, I planned the trip alone. I did commission my son, Steve, to drive me to the airport when the time came to leave. I had many frequent flyer miles from my American Airlines Advantage program. American Airlines had even revoked some of the miles earlier, so I decided to use the frequent flyer miles to pay for my transportation. To redeem frequent flyer mileage requires several weeks in advance to get the best deal. I also had to get a Visa to enter China. As it turned out, my U.S. Passport had gotten lost. So, I had several things to do before I could leave. I had to get another U.S. Passport to replace my lost one. Then I had to apply for my Chinese Visa and schedule my flight. Thinking it might take a while to do all this, I set December 1, 2002 as my departure date. As it turned out, all of the paperwork was finished and I could have left much earlier. One of the things that helped shorten the paperwork was Lily advised me to get a Tourist Visa and when I got to China we would get my working Visa (Resident’s Permit). I jokingly referred to my working Visa as my green card. Well, would you believe it? It was green!

While applying for my airline tickets I discovered that my frequent flyer program didn’t fly into Ningbo. It would only get me to Shanghai through American Airlines partner Japan Airlines. When I emailed Lily that I could get to Shanghai okay, but how about flights to Ningbo, she reassured me that there were frequent flights from Shanghai to Ningbo and I wouldn’t have any problems connecting. Then I discovered that my plane landed in Shanghai from Tokyo at 9:55 pm. Would there be any flights out that night? Or, would I have to stay at the airport until the next day? Lily solved the problem by sending someone (a young teacher Liu Bo, she said) to pick me up in Shanghai and drive me to Ningbo. I jokingly emailed her back and asked if the “young teacher” was a good driver. Little did I realize until later the true meaning of her response, which was, “Oh no, there will be a driver too).

The Journey Begins

Things were very tense around my home as D-Day (December 1) approached. Thanksgiving was the week before. Thanksgiving is normally a big family day in America. The family gathers in one home, usually the parent’s home. There is a song, “Over the hills and through the woods to grandma’s house we go…” that describes the atmosphere. Well my wife was so upset about my leaving that she refused to celebrate Thanksgiving in the traditional way. There was no way she was going to prepare or participate in a Thanksgiving meal. She finally agreed to a Thanksgiving dinner at the Golden Corral restaurant, an all you can eat buffet place. It wasn’t a very good meal that her mother, her and I had that day.

Still thinking I was going to a subtropical place; I didn’t pack hardly any warm clothes. I did bring along a pair of sweatpants and a sweatshirt and just in case I went to Beijing, I brought a coat with a zip out liner, which I almost left in Oklahoma. So, with a large garment bag, a large suitcase and my laptop computer, I was packed.

My wife told me that she wouldn’t be there to tell me goodbye and true to her word, when the appointed hour came, she had driven off.

My flight out of DF/W was at 7:00 am on Sunday morning. I didn’t want anyone to have to get up at 3:00 am in the morning to drive me to the airport. I also felt I would be a nervous wreck waiting for my son to get ready. He takes after his mom that way. So, I decided to have him drive me to DF/W on Saturday and I would spend the night at the hotel on the airport. That way I was sure not to miss my flight.

Some of Ida’s (my daughter-in-law) family had come for Thanksgiving at their house. A few of them decided to go with us to Dallas and do some sightseeing while dropping me off at the hotel. Steve and Ida wanted me to have my last meal in America, so they treated me to a late lunch or early dinner at the Red Lobster restaurant. We first visited the Los Colinas area where I used to work with IBM. When they finally dropped me off at the hotel, Steve gave me a hug and said, “Dad, I hope you find whatever it is you are looking for”. My big grandson Shane helped me carry my bags to the room and then I was alone and on my way to China and I hoped Ye Lu Ping An.

To There

After a nervous night’s sleep, I awoke and got ready to depart. I showered and dressed, taking the hotel’s extra soap and shampoo for future use. It did come in handy. I caught the shuttle to the American Airlines terminal and began my checking in process. Because of the 9/11/2001 terrorist attack I expected security to be tight but not like I went through. After the normal check-in, insuring I had a passport and visa, my checked luggage was selected out of all the others to be x-rayed. I was briskly ushered over to a seat right in front of the x-ray machine and watched as my luggage was nuked. Then, I proceeded to go through security with my notebook computer and coat as carry-on baggage.

I had worn my bib overalls, which has a thousand metal buttons. No matter how much I emptied my pockets, I could not pass through the machine without setting off the alarm. Finally they waved me over to another area to be manually searched. I had also worn my cowboy boots. These had to be taken off. Fortunately this pair could be removed with a good deal of effort with out the necessity of a bootjack. I continued to watch my coat and computer afraid someone would make off with it.

I finally satisfied these security people and proceeded to my gate to wait for boarding. As I waited for my plane to be readied for boarding I noticed that a group of security people would wonder through the gate areas and arbitrarily (it seemed at least) to re-check a passenger. I thought this strange and when it was time to board my flight, I got on-board.

The flight from Dallas to San Francisco was uneventful. When I landed at San Francisco I had to leave the Domestic Terminal secure area and walk a few blocks to the International Terminals. I then had to re-enter another secure area. It was a repeat of the Dallas experience all over again. The metal buttons on the bib overalls wouldn’t let me get through the metal detectors. So, off to the side for a manual search, remove the boots to which they gave an extra test. Finally, I was on my way to the Japan Airlines Ticket desk to get my boarding pass.

Getting my Japan Airlines boarding pass was fairly uneventful. The Japanese ticket agent gave me my first experience in dealing with people whose English is less than good. Because I was a Business Class passenger, I had access to the really nice lounge the Japanese Airlines has for its First Class and Business Class passengers.

When it was time to board the airplane, I was walking down the jet way when I rounded a corner and here were a bunch of security guards who wanted to search me again like I had seen in Dallas being done to people who had successfully passed through the first inspection. Well, to say the least, I was a little distressed. I said to one the guards, why me? Do I fit one of your profiles? He responded that they were supposed to do that. Well to say the least I was not very cooperative with them. I even made them take off my boots. Finally, I am on board.

The flight to Tokyo was uneventful. Lots of good food and drink, but somehow the atmosphere of my leaving plus the security experiences dulled my enthusiasm. America must do something about this airline security. Else, they will ruin the world’s best airline industry.

When I got to Tokyo, I had several hours to wait for my next flight to Shanghai. I had to proceed from one terminal building to another building and you guessed it, through another security check. However, the Japanese security guard was quick and efficient. He actually frisked me like a cop does, with his hands. The American security guards only touch you with a wand. It was a brief and quick search and I was on my way to the lounge. By this time I was really worn out and starting to suffer from jetlag.

There was hardly anyone in the lounge, I was tired and sleepy and getting lonely. I began to wonder if I had made a mistake starting this journey.

Finally, it is time to board the airplane. We leave Tokyo and head out over the great China Sea to Shanghai, China.

On the map, the distance from Tokyo to Shanghai doesn’t seem that far, but it seemed almost forever getting there. When we touched down in Shanghai, it was about 9:50 pm, dark and raining. We had arrived at Shanghai’s brand new Pu Dong airport. It was a beautiful terminal and the walk to baggage claim was a long, long walk. It was my first experience in finding out the Chinese do a lot of walking.

I went through emigration, showed my passport/visa and then onto baggage claim. I picked up my baggage and went to Customs. They had a sign telling those with stuff requiring duty to go one way and those without things requiring duty go the other. I went the latter way. I have never gotten through any customs in any country so easy.

I exited the Customs area and there was the young teacher and the driver with a sign with my name on it. I had arrived in China.

China, the Land of the Hard Beds

I arrived in Shanghai, China at about 10:00 pm at night. My mentor Lily (Lily is her English name, her Chinese name is Yang Lixia) had arranged for a “young teacher, Mr. Liu Bo” and a driver to pick me up and drive me to Ningbo, about 100 miles south of Shanghai.

They had made reservations at a nice Chinese hotel for us to spend the night and drive down the next day. The hotel was a nice enough hotel; a little dilapidated, but nice. I wondered if the poor workmanship of party workers that I read about was what contributed to its dilapidation.

Evidently it was a nice place because the next morning there was a stretch limo waiting for someone important I supposed. We dropped off our bags, or let’s say that we accompanied our bags to our room. The bellboys looked like solders.

I was to find out later that the Chinese evidently really like uniforms. It is hard to tell a doorman, bellboy, and bus driver from a cop or solder. When we left the next morning the parking lot attendant in a crisp uniform gave us a sharp salute as we drove out of the parking lot.

After dumping our bags, I got a two-bedroom suite and the “young teacher” and driver shared a simple room with two beds. I felt really honored. We went to the dining room and I enjoyed my first hot pot.

The table had a round hole cut in the center and a gas burner in the hole. A pot with a partition was placed in the hole and the gas burner lit under the pot and it soon began to boil. One side of the pot’s partition was liquid with bland spices and flavorings and the other side of the partition was a liquid with hot spices and flavorings. So, you had your choice.

There were all kinds of foods cut up in bite size that we picked up with our chopsticks and dumped into the boiling mixture. I receive my first of many compliments on my chopstick dexterity. Little did they know that I had been eating Chinese food and Japanese foods for many years.

Well after a delightful meal and my first introduction to Chinese beer (pijiu), we retired to our bedrooms. I chose the most elegant room in my suite for sleeping. However, when I sat down on the bed, it felt like a board with sheet over it. There was no give at all on the mattress, if you could call it a mattress. So, thinking that one bed was firm (Wow, was it firm? Hard would be a better description.). I figured that the bed in the other bedroom would be a little softer. Well, it wasn’t. So, I spent my first night of many nights sleeping on a hard, hard Chinese bed.

When I would comment on the hard beds to my Chinese associates, I was told that the Chinese believe it is healthy and good for your back to sleep on a firm bed. I often commented in return, that in America we had the same thought about firm beds, but these beds are HARD!

The next morning dawned a rainy dismal day. I hauled my aching back out of my hard, hard bed and went to the window with the view.

My hotel room overlooked the front parking lot of the hotel and beyond the parking lot was a busy street. In front of the hotel was a flagpole with the Chinese national flag flying. To be sure it was with some trepidation that this old “Cold War Warrior” viewed this bright red flag with one big star and four smaller stars, the symbol of America’s Cold War Enemy, Chinese Communism. It was not much comfort to keep telling myself that we were friends now.

Sure enough when I got to the apartment that I was to live in, I found two bedrooms, a bed in each. They were just as hard as the ones in the hotel. I was provided with several comforters that I was later to find out were to stay warm at night. I tried to soften the mattress by using one of the extra comforters as a pad. It helped, but not much. I thought that in time I would get used to the hard bed. But after two months I still crawl out of bed in the morning with aching bones.

A couple of months after my arrival, my mentor arranged a trip for us foreign teachers to the town of Shaoxing a town about two hours north of Ningbo. This town is the home of several prominent Chinese people. We visited the former home of Lu Xun, China’s great writer, and thinker and revolutionary. As we toured this really elaborate home that the Party has set up as a museum to honor this man, we came upon a sign that said ahead is the bedroom of Lu Xun, that has the actual bed that he slept in. I thought to myself, “Hey here is a chance for me to see what the rich Chinese people used for a bed”. Well, his bed turned out to be a four-poster bed with canopy, mosquito netting and all. For a mattress? It was a thin one-inch pad on a solid board bottom.

What’s In A Name?

An interesting thing I encountered with the Chinese Culture is how they deal with names. At least this was my experience at the university. The Chinese put a lot of stock into names. First of all, they always put their family name first followed by their given names. So, Yao Ming’s given name is Ming and his family name is Yao. In America we would refer to him as Ming Yao and friends would greet him as Ming. Formally in America he would be referred as Mr. Yao.

Some teachers and most all of the students I encountered in the Foreign Language department classes accommodate us Foreigner teachers by adopting English names. This is indeed very accommodating as the Chinese language is tonal and some Chinese names are very difficult for some of us foreign teachers to pronounce correctly. Just as some American names are difficult for the Chinese to pronounce correctly. One area in particular that is difficult for the Chinese is the pronunciation of the letters “L” and “R”. So, along I come with the first name of “Larry”.

When I introduced myself to the classes as Professor Larry Wilcox, the students began to address me as Larry. At least they tried while having difficulty with the “L” and the “r’s”. At first I was taken back a bit because in my previous academic experience the students always addressed professors in a formal way by using the title Professor followed by their family name. In my previous academic environment I was addressed as Professor Wilcox. If the title of the teacher was Instructor, they were addressed as Mister or Ms followed by their family name. This formality was even followed by the faculty when addressing one another in the presence of students.

My colleagues didn’t seem to mind being addressed by their given name, so I accepted the students addressing me by my given name. At the risk of sounding puffy I did need to explain this Academic cultural item to my students so they won’t commit a faux pas in another environment.

The English names some of the students choose for themselves seemed quite strange. Most chose their English names from dictionary definitions of their Chinese names. So, they ended up with names like Orange, Sky, Fish, Crab to name a few. One chap gave himself the English name of Christ. Something I had a hard time swallowing, but I reminded myself that a lot of Hispanic people in the Americas name their children Jesus. I don’t know how Christ decided on that name nor how he is outside the classroom, but he is very shy in class. When called upon to speak before the class he hangs his head and never looks up, as he talks very low.

One very sweet young coed chose the English name “Tractor” for herself. When I asked her why she chose that name, she explained that her teacher in high school told her she was always slow but determined like a tractor. I wish I could come up with a more elegant sounding suggested English name for her.

Most of the students I deal with are English majors. There are however several other subject majors on campus that emphasize their students to learn English. These majors along with the English majors have informal clubs they call “English Corner” that meet periodically to practice their English. The foreign teachers are often invited to attend these meetings and frequently become the main attraction of the meeting.

Not too many days after my arrival I was invited to attend an English corner club meeting held by the Law majors. It was hard to resist all my Lawyer jokes, but I managed. Their English wasn’t good enough to understand them anyway. A couple of things happened at this particular club meeting.

One item, considering it was the first of December was the students wanted us to tell them about Christmas. My contract says in part:

1. Party B (me) shall observe the laws, decrees, and relevant regulations enacted by the Chinese government and shall not interfere in China’s internal affairs.

2. …

3. …

4. Party B shall respect China’s religious policy, and shall not conduct religious activities incompatible with the status of an expert.

5. Party B shall respect the Chinese people’s moral standards and customs.

Therefore, I thought that I probably should restrict my description of Christmas to the secular. Of course, there is much secularism to talk about when talking about Christmas. So, we discussed Santa Claus, Christmas trees, etc. One chap seemed to have been reading about the Amazon rain forest deforestation problem and asked if it was such a good idea for the Americans to cut down all those Christmas trees. I will have more to say about Christmas in China is another Chapter.

The other thing that happened at this meeting was I met a sweet young Law major whose English name was Carey. Her English was quite good within a narrow range of subjects. She was very interested in names. We discussed that I had found on the Internet a place where you can tell the computer your English family name and the computer will give you a Chinese name. I told her that I had tried Wilcox and the computer had given me the Chinese family name of Wu. Wu seems to be a very popular family name in china. There is a vice president of the university whose name is Professor Wu. I have several students in my classes with the family name of Wu.

Carey went away and studied names and came back with a Chinese name for me. It is the one I used as an author name on this book. The name she gave me was Wu Zhen. Wu being the family name and Zhen is the given name. When she gave me the definition of Zhen, I liked it and adopted it for my Chinese name, Wu Zhen. Zhen means good luck and will always be with the people. I thought that fitted me very well. I have indeed been very lucky all my life and I enjoy the idea of always being with the people. Thanks Carey.

The Yao Ming Thing

Before I left on my journey I had heard of this NBA recruit from China, but had not paid it much attention. My only thought at the time was, “Hum, I always thought that Chinese people were short people and that it was unusual to find one that is a professional basketball player.” Later after I arrived in China I found out that China seems to grow tall people the further north and west you go. Our department secretary, Ms Yuan is a lovely tall Chinese woman that is at least five foot and 10 inches. Yao Ming is a seven foot five inch (2.26 meters) basketball player that plays the center position for the Houston Rockets. I believe that the position of Center is usually reserved for the taller players.

When the new recruit first started playing for the Houston Rockets there was some negative comments about how good of a ball player he was. Yao Ming soon set that straight. He has been breaking records right and left ever since.

I came across an article on the Internet that two guys from Houston, Texas, Chance McClain and Kevin Ryan had written a song that was inspired by Yao Ming and that it was sweeping the city. No wonder -- it's simple, has a peppy beat and is easy to dunk to. Houston Rockets fans had been singing the infectious chorus of "It's a Ming Thing" for weeks. It seems that people every where including China were chanting "Yao Ming, Yao Ming-Yao Ming-Yao Ming, Yao Ming, Yao Ming" to the tune of the soccer-fan anthem "Ole, Ole, Ole." The first verse of the song goes:

"Without the Dream no one thought we'd survive, / For too long we've been deprived. / The final piece of the puzzle has arrived, / The missing link of a championship drive."

When I downloaded the song and played it on Ms Yuan’s computer, she asked me if I was a basketball fan. My reply was, “No, not really, but my students are”. I soon instituted in my Oral English classes my own version of: “How about them Cowboys”. For those readers not familiar with this ritual, let me explain. In the Oklahoma/Texas area a lot of people are staunch fans of the American football team the Dallas Cowboys. The ritual seems to go like this. On Monday mornings when you meet someone, the conversion usually goes like this:

“Did you have a good weekend?” To which some trivial response is made and then the question:

“How about them Cowboys?” Which opens the conversation up to a discussion of how the team played their game the past weekend.

So, in my Oral English classes we do the usual, “Did you have a nice weekend?” to be followed by: “How about them Rockets”. I then ask for a report on how the Houston Rockets had performed since our previous class. Of course the emphasis is a Yao Ming report. Yao Ming is reported to have said that he likes the song though he blushed when told it’s playing in his home country of China. American sports are shown on CCTV 5 in China. The Rockets games air in China in the morning. They call it “Breakfast With Yao” and the song is played before each game. The fact that Yao Ming makes a lot of money has not gone unnoticed by my students.

My Trip to Lin Hai, China

The school declared January 1, 2003 a holiday. They also closed classes on Jan 2 & 3. However, for some strange reason the classes missed on Thursday and Friday have to be made up on Saturday and Sunday, Jan 3rd and 4th. Strange ways of Chinese Academia I guess. Fortunately I didn't have classes on Thursday or Friday so I got the weekend off as usual.

One of my students Chin Dong (English name Owen) invited me to spend the New Year's holiday with him and his family. He said something about his mother renting a hotel room. I had been told that a lot of these students are members of the new Chinese wealthy. So, I wasn't surprised about the hotel room but wondered what kind of New Year's party I was getting into.

I accepted the invitation as I thought it would be a good way to see how the real Chinese lived off the campus. His uncle in a car picked us up for the drive to Lin Hai. Again, I thought about the new wealthy Chinese. Almost nobody here has a car. In fact I was with a bunch of students (about 10) one night and one of them said, "Why do Americans think we Chinese are poor?”

I thought that a good question and came up with a question to the group, "How many of your families own a car?"

The answer was none. Then we discussed the cost of a car in China vs. the cost of a car in America. It turns out with the exchange rate; the cost is about the same. The only difference is that it would take an average American to work a year to earn the cost of a car. In China, it would take the average Chinese five years to earn the cost of a car.

Now, back to my New Year's story. The car was what looked to be a brand new Volkswagen sedan. Nice car and they are quite popular in China. It was bitter cold outside but with the car heater I thought it best to take my coat off for the ride. But, interestingly, no one took off their coats and they never turned on the car heater. I still don't understand that. We drove about 100 miles south of Ningbo to his hometown of Lin Hai. There was an expressway from Ningbo to Lin Hai. Drivers here are crazy. There doesn't seem to be any traffic laws or if there are, they aren't enforced. There were vehicles on the expressway driving 15 to 20 mph in the left lane. Chinese drivers seem to drive with their horns worse than taxi drivers in New York City.

When we arrived in Lin Hai, we went to my student's home that turned out to be a hotel. His mother runs a small (10 room) hotel. His father sells propane. There was absolutely no heat in the place. The small lobby had two sliding glass doors opening onto the street. It looked to me like they kept the sliding glass doors open to signify that they were open and doing business. They set up a table in the lobby and began to celebrate the approaching New Year. The celebration was very subdued. After a while my student's uncle had to leave. Turns out he is a policeman. Strange things seemed to be happening. The uncle and my student's father spent some time changing license plates on the car before he left. I was about to freeze to death and had no interest in ringing in the New Year, so they showed me to my room, which I shared with my student. He got a cot and I got the bed. It was a typical Chinese bed that felt like a concrete block with a sheet over it. It felt like it was freezing in the room. It was probably not much above 32 degrees F. I got into bed with my coat on and was reminded of my youth where I went to bed in an unheated house in Russett, Oklahoma. After about an hour I began to warm up a little. I brought along two changes of clothes for the trip, but ended up wearing all of them at once.

Well, the New Year dawned and much warmer dressed I descended down the three flights of stairs to the lobby for breakfast. There were two more floors above me and no elevators. It seems that some great planner in Beijing has said that buildings six stories or less do not get elevators. The breakfast was incredible. My student's mother and father were extremely gracious hosts. You would have sworn I was a show pig the way they fed me.

We then went to visit Owen's grandparents. We went down some old narrow streets into some very old homes (apartments). I got a chance to see how the poorer Chinese live. By the way, the only person that spoke English on this whole trip was my student, some of his friends and me. He doesn't speak English all that good either. But, I met his charming grandmother (she was my age) and her 84-year-old sister that she took care of. His grandfather was a nice person too.

After a super lunch we took off to see Lin Hai's version of the Great Wall. We ended up climbing up over two hundred steps and then walking about 6000 meters (probably nearly 5 miles). I was exhausted when we returned to an incredible supper.

The next day we visited a park that is called East Lake. By the way one night we went to a KFC. Tasted pretty much the same as in America. The colonel looked good. We went to an Internet cafe that had over 100 computers. Some people were surfing the Internet but most were playing games over the Internet. It seemed to be a big game of Mega Warriors. We came back a couple of times to get my email fix.

On the last day of my stay an interesting thing happened. It seems that there are special laws about foreigners staying in Chinese hotels. Some hotels are designated as okay to house foreigners some are not. For those not designated to keep foreign guests, their guests have to be registered at the police station. The hotel I was staying in was not a designated hotel to put up foreigners. So, Owen, his mother and I set off for the Lin Hai police station. Owen’s mother rode her bicycle and Owen and I rode in a Pedi-cab (a bicycle version of the Rickshaw). When we arrived at the police station, we had to go up four flights of stairs to the room for the foreigner registration.

Owen had warned me before we left that I should bring my passport. I had been told earlier that I didn’t need to carry my passport if I stayed in Mainland China. (Hong Kong is an exception). My mentor, Lily had told me that all I needed was to carry my “Green Card” (Foreigner Residence Permit and yes it is green). So, I didn’t bring my passport. Well, the first thing the policeman asked for was my passport. When I produced my “Green Card”, he indicated that wasn’t good enough, he wanted to see my Passport! It got very tense for a few moments. Owen’s mom and the policeman had what seemed like a heated discussion for a few minutes. After a while, the policeman made a telephone call and was evidently told that the “Green card” was okay. Sounds like something I have run into before. Officially my mentor was correct, but the policeman didn’t know the correct procedure.

All in all, it was a great trip. I learned a little more Chinese and got to meet some wonderful people. By the way, while my student and I were walking the Great Wall, we came up behind a church down below. I think it had been a Catholic church that had been closed. All signs were gone except for a cross that had been part of the masonry. It had been painted over and almost obscured it. I discussed with my student the reason for the church being closed, which he was reluctant to discuss. But, he asked me a question that has been haunting me ever since. He said, "But, if I prayed to God in Chinese, would He understand me?" Of course I assured him that God would understand him and that God knew what was in our hearts and minds.

We returned to Ningbo by bus. It was an interesting trip made in the afternoon. So, I got to see a lot of countryside that I hadn’t been able to see on the way down because it was dark. The terrain is rather mountainous and it was interesting to see how the Chinese build steps up the side of the mountain for tilling. It was also sad to see the air pollution. I keep wondering what kind of air pollution problems China will have when everyone owns their own automobile as is done in America (Meiguo may-gwoh).

And so ends my story of my New Year's trip to Lin Hai, China.

Chinese Etiquette, Manners, Behaviors, and Other Disgusting Habits

This is a very interesting area to discuss. The Chinese people’s behavior certainly does not conform to Miss Manners’ rules. There are several areas that will horrify some proper and elegant people of the western world. So read the following only if you have a strong stomach. Here are some things that we westerners would consider impolite.

Queuing. In the western world we are accustomed to lining up and waiting our turn. If someone barges ahead in the line they are considered at least impolite. In my part of the world, gentlemen take great efforts in letting ladies go first. If a gentlemen breaks into the line ahead of other gentlemen, he might be dealt with by other gentlemen with force. Not in China. There are no such things as orderly queues. Jumping ahead of the line is a normal way of doing things. I have seen Chinese after Chinese person do this and try to imagine what is in their mind when they barge ahead. I have a lady colleague from Boston that is not too tolerant of this practice. She is about 5’ 10’’ tall and substantially taller than the average Chinese man. She and I were standing in line in front of a bank teller window that was marked for queuing. All of a sudden this little Chinese guy walks right in front of her and steps up to the teller’s window. She taps him on the shoulder and gives him the thumbing gesture to get back in line at the rear. I will never forget his facial expression. He was astonished that she was doing this. He couldn’t figure out what her problem was. She did not speak Chinese to him and he didn’t respond, but he did move back to the back of the line and later moved to another teller line. So, if you are an Okie or Texan in China and stand back in all politeness and let the folks in a hurray go ahead, you may not get whatever it is that you were standing in line for.

Spitting. The Chinese seem to have no reluctance in spitting anywhere and everywhere. I recall my sons in