China will always hold a warm place in my heart, though it did not start out that way.
I remember waiting for my turn through Immigration and Customs the first time arrived at the Beijing Capital International Airport. I was worrying if having the Beatles song “Revolution” on my iPod was going to cause difficulties. I had the verse “if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao, you ain’t gonna to make it with anyone anyhow” nervously streaming through my consciousness- ultimately for no good reason.
My first trip there was for two weeks. Each could not have been more different. During week one, I was part of a group of 50 people, divers and their parents, who had come from the USA and Canada for an international junior diving competition.
The kids had a great time, competing, meeting each other, exploring Shanghai’s bartering areas, living without a care In the world.
The parents were by and large nervous and stayed close to the hotel while complaining about the food. The food was worth complaint, primarily hotel prepared, buffet style Chinese food, intentionally made bland for American tourists. The Chow Mein noodles were identical to those you would find at an American Panda Express, just not as hot in temperature.
One parent complained to me about being dragged to “the ends of the earth” for their kid. I was bound and determined to find out what “the end of the earth” felt like.
I do not have much patience for unimaginative food preparation. I decided to seek out some more authentic cuisine and dragged my wife and another couple along. My wife was uncomfortable being separated from the pack and repeatedly told me so, making the experience more stressful and unfulfilling than it could have been. The companions I coerced to join us were Hispanic, which I saw as a plus for a culinary adventure until I discovered they only really liked Hispanic style food. Compounding these problems, I knew Shanghai exactly as well as I spoke Chinese, which was not at all. I was shooting for targets blindfolded. While we did luck into a few interesting meals, we also celebrated my birthday at a Hooters in Shanghai near the Bund, which is a tourist destination in central Shanghai on the banks of the Huangpu River. The wings there did not even do justice to those from an American Hooters, or a Chinese KFC!
If that week were the extent of my first trip to China, I would have never returned, the tour of the Great Wall, the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square notwithstanding.
I owe my love for the Chinese culture and people to my daughter’s diving coach, my friend Andy. Andy was born in Canton (now Guangzhou) and trained in Beijing for years with Chinese Olympians. Andy competed in the 1984 Summer Olympic Games in Los Angeles. Some years later, he married a wonderful American Girl and became a diving coach in Southern California.
Andy asked me to meet him at a sports bar in So Cal one evening, several months before the China trip. Andy is one of the most optimistic and upbeat people I know, but on this day, he was feeling down. The training facility he was building was strapping his cash flow and causing him a period of doubt about his life decisions. He began comparing his status to his friends from the Chinese Olympic training days. Many of those revered Chinese heroes had elevated to positions high in the Military or Government, others had benefitted from the growing waves of capitalism in China as early entrepreneurs.
“Do you stay in touch with these people?” I asked
“Most of them, yeah” was his reply.
“Why don’t we meet with them after the diving tournament?” I suggested. “Maybe we can find something to do together.”
That night at the sports bar was the genesis of “To the Ends of the Earth- Week 2.”
To the Ends of the Earth- Week 2
