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TRAVELS IN CHINA 2002

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Family Matters, Preparing the Celebration, Wei's "FEW" Students

The next day began cold and rainy, like the first 2 weeks of last year's trip. I rechecked our itinerary, and was reminded that we would leave Nanning in only 6 days. I knew that they would pass too quickly and that once again I would have to leave this great place, although my feelings were tempered by the previous day's events. After breakfast, we set off after Yuening to do some more wedding preparation things. We stopped by the seamstress' place to pick up my jackets, which now appeared to suit Yuening. She then tried on her dresses, which were a little loose for her taste, so I am sure that we will return to haunt that poor woman again in the near future, since the celebration is only 4 days hence.

We then went to the hotel with the revolving restaurant so that Yuening could personally supervise the preparations and create a little havoc just to keep everyone there on their toes. After she put a little more fear in the hearts of the hotel staff, we marched home for an afternoon snooze before going to Ama's for supper with the family.

Yuening's mother, I call her Ama, is the quintessential version of a Chinese grandmother. She has about 5 words of English, but we get along very well by dint of her great sense of humor and her always-smiling disposition. I have had the feeling that she likes me since we met, and she appears to support Yuening's odd choice for a husband. Yuening's father, Apa, is quite different. He is not unfriendly, he just hasn't much to say most of the time. Yuening says he is a quiet man of few words. Yuening's parents are in their early seventies, and have the "been there, done that, got the t-shirt" kind of faces that make memorable and beautiful black and white images. I wished I had my high-end Canon equipment and studio strobes there to do their quiet weathered countenances justice. I could see that picture and even the lighting in my mind's eye and was sorry that I would not be able to put that image on paper for their posterity.

Yuening's cousin and one of her classmates, Li Jian Ri, came for supper that night. They helped cook while me, Paul and Apa sat in the cold living room and watched TV that only one of us could understand. Except for the Chinese television, this could have been a family get-together in Missouri, just without heat. The food was just as good; we made the same small-talk and jokes, albeit with a lot of gestures and Chinglish, and enjoyed the supper and socializing just as much as anywhere else. Afterwards, we sloshed our way out into a cold pouring rain to the taxi and home. I did not know then that I was not to see the sun again until my plane escaped the clouds on its way to Guangzhou, several days hence.

For some reason, Nanning taxi drivers, maybe in some display of Chinese machismo, refuse to use a heater or defroster in their vehicles. They drive, windows open, in all weather - hot or cold. The taxi home was damp and cold, and all the windows we could reach to roll up against the downpour were fogged into opaqueness. I told Paul, riding shotgun, to keep his wiped for fear that we would have a wreck. We made it home fine, and had only 5 or 6 of what I would call close calls. This was below the average of 10 that usually occur in a ten-minute taxi trip in Nanning. I didn't need a z-test of independent proportions to tell me that 6 and 10 are both too many for comfort. Every time I woke that night it was to the sound of pouring rain; I think we got several inches between bed and breakfast.

On Thursday, we were destined for a day of small chores; we needed long-johns for Paul, a heavy quilt so he wouldn't freeze at night, a case of bottled water, changing money at the bank, etc.. We dawdled over breakfast and coffee to see if yesterday's laundry would be dry enough to use; fat chance in that humidity. That evening we asked Wei to dinner so we could talk about things that require accuracy and where mistakes could be disastrous.

Wei said that he would like me to speak to his students the next day. This is a treat for me and I looked forward to it. I had a day to think of something to talk about. The last time I went over Disraeli's "3-pillars of learning," and if they were different students I might get away with that again. It turned out that this trip Wei had lined up so many students that we would need two performances to accommodate them all. I agreed in the interests of international relations and a hot pot dinner with Wei's upper-class women.

The next day, Yuening was on auto-pilot, dashing about doing all those last-minute preparations that women the world-over do before a marriage ceremony. She filled out and delivered a last few invitations, tried her wedding clothes on 4 times, made a multitude of phone calls, got out 6 sweaters and a coat for me to haul to the US for her, tried on her wedding clothes some more, the shoes twice, moved everything in her apartment at least twice, brushed her teeth, did some more invitations, got dressed, yelled at me a little and got Liang Xi off to school - all before breakfast. That day she would go to Ama's to do even more things like buying special rice, special cigarettes, special corsages, special socks, a special necklace (18K, of course) and many more special this-and-that’s. All I had to do was find a Nanning shoe-shine girl with a chair strong enough to hold me so I could get the Nanning mud off before the big event.

That evening, I went to Wei's school to speak to a "few" of his students. Last year, a "few" meant 50-60, but this year it meant 150 or so. About 30 were repeat attenders from last year. Overall, their English was pretty good, and most weren't even English students. They asked several questions about learning English - and about the seemingly looming war with Iraq.I reminded that China did not vote against the US in the UN, essentially voting with us instead of vetoing the US proposal. I think I went a little way towards convincing them that we were not poised to kill Iraqi babies and leave behind a nuclear wasteland in the Middle East.

Their most intriguing question was "since many Chinese, even at a young age, want to study English and believe it is important, why are there almost no Americans that study Chinese?" I had to think carefully and quickly, something I am not noted for, before deciding whether to be truthful or say something harmless and nice; I opted for truth over diplomacy. I attributed part of this to the almost ubiquitous use of English as the language of business and diplomacy. Then I said that the most important reason was that 99.9% of Americans don't care about Chinese people, Chinese language or China, and for that matter, Russia, Indonesia, Burma or Botswana either. I said that through ignorance, hubris and the fact that the US has historically been the 700 pound gorilla of economics and militarily, we have had the luxury of not caring much about the affairs of other people unless those affairs affected Americans in some immediate and important way. I also said that globalization of the world's economy, with its effect of making previously nation-based economies become intertwined, was changing our isolationism very quickly. I said that most large universities in the US now have Asian studies of various flavors and that US farmers watch Asian markets very closely because grain and livestock markets in Asia have a more direct and immediate effect on these farmers' ability to feed their families. I said that many Americans have ties to the stock markets, either directly or indirectly through their retirement plans, and that these ties involved trans-national business occurring in Asia. I said that it is the economy that has driven many Americans' interest in Asia, rather than any personal interest or desire to learn about China and other Asian cultures, but that the effect is similar.

Like my last visit, many pictures were taken and I was given several small gifts. I enjoy this schtick every time, and this time I even got to do a little of Disraeli's thing again.

CHINA TRIP 2001 TAIWAN TRIP 1999

(1) U.S. TO CANTON (2) CANTON (3) NANNING, REPRISE (4) WEDDING TALK (5) REALLY DIFFERENT (6) ONLY ONE!

(7) CUSTOM CLOTHES (8) HIGH GROUND (9) MUGGED (10) TO GUILIN (11) LI RIVER (12) WEI'S CLASS

(13) THE BIG DAY (14) WEDDING ALBUM (15) HEADING HOME

THERE ARE MANY GRAPHICS ON THESE PAGES - PLEASE BE PATIENT AS THEY LOAD!