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Oddly enough my interest in China began long before my birth. My father was interested in China. His interest ignited mine when I was a young child, perhaps two years old. By the age of five I had determined that one day I would go to China and that I would learn to speak, read and write the Chinese language. Children have such silly and grandiose dreams and aspirations that appear to slip into the realm of fairy tale and legend. Yet that initial spark ignited a vocation as a Sinologist [Chinese scholar]. When my Dad was training for the Olympics in the 1920’s at a boxing gym in Manhattan he was befriended by a Chinese gentleman who gave him a gift of a pair of green beaded Chinese slippers (there’s a picture of them on my website www.blindmansees.com in media/pictures/pretty things). After he married many years later he gave them to his bride as a gift. My Mother hung them on the wall of her living-room as an ornament. The Green Chinese Slippers seemed to hold some deep and lasting romantic meaning for them. I can still recall how at the age of two years I hovered weightlessly in the The Champ’s arms while he told me that story for the first time. Apparently one of my first spoken questions in English was, “What are those Daddy?” as I pointed up, way up at the pretty green slippers. Sometimes when my Dad was working away in later years I would take those slippers down off the wall and slip my adolescent feet into their downy compass. Then I would parade around the empty house dreaming of China and of my father. I saw pictures of this exotic place of which my Father spoke (for he had been to Hong Kong) in a picture book at the age of five. This is what steeled my will to go to this ancient and distant existent place of wonders, pagodas, canals, waterbuffalo, rice paddies, jade, tea, temples, The Great Wall, The Forbidden City. One of the pictures in Around The World In Five Thousand Pictures was of “the oldest pagoda in the world” and, in later years with a degree in Chinese Classical Studies under my belt, I saw that pagoda with my own eyes in the city of Xiao Xin. Wow! Talk about personal fulfillment. I actually visited and spent some time in what I called The Three Chinas: Taiwan, Hong Kong, The People’s Republic Of China [PROC]. Each was distinctive, shaped by massive and historical movements that washed like tidal waves and tsunamis across Asia and “The Four Seas”, as China was often called. People drowned and perished or floated aimlessly, or fled or stood to fight. Turmoil and historical reality had torn apart the ancient Middle Kingdom. But I wanted to touch China and be touched in return. And I have been touched - deeply and broadly and profoundly and permanently. China in all her splendor, richness and diversity has helped to shape who I am – this “other mother” who helped to nurture me as a foundling. She has poured the rich culture of all of her ages into my mind, heart, soul, body, relationships, values, and all of my life. In return I sought successfully to give something back to this alma mater [other mother]. Chinese Studies was the warm mother’s milk of my intellectual and scholarly youth. She was my nursemaid and I was her grateful adoptive son. I have sought to honor this relationship in many ways. I’ve studied the Chinese language and culture with a depth, passion and thoroughness that is rare. I have introduced many Westerners to Chinese Culture. I have stood firm for the equal rights of Chinese Canadians and have counted many in that Canadian subculture as my lifelong friends. But I have also carried treasures and tribute back to the bosom of the one who loved me and gave me so much. In the Spring of 1982 I entered Mainland China under some intense scrutiny and not before sparking a political debate amongst the thirty of forty Communist Party Members (all in military uniforms) in the Customs and Immigration office and train station at the Hong Kong Frontier. I had to talk my way in [in Chinese], but I got in. At that time China was a nation in transition and in upheaval and foreigners were rare. Chairman Mao had died. His death had precipitated a power struggle which landed The Gang of Four (Five) in jail, on trial and on the national television network in the first televised trial in a country renown for secrecy within their judicial system. There was Mao’s wife in the defendant’s dock along with her co-conspirators who sought to continue the repression of the Chinese people after enacting a quiet coup d’etat. They were convicted and a light began to dawn in the Red Giant - The Red Dragon. I spent three months at an art college commune while the trial proceeded. This was Communism! And everything was divided into communes in accordance with Maoist doctrine and practice. My then girlfriend Jo-Ann Turford had won a scholarship to study Chinese Classical painting and calligraphy at the most highly-esteemed institution for these traditional art forms in all of China and I went to visit her. The school stood on the reputedly beautiful shore of The West Lake (Xi Hu) in the ancient capital city of Hong Zhou southwest of Shanghai. Those three months in this highly influential school provided me an opportunity to “give back” something to China. I quickly became warmly acquainted with many of the students and faculty and it was immediately obvious that they were hungry; hungry for knowledge from “outside” – outside of a cloistered Communist China. They were persistent in their questioning and I was forthcoming in my replies. The two most common lines of questioning from all of these intellectual artists were concerning Democracy and Christianity. I carried a half-dozen Chinese language Bibles (some with English interface) into PROC and gave them to people at the college so they could read them, share them, and carry them to the corners of The Sleeping Dragon. For as China was a Mother to me, so God in Christ is my Father. [The only question they asked me at the border baggage check was, “Are you carrying any Bibles?” for this was regarded as a serious crime.] There are few people so steeped in the details of Democracy as I am and was and will be. I had memorized the American Declaration of Independence, The Bill of Rights, The Gettysburg Address and other democratic documents at age eleven while reading The Iliad and The Odyssey of Homer. I had been nurtured as a democrat at my Daddy’s knee. By the time I arrived in China I had read most of the primary texts of democratic ideas as well as the democratic histories. I arrived in the People’s Republic of China as a Sinologist with a democratic heart, a Christian soul and much practiced eloquence at defending democracy to Maoists, for I had had many encounters with Maoist bullies in Canada in preparation for the challenges that awaited me in China. There I had to deal with some earnest and ardent defenders of the Communist regime in the persons of Communist Party Members [Cadres] and the Secret Police who interrogated me for six hours (in Chinese) one lovely Spring morning. Apparently I passed that test. In recent years as I’ve watched the growth of Christian faith in China from afar, and as I’ve seen Chinese citizens and immigrants in the pews of my local Canadian churches I gently wonder how many of these might be the children of my days in The Three Chinas and most especially Mainland China, which was my target from the beginning. I knew the dark mind and heart of Mao and in contrast I knew the soul of the China who had nurtured me – my China. My China is mother to these refugees from oppression and darkness who have come to our shores seeking freedom and life. And as I’ve watched the “democratic movement” evolve in China subsequent to my visit there I’ve wondered how the ideas I shared there have helped to form and shape the colorful, diverse and hopeful China of today. The Green Chinese Slippers now hang on my living-room wall, as my Mother bequeathed them to me. There they hang as an inspiration to others along with other debris of a long life shared with one of the great civilizations of human history [AHA]. They infer tolerance, hope, respect, love of learning, love for humanity, wisdom, diversity, dreams and their fulfillment, and the wonderment of the interface between the human imagination and the reality that comes into existence when we believe and trust and pursue our dreams with passion. |