Traveling to China may not be the big deal it used to be. Every town in the U.S. -- well, in fact, in much of the world -- now has Chinese students from somewhere on the mainland. Chinese from Taiwan, once common, are now the exception rather than the rule.
Nevertheless, for anyone old enough to remember Richard Nixon's famous trip to Beijing, China is the exotic center of the world. It seems somehow pre-historic. Before Nixon's visit, we understood Beijing's Forbidden City to mean, essentially, forbidden to Americans. Fixed in my mind are the Mao jackets, the small-brimmed caps with the red star, and the bicycle-crowded boulevards. The images are all in black and white.
Now, of course, the memory itself is an anachronism.
Still, the lure of China remains strong. Thus, when the invitation to visit China was extended, we could not not say "yes!"
On the day before we were to leave, with bags packed, house tidied, fears restrained, we began to feel a bit of trepidation. What if the winter storm that was forecast arrived sooner than expected and delayed or cancelled our first, short flight to JFK? What if Donna's cold, already creating a bit of congestion suddenly got worse? What if? What if?
What if we just don't fit in?
I had thought for a number of years that I would learn Mandarin, so that we could function once we made our long anticipated voyage. But somehow my several attempts were brief, frustrating, and eventually abandoned. I got as far as "thank you."
During that same forward-looking period, I decided to learn how to use chopsticks. To do this, I first tried observing experts, which is to say, our Asian students. I discovered two things. One is that they all preferred forks to chopsticks. Two is that on the infrequent occasions they did take up the wooden skewers, they invariably told me, "Don't copy my style. It is improper."
Undeterred, I taught myself, properly, from one of those red paper sleeves that bamboo restaurant chopsticks come in. It was easy to position the chopsticks, hard to make them work. While I was learning, struggling first to get food off the plate, then struggling to get it into my mouth instead of on my shirt, I became convinced that Americans would be thinner and healthier on the whole if we were all forced to use chopsticks. A nationwide chopsticks diet would address our obesity problem!
Gradually, however, I worked my way past the dropped rice, the stick flying off across the table, and the hand cramps. Technique and practice. I can't quite snatch a fly out of the air like the Karate master, but I am, with quiet modesty PDG (pretty darn good) bordering on QE (quite excellent). I can seize a rolling grape, pluck individual rice grains from a flat surface, and roll spaghetti as if it were a fork.
OK, so the chopsticks won't help me when I need to ask where the bathroom is, but it does make me feel a bit more at ease about the trip.
The night before we were to leave I mentioned to my daughter, the nurse, over the phone that I was hoping her mother wasn't going to get sicker.
"It's a cold, Pop." She replied without hesitation. "Give her meds and get her on the plane!"
After all, China is not an option every day.
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