Andrew Singer - China Sings to Me: A Journey Into the Middle Kingdom and Myself

CHINA SINGS TO ME: A Journey into the Middle Kingdom and Myself

Copyright 2018 by Andrew Singer

Published by Station Square Media

1204 Broadway, 4th Floor

New York, NY 10001

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except for brief quotations in articles and reviews.

Editorial Production: Diane OConnell, Write to Sell Your Book, LLC

Cover and Layout Design: Steve Plummer/SPBookDesign

Production Management: Janet Spencer King, Book Development Group

Printed in the United States of America for Worldwide Distribution

ISBN: 978-0-9993727-0-8

Electronic editions:

Mobi ISBN: 978-0-9993727-1-5

Epub ISBN: 978-0-9993727-2-2

This is a work of nonfiction. As such, places, people, and events are real. Except where permission has been granted, names have been changed and biographical backgrounds may have been altered or omitted. In addition, while many of the conversations are real, others have been recreated. The latter, however, are in all instances faithful to the contexts of the original settings. At the end of the day, what transpires in this memoir is my sole recollection of those places, people, and events, how I experienced them at the time, and recall them in the present. Any errors or mischaracterizations are mine and mine alone. I have enjoyed writing this book, and I hope readers will enjoy reading it.

Table of Contents

The Silhouette upon my breast,

The warm, deep breath of sleeping Dream.

I lay awake and Marvel such,

The quiet Bliss of Memories.

Andrew Singer

Jian zhe yi, xue zhe nan.

Seeing is easy, learning is difficult.

Chinese Proverb

Sheng you ya, zhi wuya.

Life has limits, knowledge has no bounds.

Chinese Proverb

INTRODUCTION

T here is nothing Asian in my known history. Yet from before I can remember I have been fixated with China and all things Chinese.

I grew up on Cape Cod, a sandy flexed arm of American soil jutting into the North Atlantic. Cape Cod is on the other side of the planet from the Middle Kingdom. My mother and father transplanted to this corner of Massachusetts from the Boston area in 1965, a year before I was born. My parents parents parents all came from Eastern Europe. I was raised Jewish in an area lacking in significant ethnic, cultural, and religious diversity, with limited exposure to Asia.

I am often asked, Why China? I could say it is because mom and dad planted a seed when they told a little me that if I dig deep enough in our backyard sandbox, I would reach China. I could say it is because my mother also has a fascination with the East (which I did not know then). The joke at home is that I must have been Chinese in an earlier life. This last possibility may be closest to the mark.

We visited my grandparents cottage on Sebago Lake in Maine for Labor Day weekend before school started each summer. I was drawn to a small Chinese curio sitting on a shelf in the cozy living room near the sofa. It was an ornate ivory bridge, about five inches long, spanning a stream. A little, bent-over man made of wood pulled a cart with delicate wheels. There might have been animals too. Two decades later, my dad told me that when I left for college, his mother told him that she always knew China would be a part of my life because I gave her that Chinese curio when I was a young boy.

Whatever the reason, the young me had a mission: to study Chinese and go to China. When I graduated high school in 1984, neither was easy. However, thanks to the prior persistence of a Chinese professor at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York, two years later I found my way to China to live, study, and learn. In a time of no cell phones, no world wide web, and the absence of the constant contact we now take for granted, the world was a larger place.

China then was a cauldron, an ancient civilization struggling to emerge from a 150-year-long nightmare. The shadow of Mao Zedong and the Cultural Revolution clung thickly on Chinas landscape. Fewer than three years before Chinese students took over Tiananmen Square and raised the Goddess of Democracy, I had a front-row seat at an intramural ping-pong game between a suffocating past and an uncertain future. The Communist Partys all-encompassing grip on society repeatedly clashed with the Communist Partys baby steps toward expanding the economy and improving the lives of the people. It was a time of opening and closing; two steps forward, one step back.

At the same time, life in China was a trial I was often ill prepared to weather, a journey inside myself that was not for the faint of heart. I was a nervous nerd, self-conscious and easily excitable. I was halfway around the globe, alone. There were no safety nets. I was reminded daily that the cloistered classroom and the outside world are distinct realities. I faced a personal Tower of Babel in attempting to communicate, to understand, and to function in this real world, particularly one as alien as China. This was the first time I was truly on my own and in charge of me. I had to learn to be comfortable in my own skin, to chart my way forward, or to crash for the effort.

CHAPTER 1

FOLLOWING THE PATH TO CHINA

August 1986

I love you, Mom.

I am not a hugger and do not often share my emotions with my family. I cannot recall the last time I said this to her, if ever. The moment is not lost on mom.

Why does he have to say this now? flashes across her moist eyes.

United Flight 285 to Tokyo now boarding.

With that, her composure crumbles. The first leg of my flight to China is about to begin.

My father and I share a hearty handshake. This is it.

I am numb.

The swirl of the departure area at JFK International Airport in New York City is so much white noise.

Thank you Professor Chin. I headed to Vassar College and the Hudson Valley in the first place after meeting Yin-lien C. Chin and learning of the opportunity she had forged to send her students to China. We had an early chemistry that blossomed in Beginning Mandarin my freshman year.

This is a step I have wanted to takehave planned to takefor so long. My insides are a jumble of intense desire coupled with near-paralyzing fear.

I will my heart to slow down and my feet to move.

Mom, I promise to call when I get there.

I float down the jetway in a haze.

My parents begin their 250-mile drive home, minus their eldest child.

About nineteen hours later, after a refueling stopover in Alaska, my nerves awaken with a jolt over the Sea of Japan. The friendly missionary on my left from Brigham Young University is speaking, but his words are lost in a rush of silent emotions.

What am I doing here? Am I nuts? I cant do this. I cant handle this. HELP!

The Peoples Republic of China re-opened to the West a brief seven years ago when Deng Xiaoping re-asserted control after Maos death. I have studied Mandarin for a grand total of twenty-four months. I am voluntarily moving to a communist country during the Cold War. I must be crazy.