4
Slow Boat to Amoy

September 19th, 1988

Dear John and Gwenn,

Seven years after marrying in Taiwan, Sue and l had finally burned our bridges behind us – or as Chinese say, “smashed the cauldrons and sunk the boats” (Pòfǔchénzhōu破釜沉舟). After three weeks in Hong Kong, Pearl of the Orient, we stood behind our double stroller and our pile of suitcases and trunks on the gray concrete Hong Kong pier, both excited and nervous. An ancient bus pulled up beside us and disgorged a cargo of baseball capped, camera toting, flag waving Japanese tourists. The briny air was redolent of dead fish and the sweet bouquet of burnt diesel, and wafting gently over all was the heady aroma of a soiled diaper.

“Your turn, Bill.”

We pushed the double stroller up the gangplank, a sanitized and satisfied Matthew in front, and two-year-old Shannon in the rear, sucking his pacifier like Patton chomping a cheroot, se-renely observing the proceedings as if taking notes.

We boarded the HMV Jimei and presented passports and tickets to a smartly uniformed officer who ushered us to our cabin. After three weeks of escalating stress in Hong Kong – due largely to hauling our double stroller up and down escalators with stairs at both ends; whoever designed them never used strollers or wheelchairs – I relished the thought of eighteen hours of peaceful cabin life. It was not to be.

About midnight, Sue screamed, “Bill!”

I bolted upright, banging my head on the bunk above. “What’s the matter?”

“Roaches! I hate roaches!” she yelled. Roaches swarmed on the walls, bunks, even the pil-lows. “I can’t sleep with roaches in my face. I want another room.”

“Sue, if they are here, the whole ship’s infested. Switching rooms won’t help.”

“I will not sleep in this room!”

“Then use the can of Raid that you brought,” I suggested.

“The smell gives me a headache and I won’t be able to sleep anyway knowing the place is crawling with roaches.”

“Then why on earth did you pack the Raid?”

“Don’t yell, Bill. Everyone will hear you.”

“I’m not yelling!” I yelled.

“Just forget it, Bill. I’ll sit up tonight and read my book.”

I jumped back in bed, banging my head again. I hated roaches too, but could not do any-thing about it, so I whipped the blanket over my head and tried to sleep.

It was not an auspicious beginning.

The Jimei was gliding into ancient Hépíng (Peace) Port when I awoke from a wild dream of battling bugs led by Roachzilla. Sue was staring, eyes red, out of the salt-encrusted porthole. She had stayed up the entire night. She glanced at me reproachfully, silently. I hated myself, and vowed silently that whatever it took, I would seal our Xiamen apartment from bugs, but I said nothing. Then Sue took my hand and held it, silently, proving once again she was of the stronger sex.

After so many years of marriage, Sue and I are still best friends, and still date at least weekly, but we’ve had our share of disagreements, usually over trivial things. But Susan Marie’s pet theo-ry is, “You can’t stay angry at someone you are holding hands with.”

A Custom Welcome　We were still reeling from Matthew’s olfactory assault (a diaper change) when the loudspeaker also attacked us. A very loud recording of a song played on a cheap electronic keyboard was followed by a full five minutes of Chinese announcements, which in turn were followed by a 20 second English summary: “Overseas Chinese compatriots and foreigners please proceed to quarantine and health station in Bar No.1. Comrades, please go to Bar No.2. Have your arrival cards completed.”

The quarantine queue extended from Bar No.1 down two flights of the curved staircase and into the hallway outside our room. Knowing it would take hours, we waited on our bunks until the cattle outside began shambling down the chute. This took quite awhile because the customs, immigration and health officials had yet to board the ship. We stared out the porthole at the teeming throng of passengers’ friends and relatives, pedicab drivers, dock workers and a motley crew of beggars in various states of mutilation and creative incapacities. About half an hour later, the crowd parted as fourteen officials marched up the gangplank and into the bowels of the Jimei.

I wondered if they’d delayed everything on purpose. I had read that in Ethiopia, important people only perform important tasks, which naturally take more time. So they take their merry time at even the most inconsequential tasks, lest a hasty finish impair their social status.

The officials spent another half hour greeting the ship’s officers, passing cigarettes back and forth, pouring tea and stacking forms. The passengers’ processing took a few more hours because only four officers manned the desks while the rest held the fort in the bar, sipping cokes and smoking.

It took two hours for me to reach Bar No.1’s doors. The dour official scrutinized my pass-ports and health forms several times, as if he’d never seen their likes before, waved the health forms in my face, and demanded, “You’ve not had any of these illnesses?”

“Never,” said I, though I wondered who would admit it if they had.

“Where are the other three?”

“In our cabin. Two hours in line is too much for a mother with two babies.”

The official’s eyes narrowed. “I must see them face-to-face.”

I glanced at the long line snaking behind me. “After I get them, can I return to the front of the line?”

“No! Back of the line. Policy!”

I retreated, wishing I were as calm as the Chinese who bore everything in stoic silence. But a few smiled at me, sympathetically, and I realized that beneath the inscrutable, unruffled sur-faces were kindred spirits. (I’d have never imagined then that, within a couple of years, even the dour customs officials would be friends).

Back in the cabin, Susan greeted me with, “It’s about time you got back.”

“I’ve not done anything yet, Sue. You and the boys have to appear personally.”

“What?” Sue’s face reddened. “But –”

“– It’s a long line, and we have to start at the back again,” I said. “Let’s just get it over with.”

Parting the Waters　The crowd parted like the Red Sea under Moses’ flip flops as Sue led Shannon by the hand and I carried Matt. As the crowd saw our tiny towheads, a chorus arose, “So cute!” And virtually every person said, “Go ahead of us, go ahead.”

In no time, we were back at the head of the line, where I thrust my papers under the official’s nose.

He gawked at me, no doubt surprised I’d made it back the same day, and then reexamined every page of every passport, lest I’d altered them while getting Sue and Sons. He even stared at the blank pages, as if seeking a secret message in lemon juice or milk.

Our official reluctantly stamped each document and impaled the forms onto a large, rusty steel spike with such vigor that I cringed. He then tossed our passports and four small, metal medallions in our general direction and said, “Next.”

“What are these for?” I asked. They looked like award pins for memorizing revolutionary poems in a Maoist Sunday School. He ignored me and grabbed the documents that the man behind me was anxiously stuffing under his nose. I was dismissed.

The man at the next station snatched my four medallions. Maybe I hadn’t memorized enough poems. The ship’s officers saluted me sharply, and two deck hands grabbed our luggage and manhandled it down the steel steps while I lugged the double stroller with the two yáng wāwa (foreign dolls), to the chorus of Lǎowài (foreigner)! We located our widely dispersed and battered luggage and proceeded to customs.

“Anything to declare?” a bored official asked. Then she saw our two towheads and grinned. “So cute!” She studied our ten pieces of luggage and asked doubtfully, “Tourists?”

“We’re students of Chinese at Xiamen University.”

“Students? Welcome to Xiamen!” With no further ado – no forms, no opening of luggage – she waived us through.

Mr.Pan, I Presume?　Staid statistics can never prepare one for China’s most overwhelming reality – her 1/5 of the world’s population, a large portion of which stood on Hépíng dock. The clamor of the crowd surged over us like an incoming tide. And then someone yelled, “Mr.Pan, You’re finally here!”

We knew no one in Xiamen. Not even school officials knew which boat we’d taken. And yet an elderly fellow in a gray Mao jacket and cap was yelling and waving a scrap of cardboard on which was scrawled my Chinese name, “Pān Wéilián”潘维廉. He wormed his way through the throng, grabbed my hand with both of his, and hugged me, laughing and rattling off Chinese a mile a minute. I caught the gist of it. “I didn’t know when you were coming. I’ve met every boat for a week.” He saw our confusion. “I’m John (Yuēhàn约翰). Lao (old) Chang wrote about you.”

Lao Chang was a Chinese from Shanghai I met while working on my masters. After the “Cultural Revolution”, he moved to America and I’d hired him as our Chinese tutor. We paid him $500 a month for one year. One year later and $6,000 poorer, we’d not learned much Chi-nese but he’d told us quite a few stories about China – most of which we thought were pretty farfetched. Buses running at night without lights, and fish lips as a delicacy? The more I heard, the more I suspected my masters degree should have been in interplanetary studies rather than cross-cultural studies.

When Lao Chang heard we were going to Xiamen University, he said, “I have friends in Xiamen! I’ll write them about you.”

“That’s ok,” I told him. “We’ll be pretty busy learning Chinese anyway.”

“OK,” he said, and he wrote them anyway. And we were so glad he did. Once off the boat, we were absolutely exhausted, and thankful for a friendly face and a helping hand in this surging sea of strangers. I sent up a silent thanks to stubborn Lao Chang.

John hugged us again, beaming broadly and laughing, two gold teeth gleaming in the sun-light. “These are your sons? So cute!” We piled our ten suitcases onto a vintage Jiěfàng flatbed truck and made our way to XMU about 4 km. away. The narrow, potholed, serpentine streets were lined on both sides by 3 and 4 story buildings that looked more European than Orien-tal. We learned that the picturesque port city was one of the 5 treaty ports forced open by the Opium War, hence a mix of Asian, American, British and French architecture which early 20th century experts dubbed “Amoy Deco.”

The truck shuddered to a halt near the university in front of a guesthouse called the “Holiday Village.” Our one semester there was not a holiday but it was certainly an adventure.

Yours,

Bill and Sue

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(1)This is the Chinese phonetic alphabet, which has four tones denoted by “–”, “” “” and “”. In this word, “” and “” represent the second and forth tone.