I had no desire to visit China. Give me Italy, Spain, England any day. I want to travel but to a country where I
recognize the food and speak the language. I want to eat with a fork and a
knife, and I do not want to squat to do my business. (At my age, I am not a very
agile crouching tiger.)
It has been one year since my husband HoneyBunch and I spent
seventeen days in China, and I can now look back and not hold it against him
anymore.
It’s not that I didn’t like China; it just wasn’t on any of my
bucket lists. And though he may deny it,
it wasn’t on any of his. I distinctly
remember taking him to a travel presentation where he went all Kung Fu Panda on
the sales agent. The poor man was talking about the sites we would visit in
China and the history we would learn, and HB said some pretty ugly things about
Mao and Communism.
Needless to say, my husband and I didn’t stay for the slide
presentation of Tuscany.
What changed HB’s mind?
Why did we spend our trip-to-Italy money on a seventeen-day tour of
China?
His son.
His oldest went to China on a one-month vacation and returned soon after to pursue an interesting
job offer – just a little diversion until he decided what to do with the seven
years of expensive schooling from UT-Austin paid for in cash by his father. He worked at several jobs while there and
eventually met a wonderful young woman and got married. They were making plans to move to the states,
so HB figured this might be our one and only chance to meet our Chinese in-laws.
He booked us on a tour for the first twelve days and then added a four-day detour
into the interior on our own to visit family.
For four months I practiced with chopsticks, worked out at the
gym (because the brochure warned us there would be a lot of climbing and
walking), and read up on Chinese history.
I had a lot to learn. Nowhere in the seven thousand years of history was
there mention of Mulan, Jackie Chan, or the Karate Kid. The only Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was a
made-for-America movie that scored big at the box office.
It was a bit overwhelming but made sense when we were able to
attach book knowledge with the museum artifacts and the structures that have
survived through the ages.
It all feels like a dream a year later, but what stays with me
most is my daughter-in-law’s family. Now
that the kids live nearby, we often talk about “home.” She Skypes and emails
with them on a regular basis. They ask
about us, and we send our regards. Despite our language barrier and all the
thousands of miles between us, one thing is real – mess with our family and
awaken the hidden dragon in all of us.
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