A New Year's Letter
Over the Pacific Ocean
Year of the Horse
February 5, 2002
Dear Friends,
In keeping with a tradition of China where we live this year, we are
on our way home for the New Year celebration. Last night as we left our
Shanghai YMCA Hotel we found a row of men slouched against the wall at
the railway ticket office waiting to buy tickets this morning. When we
went out for breakfast the line stretched three blocks with no end in sight,
everyone headed back to their home village as we head to ours in the Bay
Area.
Our son Joe is now settled at Point Richmond, with a bay view. Annette,
Steve, and Rowan Williams have invited us to stay in their downstairs bedroom
in Oakland. This will mean a different awakening in the mornings--not a
dark rising to yank on layers of clothes against the Nanjing cold, but
a pounce from an eager grandson and a lick from his dog to get us out into
the backyard.
Since
August we've been in Nanjing, one of China's ancient capitals, just a few
hours up the Yangtze from Shanghai. Anne is teaching a course in New Testament
in the Protestant seminary's graduate program and continuing her collection
of Chinese Christian oral songs. I teach at the China Pharmaceutical University
as one of the 80 volunteers teaching college English across China sponsored
by the Amity Foundation, founded sixteen years ago by Chinese Christians
to give the global church a chance to take part in China's development
(more about Amity: www.amityfoundation.org
and
China teaching: www.oocities.org/hughwire).
As I try to sleep on this plane, a child's Chinese comes across the
aisle. I recognize these sounds now, as I recognize also a few characters
on street signs, though meanings are hazy. My Chinese learning has been
very slow, and when I try to speak it's often a Spanish phrase that pops
out. My special door to China has been to become an English teacher. Learning
English matters there and those who speak it get attention. Fellow teachers
are willing to share with me on the commute bus and students are grateful
to talk about any common interest.
But I do know the names and locations of all the Chinese provinces because
I have students from each one, except Tibet. Recently pairs of students
in my classes chose a picture of somewhere in the US that reminded them
of a place in China and expressed their feelings about it in a short English
poem. Whether or not they got from this a tie to a part of the US as I
was hoping, I did get connected to their many different worlds in China.
In January we began to travel outside Nanjing, beginning in Kunming
(southwest China) where Anne lived in her preschool and junior high years.
In her search
for oral songs Christian friends took us to two minority mud-brick villages
on the steep mountains of Yunnan province. A hill covered by chaparral
and eucalyptus felt like the hillsides of Laguna Beach where I grew up
or El Cajon where Anne went to high school. A mountaintop of scrub pines
was close to the Nevada high desert slopes I have walked prospecting with
my brother. We were met by a row of girls on our left and boys on our right
singing songs of welcome, reminding us of the indigenous peoples of the
American West.
We attend the neighborhood church in Nanjing, which manages to pack
in a good three thousand worshippers each weekend in its four small floors
through four services. There is no coffee hour, hugs or other gesture toward
passing the peace, but we practice the hymns before the worship and then
sing them together, often translations of songs we know. Once I adjust
to the tone of the piety of the preacher of the day, I use the long sermons
as time to catch up with myself, putting my attention were most people
probably put theirs when I have been their preacher. Meanwhile, Anne can
hear seminary graduates communicate the gospel in a busy modern city. When
everyone prays aloud at once at the close of the service and in the simple
dignity of the monthly communion we are fully drawn in and join in worship
with these people in this place.
After two weeks at home with family and friends, we will be back in
China for another term of teaching, research, and building bonds that will
shape the rest of our lives. Thanks for your notes. Keep in touch: 69 Beijing
Xi Lu, Hua Gui Yuan 9-203, Nanjing 210024, People's Republic of China;
or hughwire@yahoo.com, annewire@hotmail.com.
Blessings, Hugh, and Anne.
more pictures
of YunNan
home