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Detour From Australia

June 14th, 1988

Dear Mitch and Janet,

It’s hard to believe that in 3 months we’ll finally be in China! For 7 years, I’ve insisted our busi-ness was only temporary to pay off school bills and save money for study in China. And now, thanks to you buying the business, we can finally take the Slow Boat to China (quite literally; af-ter the plane to Hong Kong, we take an 18-hour boat ride up the coast). Some people still think it’s a bit crazy to give up a prosperous business to study Chinese in China, so here’s how China got in my blood.

Until the Air Force sent me to Taiwan in 1976, I had no interest in China or Asia. My heart was set on Australia. When I applied to emigrate, the Australian Embassy replied that I was warmly welcomed but needed to reapply in ten years because the minimum age was eighteen and I was only eight. But they softened the blow by sending me a box of children’s books about Australia. I still remember one poem:

“Now you have seen within these pages birds and beasts of bygone ages,

And you can draw a kangaroo, a wombat and a black swan too.”

I never made it to Australia, but Xiamen University’s (XMU) Lotus Lake has black swans.

I was still reeling from Australia’s rejection when I read about educational work with poor Africans. I determined to be a Marian Father until I learned I wasn’t Catholic, which meant I was Protestant by default.

I had no idea what we Protestants were protesting, so I spent hours with two Catholic priests from Ireland and Spain, Father Patrick J. O’Reilly and Father Carlos. The cigar-smoking, whisky swilling Father Patrick often joked, “William, I’ll convert ye yet, heathen!” They never converted me, but they did influence my decision to help poor farmers in Central America.

With Nicaragua or Guatemala in mind, in high school I was involved in various social activities and joined the FFA (Future Farmers of America) for four years. I studied animal hus-bandry, horticulture and forestry. The team I captained won Florida’s state championship in 1973 and we attended the Florida Governor’s awards banquet. I sat beside Miss Forestry and Miss Universe, who was from the Philippines – but I had no interest in Asia. I was headed for Central America.

And I ended up not in Australia, Africa or South America but China. Yuánfèn(1) (fate) – or else Someone Upstairs has a cosmic sense of humor.

14-Year Detour to China　On a hot April afternoon in 1974, three months before high school graduation, I saw the Seychelles Islands poster that derailed my plans for Central America and led me by the nose on a 14-year detour to the mainland of China. The poster was in the local mall between signs for Winn Dixie ground beef and Eckerd Drugstore weekly specials. Curious, I non-chalantly sauntered into the Air Force Recruitment office. I was less nonchalant when I staggered out three hours later.

The savvy sergeant sized me up from across a bare, glass-topped, gray steel desk – no family photos, penholders, pads. Not even the dust of Bartow, population 15,000 and proud phosphate capital of the world, had dared settle on its surface, which gleamed like the spit – polished shoes planted firmly, parallel, on the polished floor.

He was a blue-suited carnival barker wise to the insecurities of an 18-year-old mark on the eve of graduation and anonymity. He cocked and aimed an eyebrow and said, “We’re not like the Army, you know.” He nodded in the direction of his rival next door. “The army puts a mirror under your nose and if it fogs up, you’re in. But not the Air Force of these here United States.” He paused, and added, “No sir. We turn away most of our applicants.”

“Well, I wasn’t really…”

“But I see something special in you, son,” the fisher of airmen interrupted. My back betrayed me, straightening of its own accord, and he reeled me in. “The U.S. Air Force is not a job, son, but an adventure!” He shoved towards me The Photo Album with blue-uniformed airmen who strutted tall through Bavarian villages and along African beaches, or relaxed in ivy-clad brick dormitories, or flew jets into the stratosphere. Some even soared into space – and they were paid for it! The Air Force wasn’t a job but four years free in an exclusive timeshare underwritten by the deep-pocketed Department of Defense – all for just a signature. I was ready to prick my finger but he settled for ink.

A black U.S. government ballpoint pen materialized in his hand and with a signature I cut my apron strings and shredded the apron. I signed my life away to see the world. And that blue suited Mephistopheles sentenced me to Tampa’s MacDill Air Force Base 46 miles from home.

Air Force Dream Sheets　MacDill Air Force Base was so diabolically close to Bartow that I was expected to return home every weekend. I was a weekday warrior but a weekend mama’s boy. I was happy, of course, to see friends and family – but every weekend? And each weekend, mom updated me on the home front:

“Son, crime is worse than ever now,” she’d say, “Drugs and Cubans. No jobs, people dying of cancer from the radioactive phosphate mines which have drained the water table and sink-holes are swallowing highways and houses whole…” And she’d end with, “Son, after the Air Force, you are moving back here to Bartow, aren’t you? This is your home, you know.”

Yes, I knew. And though I loved the little “City of Oaks and Azaleas,” I grabbed a pen and an Air Force Form 392 – the Dream Sheet.

Dream Sheets allowed airmen to submit assignment preferences, the rationale being that a happy airman was a productive airman. We labored over Dream Sheets like a wish list for Santa, sometimes submitting 2 or 3 per month. Most airmen begged for Taiwan, but I asked for Thule, Greenland, “The Top of the World,” because no one but a fugitive from Interpol would volunteer for a post 1,207 km. north of the Arctic Circle. I was confident I’d be on the next plane out – or dog sled. I was desperate to see the world, even if it was just the chunk of ice that Leif Erickson passed off as Greenland in the world’s first real estate scam.

And the U.S. Air Force, which had promised the moon and tucked me into Tampa, sent my friends to Greenland and packed me off to Taiwan, just 100 miles off the coast of Xiamen. Yuánfèn.

I’d have been happy to go anywhere on the planet except Asia – but in the next letter I’ll share how, within a week, I’d fallen head-over-heels for Taiwan.

Warm regards,

Bill and Sue