What, me worry?

I've settled into a period of general acceptance about the upcoming trip. I'm now the guy who's going to China. It's as if I developed an excitingly new condition, like growing an eleventh finger or hair after being bald. The trip is actually only three months away, though–in fact, we leave three months from yesterday.  But sometimes I feel like it might as well be five years from now. Seems like anything that's more than a week away is just something that will happen someday, and that I'll face when the time comes. What has happened to my ability to plan ahead?

Actually, I have been taking steps. I got my passport. I purchased my traveller's insurance. Airline tickets: Check.  I have the trip agreement to fill out and send to Uncle George with payment–must do that this week, as well as call my doctor about immunizations.  (Good grief, did I pay Cheryl for the airline tickets, yet??)  I need to figure out how I'm going to get to New Jersey in order to make my noon flight on the Saturday we're leaving, and, equally important, how am I going to get back to Rome after a 16 hour flight from Beijing?  Do I drive down Friday night or take a flight Saturday morning? Driving down would necessitate driving back–not a very appealing prospect after the long flight back. I could pick up Chris and drive down to NJ and back with him, though. That would make the drive easier.  One good thing: Lori is going to arrange for me not to work the day after I get back.

There are other things: I'm worried about not speaking the language. This isn't like going to Austria after taking four years of German. I'm not going to have ANY idea what people are saying. The idea that I'll be totally dependent on someone translating for me makes me nervous.  I checked out a book called "Getting Around in Chinese" and found it about as easy to follow as a book written in... well, Chinese.

The food is another thing. I'm pretty much down with Chinese-American cuisine, but the thought of someone offering me a fish head or a pig's face has me a little queasy.  Anthony Bourdain may be able to dig into whatever is put in front of him anywhere in the world (although I did see him struggle with something like monkey testicles one time), but I'm a not so sanguine about by intestinal fortitude.  My plan: Stick to noodles, rice and chicken wherever possible. Something tells me I won't be able to get Moo Shoo pork when we're over there.

Reading maps of China

I've been using Google Maps to examine the locales on our nine-day itinerary, particularly those places we'll be visiting in Yunnan province.  I noticed an odd thing when trying to zoom in on the places--the cities--we'll be visiting. If one looks at an overview of the area of Yunnan P. on our itinerary, one can see the names of the cities we'll be visiting: Kunming, Baoshan, Dali. When one zooms in, though, the names of the cities disappear.  Huh.

Take Baoshan, for example. When one looks at the region surrounding Baoshan, one sees "Baoshan" on the map. Zoom in any further, though, and the city seems to disappear. It suddenly becomes Longyang. Zoom in some more and one can see the Baoshan airport, but there is no obvious city of Baoshan.  What gives?

Well, it turns out that it has to do with the regional and local levels of government, and the way those administrative divisions are displayed on the map. Baoshan and Kunming are what are called "prefecture-level cities." Think of a prefecture-level city as what would be the county surrounding a major city in the U.S. For example, Chicago is in Cook County. If it were a prefecture-level city in China, Cook County would be what is called Chicago. Within the prefecture-level city would be urban centers and possibly rural surroundings, but all of it would be called "Chicago."

The librarian in me wants to know how Baoshan compares to other metropolitan areas in the U.S.  Baoshan prefecture-level city covers an area of nearly 20,000 square km (~7,700 sq. miles) and has a population of about 2.5 million, about the same as the Denver-Aurora-Broomfield metropolitan area. The Longyang district of Baoshan, the urban center of the prefecture-level city, has a population of 850,000, or about the same population as the Albany-Schenectady-Troy metropolitan area or the city of San Francisco.  Kunming prefecture-level city has a population of 6.8 million with an urban population of over three million--the 23rd largest in China--which would make it the third largest city in the U.S.

Dreams and plans

Had my first dream about China last night. In it, we were driving either to or from Baoshan. The roads were narrow--can't remember if they were asphalt or dirt. The van was a VW bus... and yet, in the way it happens in dreams, it was also my Dodge Caravan.  At one point, I was driving over the top of a dam, a narrow way that made me nervous that I was going to drive off the edge. Then the road began to climb into the mountains. The road disappeared--that is, there were no shoulders or pavement, or even dirt, only rock. The road went up and up into towering mountains and the old bus climbed and climbed. The rock "road" had ruts and raised veins of rocks that made me think the bus/van was going to lose a wheel or get hung up, yet it kept climbing. I wasn't sure I was going the right way at times, but at one point I had to pull over to let a yellow school bus go by. There were a few pickups and cars behind the schoolbus, so I figured I was still on the road. I don't know where it was leading, but we were on the road.

With apologies to my uncle for not heeding his advice to do this sooner, I finally purchased trip insurance yesterday for both me and my brother. The party is now up to eight, which I hear will please Jasmine, our tour guide, because eight is considered a very lucky number in China. (Remember the 2008 Olympics? They started on 8/8/08 for a reason.)  It's now my aunt and uncle, two cousins, my dad and my stepmother, and my brother Chris and I who are going. People are excited when they hear I'm going to China, and I'm excited to tell everyone.

I've been wondering how I'm going to keep in touch with home.  Will my phone work?  Will I be able to write blog posts either with my iPod Touch over the Internet or by SMS message from my phone. Something to look into.

Some background

My grandfather, Chang Kan Chien, designed and built bridges on the Burma Road during China's war with Japan (known to Western history as the Second Sino-Japanese War and in China as the Anti-Japanese War) in the 1930s and 40s. After Japan overran the Chinese seaports in 1937, China had no way to receive allied supplies for its war efforts. The Burma Road was built to connect the Chinese railhead at Kunming with the railhead at Lashio in Burma, then a British colony. The road crossed over 700 miles of rugged Yunnan landscape, including three major rivers, ridges rising thousands of feet, and miles of mosquito-infested jungle. Two hundred thousand Chinese men, women and even children carved the road out of the imposing terrain using not much more than their bare hands. My grandfather helped to direct part of that effort.

Known as CK to his American descendants, my grandfather was born in 1904 at Chongming, Shanghai, China. After graduating from college in Beijing in 1920, he came to the U.S. for advanced training in engineering. He graduated in 1925 from RPI with a degree in civil engineering, and was awarded that college's prestigious MacDonald Prize. Before returning to China in 1927, he worked in the U.S., helping to design and build the Peace Bridge between Buffalo, NY and Fort Erie, Ontario, Canada, along the way. He married my grandmother, Alice Ryder (whom he met while a student at RPI) in 1929, and founded the Eastern Asia Foundation Company, Ltd., in China in 1933. In 1937, when the Japanese invaded China at the onset of the Anti-Japanese War, CK sent my grandmother and their three sons, Alan (my Dad), Philip and George, back to the U.S. for safety while he remained in China to assist with the war effort. His work included designing and constructing bridges on the Burma Road, including a notable bridge across the Mekong River. In 1940, after this bridge was bombed by the Japanese, the story goes that CK was returning by plane from Chungking to Kunming to assist with the rebuilding of the bridge when his plane was shot down by the Japanese.

On the trip to Yunnan province, a major goal will be to visit sites where my grandfather left his mark, particularly the bridge across the Mekong River (or Lancang River as it is called in China) and hopefully his burial site, which has proven to be elusive, but which we hope is in the vicinity of Kunming.

In which I decide I am going to China

So, in early April, I discovered I might have an opportunity to go to China--land of my ancestors and my father's birth--with my father, my uncle and other family members.

I immediately want to go. My only thought is, if my father's going, I want to be there with him.

My cousin mentioned it to my uncle George, and my uncle sent me the itinerary. We'd be leaving on October 24 and returning November 2. In between, we'd be visiting Beijing and the Great Wall, then flying to the capital of Yunnan province, Kunming, and traveling to various sites in Yunnan, including Baoshan and Dali. But the main reason for travelling to Yunnan is to visit sites that have great family significance--a bridge my grandfather built and his burial site.

I am nervous as I broach the trip to my wife, Lori. It's not cheap: nearly $3,000 between air fare, the tour package, and travel insurance. My fears are dispelled as she enthusiastically agrees I should go. A family trip with a genealogical aim is her kind of trip. However, between cost and the timing of the trip, only I would be able to go from our family. Other Chiens are lining up to go, too--my brother, another cousin, my step-mother--and the traveling party can't be larger than eight without impacting its cost. It's also at a time of year when our kids are in school. Finally, the cost would be prohibitive for my wife and two children to go, too. While a dream is to travel with them to China, the cost and the timing of this trip prevents it from being the trip that fulfills that dream. Finally, I must scrounge the time off at work. Thankfully, my boss at the library is flexible about time off, and I am able to put together enough time off earned in order to make the trip.

Unbelievably, astonishingly, joyfully, excitedly, I am now committed to going to China!

A Journey Begins

Each year, the first weekend in April brings one of my favorite days of the year.

Draft Day.

You see, in 1984, I read a book by Lee Eisenberg and Glenn Waggoner called Rotisserie League Baseball, and I convinced my friend, Steve, my cousins, Dave and Paul, my father, and another friend from college to start a Rotisserie baseball league. Rotisserie Baseball is the original game in the now booming fantasy sports industry. 2010 marks our 27th straight year of playing our league. Once a year we gather--14 of us, representing 12 teams--to draft at auction the players that will be on our team in the coming season. The Baker's Dozen, we call ourselves, and my four-time champion team is called Chien Music. That's an ongoing journey that might merit some posts at a later time. However, this post is about the beginning of another journey.

The 2010 draft was held in Poughkeepsie. Afterwards, a few of the team owners gathered at a local pub overlooking the Hudson River to catch up. For some of us, it’s the only time each year that we actually see each other. My cousins Dave and Paul were among the revelers at this post-draft gathering, and at one point, my cousin David said to me, “So, did Paul tell you he’s going to China again?” (He went last year with Dave and his sister, Judy, his mom and dad, and Dave’s wife, Cheryl, and daughter, Jeannette.) “No,” I said. “Tell me about it. Is this a business trip?” (Paul works for UPS.) “No,” Paul tells me, “I’m going with my mom and dad and your father.”

If this were a scene in a movie, a spit take would have been appropriate at this point. “Wait a minute,” I say. ”My father is going to China? How come I don’t know about this?” I pressed Paul for details, but I don’t think I was listening at that point. All I could think was, my father is going to China. For the first time since he was seven years old, when his mother and two brothers fled in the face of Japan’s 1937 invasion, my 80-year-old father is returning to the land of his birth.

Holy crap, I thought. I want to go to China.