Eric's Beijing Diary

Thursday morning I got the visa paperwork from the university in China. The travel agency sent that material with my passport to the Chinese consulate in LA. I should have my visa in a few days. Yesterday I drove down to the old Flying J truckstop in Eloy and had the buffet dinner. Kinda strange sitting in a truckstop again after seven years. Hard to believe it has already been seven years since I moved here to the East Valley. I spent the seven years prior to that in the trucking industry, traveling the highways of America.

This will be move number 37 for me. I think. I counted twice and got different results. But actually, it’s kinda hard to decide just how to count. For example, I moved here seven years ago. I have lived, since December of 96, here in the Phoenix area (except for the summer of 97, when I was working in Alaska). But during that time, I have lived in five different places in three different cities. So what should I count? And what about the seven years that I was living on the road? Should I count each truck separately? That would put me at about 40. Anyway, even in the worst case, its less than 49 (my age) so we're still down to less than one move per year, which isn’t bad.

I am a gypsy. A wanderer. Born to move. No matter what kind of hobby, or project, or work I was involved in, there was always the feeling in the back of my mind that I might not be around to see it through. When you move a lot, moving becomes the norm. The expected. But, as I mentioned, my life has been a mixture, because, for example, I lived basically in the North Dakota area from 1981 to 1996. That’s fifteen years. But during that time, I traveled throughout the 48 states, and most of Canada. Speaking of Canada, I also spent six summers in Saskatchewan going to two graduate schools. Should I count that? You see, my life has always been a combination of staying in one place, and yet not staying in one place. The more things remained the same, the more they changed.

And how many places will I live in China? Will I be on the move there, too? Or will I finally settle down? And where will I retire? Funny how you start thinking about that stuff when you get pretty close to the big Five O. At any rate, it will be interesting to see how my approach to living in China is influenced by the way my life has developed to this point. Stay tuned…

As I mentioned last Friday, I have obtained a position at a Chinese university. I am awaiting the final paperwork for my visa, so that I can go to Beijing in January. The college where I will be teaching is part of the new “software colleges” initiative by the Beijing government. As such, the college where I will be teaching is new, even though the university it is part of has been around since the early fifties.

I currently teach Information Systems at a small, private university here in Tempe. When I came to this university almost four years ago, I was a Microsoft specialist. But I have slowly been making a shift to the Oracle database system. Of course, I am still very interested Windows as a server platform, because it is much easier as a training platform. But when it comes to the systems that ride on that platform, I have narrowed my focus almost exclusively to Oracle. My objective in China, is to develop curricula which will facilitate the teaching of complex systems in English, to students who are not native speakers of English.

Tempe, Arizona.

One might wonder why my "Beijing Diary" would begin in Tempe, Arizona. Quite simply, it is because, although I am right now preparing to go to Beijing, there remain a few details to be taken care of, most importantly, my visa.

I actually began my move to China three years ago, in the fall of 2000. I did not then have a means or opportunity to go to China, but I began studying in earnest, particularly with extensive reading, and watching Chinese movies. One of the books that I found most enlightening during this period, was a book called "Wild Swans" by Jung Chang. I grew up in Japan during the fifties and sixties, so I am about the same age as Jung Chang, and the things she had to say about the China she grew up in were of great interest to me. Another book which was helpful during this time was "The Soong Dynasty" by Sterling Seagrave. The word "Dynasty" in this title is actually a play on words, because it does not refer to historical dynasties, but to the family dynasty of Charlie Soong. Charlie's three daughters and his son TV Soong all played important roles in the 20th Century development of Chinese history.

In the fall of 2001, I took a trip to China with a group of local businessmen. We traveled to a small village in Yunan Province, donated some computers to a small elementary school, and spent three days teaching the children how to use the computers. One of the things that became very obvious to me during this trip, was the need for me to learn Chinese. I determined, upon my return to the US, to find a tutor. My first tutor, Lili, was a neighbor of mine, and she taught me how to read Pinyin out of a first grade reading book . When Lili returned to China in the fall of 2002, I wasn't sure how to proceed. Thankfully, I met Ina, who is a native speaker of both Japanese and Mandarin, and has an extraordinary grasp of the linguistic comparisons between languages.

Recently, I have obtained a position with a Chinese university, so I am preparing to leave for Beijing in January.