Running Stories (0): Mount Up with Wings Like Eagles

I suppose many people see running as a test of physical ability. When it comes to long-distance, people may add that running is also a test of mental toughness. Recently I read an article entitled "There Is No Atheist At 26th Mile", in which the author stated that when one had to stretch his or her body and mind to such an extend while running a marathon (measured at 26.2 miles), it also became a spiritual experience.

Running a half-marathon in Monterey this morning (November 16, 2003), I had to call it a spiritual experience at the end. What I mean, however, is somewhat different from what the above mentioned article indicated. I didn't wait till the end - when I was supposed to be extremely tired - to call on God. My strategy of saving a lot of energy at the beginning paid off handsomely; in fact, I ran my last 3 miles 5-6 minutes faster than my first 3 miles. I invited God into my running much earlier in the race by repeating this verse from the Scripture:

But those who wait on the Lord
Shall renew their strength
They shall mount up with wings like eagles
They shall run and not be weary
They shall walk and not to faint
(Isaiah 40:31, NKJV)

It fit perfectly because instead of running straight like the last race I entered (and didn't totally enjoy), I incorporated walk breaks throughout. As it turned out, I averaged a faster pace during today's 13.1 miles than I did in the last race of 12K (or 7-plus miles) at Bridge-to-Bridge in San Francisco. Walk breaks proved to be very effective.

4-5 miles into the race, I was already able to comfortably maintain a pace that would beat my own expectation. From that point on, I stopped worrying about running anymore. I began to see everything around me. The blue sky. The ocean wave crashing on the rocks. The cypress trees. The cheer crowds including local residents and race volunteers. There was Irish music playing. There was a team of drummers. A few violinists were playing a very slow tune; I didn't think they were helpful. Some runners were so fast (yes, those Africans) that they were already meeting us on their return route while most of us hadn't reached the half-way mark; and a man about my pace kept telling every one of those fast runners his or her overall standing. A few others were shouting "way to go" at those same runners. After the 10th mile, all I was doing was passing people, most of which only had energy left to walk. Knowing that I would finish a good time by my own standard - plus I began to tire myself - I enjoyed a few moments of intentionally slowing down to run with, typically, an older lady and give her a few encouraging words. And of course, the moment of exhilaration when I sprinted across the finish line. Constantly talking to God was one thing (which I enjoyed completely), while being able to appreciate every detail and every moment of the whole race - instead of only thinking about running and finishing - was what prompted me to call it a spiritual experience.

Perhaps I can use this space to recount my running stories - from past to present - to demonstrate how running has evloved from a physical experience to a mental experience and to a spiritual experience in my own life.

Running Stories (1): The Last Straw

I began my distance running at the age of 13. At the time, I was living in the dormitory of a middle school in Nanjing, China, my birthplace, only going home over the weekends - which didn't include Saturdays at that time in China.

As far as my physical condition was concerned, I was basically in a vicious cycle. On the one hand, since I constantly got sick and quite weak in general, I hardly participated in exercises or even just plain games with other kids. On the other hand, lack of exercise didn't help at all in improving my physical condition, so I continued to get sick roughly once every other week. It would have been easier had I stayed home, but since the middle school - one of the best in the nation - was far away, I had to live in the dorm most of the time. My mom would visit me at the dorm once a week to bring extra nutritious food like eggs, as well as some Chinese medicines that doctor had suggested me to take to improve my kidney condition. But after a year living in the dorm, no sign of improvement was shown.

Meanwhile, I could only get a passing grade in the P.E. class - not based on my performance, but because of my obedience and courtesy to the teacher. I literally failed every test on running, jumping, or throwing. I couldn't even compete with some of the girls.

Outside track and field, the situation was just as bad. Unable to run fast, I was often left out when it came to basketball or soccer. Well, the only position I could play in soccer was probably the goalkeeper, then of course no team would give me that chance because it would be too easy for the other side to score. Strangely, I didn't mind to be left out; I was perfectly fine to just watch from the sideline.

One day just before the winter break, which was around the Chinese New Year, my roommates at the dorm sat me down and offered me an advice. There was one last thing I could try, they said, and that was long-distance running. "This is the only event that doesn't require skills or special abilities to get started," they said. They wanted me to give it a shot over the winter break.

I didn't think that was a good idea. Just not long ago during school's annual New Year's Day street running race, I finished last with two "fatties" among the 90 plus boys in our grade. Those two boys were unusually heavy, considering most people didn't have much to eat during those days in China, and they were known for running slow. To finish last with them - in fact, the boy finished just ahead of us was way ahead of us - was almost embarrassing. I just couldn't run.

But just like my roommates said, I had no other choice.

The winter break started. Some neighbor kids got together to run in the mornings, and I joined them. We went to a nearby college to use its track. For me, running one lap of 400 meters (or 1/4 mile) at my top speed was my maximum distance, and that was what I did at the beginning. Then I began to add a little bit more, then a little bit more. By the end of the winter break, when almost all the other kids had actually quit, I was able to complete three laps. I was thrilled.

Running Stories (2): Boy on the Bus

After the winter break, I went back to my dormitory life. Things began to change now because every Sunday morning, while I was home with my parents, I would go to that college nearby and run on the track. I focused on 3 to 4 laps because that was what the school required the most.

My roommates began to see the changes, and they were happy for me. I still couldn't run fast, nor jump high, but at least I became "physically more reasonable." I no longer had to worry about being blown away by a gust of wind.

As for running, I didn't think that I had the prospect of running longer distance. I felt that I had reached my limit. Or in a sense, I didn't see the point of running longer. Then, quite by accident, I changed my view of myself.

It was a Saturday afternoon in the hot summer. I was on my way home. On that day we got off school early, and I went for a bus route where I could go to my favorite bookstore. Coming out of the bookstore, I had only 10 cents left in my pocket (in China, 1 cent is 1 fen). I wasn't sure about the exact bus fare from there to home, because this was not my usual route. Sometimes they charged me 5 cents, sometimes 10 cents. I decided to take a risk, because I really wanted to spend 5 cents to buy an ice stick. It was so hot! Before I could finish the ice stick, the bus arrived. I jumped on the bus with the ice stick still in my hand, and what I feared to happen happened.

The ticket collector, a young woman, asked me to pay 10 cents for the ticket. I said I only had 5 cents left. She said I need to pay 10 cents. I said the last time I paid 5 cents. Then all of a sudden, she exploded. She seriously thought that I had more money on me, or I wouldn't buy that ice stick. When I insisted that the last time I paid 5 cents, she began to accuse me of lying. That got me. I stopped saying anything, because if I tried, I would cry out aloud right there. The bus just waited, letting this girl threw all her emotions on me, with every passanger watching on. After who-knows-how-long, which felt like eternity to me anyway, she finally stopped and took my 5 cents. The bus took off again.

Then to everyone's astonishment, I got off at the very next stop and started to walk home!

Actually, I could take the bus a few more stops, as far as the 5-cent fare would take me, which would be only one stop short from where I wanted to get off. (Yeah, she could have been more flexible!) Then I could walk, and I would still "defend" my innocence. But obviously I was very mad. Not only I was mad about being called a liar, but I was mad at myself too. I knew 10 cents would be safe, yet I took a chance. Anyway, I was mad and I was walking fast. I walked for at least two hours.

When I got home, I wasn't that mad anymore. Then a thought hit me. It was almost stunning. I WAS NOT TIRED! After walking for this long, I wasn't tired! I said to myself, hey, maybe you are made to run long-distance!

That revelation proved to be quite true. I began to add more and more laps into my self-training. I began to believe that I could ran as long as I wanted if I really tried.

One of the most interesting aspects of life is how sometimes you discover yourself - rather unexpectedly.

Running Stories (3): A Runner's Mind

It didn't take me long to realize that mental strength was as critical as physical strength when it came to long-distance running. But it would be an exaggeration to say that I was very conscious about it. I ran to improve my physical conditions, and it was simple as that.

After a few years of running, one thing was sure. Mostly what I did was to improve myself physically. Friends would make comments on my endurance to run long-distance, and they meant my physical endurance. Deep down, however, I knew that my mental strength had a lot to do with my running as well, but exactly how it came to play was very vague to me.

Many years later, I became more and more fascinated by how human mind works. Partly because I was a computer science student in college, and I learned a great deal how people tried to make computer work one way or another. Through those attempts, people tried to figure out if that was also how human brain worked. Gradually, I started to view the whole situation from a different angle. Instead of trying to understand human mind through the development of computer, why not look at the human mind directly? That was also the time I made changes in my career direction. I decided that I would not be a programmer who deals with the machines all the time; I'd rather have the opportunities to deal with people directly. I enjoy to understand people and to serve them.

So how does a runner's mind work? I certainly cannot speak for anyone else, but for myself, I happen to remember how I was running and what happened to me through the years. I doubt that I ever developed much mental strength through running. Instead, I discovered some of my mental strength through running.

For example, my ability to keep a consistent pace was evident from my running. A big part of my preparation was to figure out how fast I needed to run each lap in order for me to finish at certain time, and once I started to run, I would stick to that plan. If I felt really good, I wouldn't rush to a faster pace based on that feeling; if I felt sluggish instead, I would push myself to hang on the planned pace until I ran through the "wall."

In later years I realized that consistency was the key to success in other areas in my life as well. Looking at the projects that I finished successfully, it was almost all because I was able to carry out the tasks in a consistent manner. On the other hand, many of my projects failed because I didn't have the consistency. Other people certainly may have different styles. I observe that some people are "sprinters" in life. They work hard and play hard. I know that's not my style. I know that through my running.

I suppose one could improve his mental strength through running if he understands how to focus and how to prepare for it. I certainly wasn't knowledgable enough when I was a teenager, nor was I smart enough to seek out a coach or a mentor. I just ran, all by myself. Perhaps some of my mental weakness showed up in my running too, but I was simply not aware of it. It's not too late, though. I am still running.

Running Stories (4): Olympic Heroes

Most of the classmates from my middle school and high school in China had no idea how I was training myself on running. Or put it more precisely, they had no idea that I was actually serious about it. For most kids, running was exercise. It made one healthier, and that was about it.

Initially, running was meant to be exercise to me, as my roommates adviced me. But as I gradually had a better sense about myself through running, I was hooked. I found that running alone allowed me to reach deep into myself, and I enjoyed that feeling. Sometimes I wonder if one does a certain thing because of his personality, or if he does a certain thing long enough, it molds his personality. I suspect that running and I had that type of relationship.

When I explained to some people how I was running, they appeared puzzled. How could you run all by yourself lap after lap? Wouldn't you get bored? Obviously I wasn't bored, or I wouldn't maintain a high level of enthusiasm about running for 4-5 years (up until my family left China). It seemed that there were always ways to motivate myself.

For example, I was always fascinated by the long-distance running stories in the Olympic Games. There was this guy, while running an Olympic marathon, suffered a cramp half way through. He gave up and jumped on a vehicle that was patrolling the race. After a while, his cramp was gone, so he jumped off the car and resumed running! By then he was far ahead his competitors, and he entered the stadium first! He was then caught by the officials, of course. There was another guy who lost all his belongings while travelling across the ocean to participate in an Olympic marathon. He ran the race nonetheless, in his street dress! And finished in 5th place! A Japanese runner gave up his marathon pursuit half way. Many years later, as a high official of the Japanese Olympic committee, he returned to the race site and "completed" his run. His "official" time was like some 40 plus years.

Then there were stories that were not amusing, but utterly inspiring. My favorite Olympic hero was a man named Paavo Nurmi of Finland. In 1924 in Paris, he won five long-distance running gold medal in 6 days! Most amazingly, the 1,500 meters and the 5,000 meters finals were held only one hour apart, and he broke both world records! If there was one thing that I would wish upon Nurmi, it would be that he had also run and won an Olympic marathon. But he never did. Luckily there were plenty of Olympic marathon runners to fill that role. When I ran, I often imagined that I was running with them. Especially running with Nurmi.

Over time, I naturally grew this dream of running a marathon in the Olympics. Soon I realized that it was not realistic anymore. I simply did not have the speed. But the dream of running a marathon was always deep in my heart, and the dream of participating in the Olympic Games also never went away.

Now, you might be intrigued and ask, which event would you possibly participate in? Well, I guess I will have a shot at Tai Chi if it ever becomes an Olympic event. But seriously, I did come up with an idea recently. You know those Olympic torch bearers? The last time the U.S. held the Olympic Games (in Atlanta, 1996), 10,000 people were selected to carry the torch, running through 42 states. How were they selected? They were "community heroes" across the nation. You probably can guess what I will be doing in my spare time between now and the next time the Olympics come to America, in addition to running.

Running Stories (5): Numbers Game

When I was in middle school, I got a digital watch from one of my relatives who lived either in southern China or Hong Kong. At that time, a digital watch was still a rarity in most part of China, not to mention being owned by a school boy. What I liked about the digital watch was that I could tell the exact time much easier than reading the hands of a regular watch. Every day before lunch time, a few boys would turn to me, asking for exactly how many seconds left before the bell rang. They would then start countdown and position themselves, and when the bell rang, they dashed out of the classroom at exactly the right moment - that was how they got to the front of the lines in the cafeteria. I guess my obsession with precise time and clock started at that time. Today, my watch is "radio controlled," reset every day by the national atomic clock. And yes, I am very punctural. If you invite me to a party, don't expect me to be early.

That digital watch became an integral part of my running. I used it to time myself on every lap, and I would quickly calculate my current pace and see if I was on track (no pun intended). After I went home, I would again calculate my average pace for the day and set a goal for the next week. Then I began to do the same calculation not just on my own time, but on the times achieved by world-class athletes, including world records! That was probably when I realized that my chance of qualifying for Olympics was next to none. But through that "hobby," I began to develop a keen sense of numbers.

In my last year in middle school, our P.E. class required us to run 1,500 meters 4 times, and the best time was reported toward the final grade. My first three runs were 6'18" (6 minutes and 18 seconds), 6'00" and 5'46", respectively. Thus I predicted that my last try would come in at 5'36". My "reasoning" was that my last three tries showed improvement of 18 and 14 seconds, respectively, so my final run "should" have an improvement of 10 seconds from the last run, because 18, 14 and 10 would form a nice linear series. I told all my friends of my prediction; they were polite. I ended up finishing the run at 5'37", good enough to earn full score on this event.

That was only the beginning of my obsession with numbers. I began to play with numbers wherever I saw them. Friends' birthdays were one of my primary targets. A close friend was born on March 27, 1968. In China, that was usually written as 1968.3.27. I told him that the cubic root of "19683" is "27". In addition, 1+9+6+8+3=27. That's how I still remember his birthday. If you think that running is crazy, wait until you see what can be done with numbers.

I once had a combination lock for my bicycle. The combination key was "762". I stared at the number (with pencil and paper) and saw that 762 was the sum of 400, 361, and 1, which happened to be the squares of 20, 19 and 1, respectively. That was probably as much as a combination lock would deserve already. For some reason I looked at the numbers a little bit longer, and when I saw that 20+19+1=40, which was as plain as it could get, suddenly something quite extraordinary appeared in front of my eyes:

762
------ = 19.05
 40

Eh, what's special about that? Well, if you combine all the facts I listed above, you have:

19² +1² + 20²          1
------------------ = 19 ----
  19 + 1 + 20            20

A little magic that was hidden in a combination lock.

Later I thought about it. It was as much a matter of attitude - if not more so - as a case of skills or talent. Yes, some skills and experience may be required, but it was the belief that something extraordinary would come out of ordinary if we try hard enough that drove me to hang on a little bit longer. Kind of reminded me of how sometimes I ran. (Okay, that's my attempt to get back to the topic of running before you begin to wonder where I am heading to.)

Running Stories (6): Racing at School Meets

As much as I enjoyed running, I didn't care much about racing. It was similar to my attitude toward study: As much as I enjoyed learning, I never cared much about taking exam. Somehow I got this self-confidence that my ability of running or studying was not measured by races or exams.

But racing was fun. I couldn't say the same about taking exams. Most of the races I participated were part of the semi-annual sport meets held in school. We had sport meets once in spring and once in autumn every year, mostly on track and field events. Classes would compete against each other within the same grade. Top finishers in each event earned points, and the class that accumulated the most points won.

I naturally entered the distance running events, and I never won any races. The longer the race, however, the better I would finish. I didn't feel bad about not finishing first, as long as I finished well enough to earn points for my class.

The last race I ran was in the autumn before my family left China. We would immigrate to the U.S. in the spring next year. I already knew that we had a good chance to go to America, and I hadn't been running much for a couple of months before the autumn school meet. I did train one more time the weekend before, and I felt marginally okay.

The event I entered was 1,500 meters, or five laps on our school's 300-meter track. At the gun shot, almost everyone around me seemed to get off a fast start, and I immediately fell behind. After one lap, I was the dead last, while my legs were feeling heavy. An old classmate happened to be standing on the side watching, and he smiled at me, shouting, "We are getting old!"

After the second lap, I only moved up one or two positions, while the leading pack was already half a lap in front of me. Between two and half laps and three laps, however, my legs were suddenly feeling strong - and I was mad. Look at all these people in front of me! At that moment, I also suddenly remembered that this could be my last race!

I threw away my glasses, and I began to accelerate with two laps to go. Usually I would save that speed to the final half lap, but at the moment, energy just came up strong, as if from nowhere.

The next two laps were perhaps some of the most memorable running I'd ever experienced. I was passing other runners one by one. I could almost feel their astonishment. I ended up finishing 4th, crossing the line at the same time as the 3rd place finisher. The top two finishers were about 20 meters ahead of us. I was certain that had the race gone on another lap, I would pass them all.

My whole class erupted. They cheered on as if I finished first. My teacher ran toward me with his arms open, "You could run 10,000 meters!" he shouted. I looked around, "Where are my glasses?"

The funny thing was, later when some of my classmates described the school meet in their composition, they wrote that I finished first! Well, they forgot - or perhaps they didn't care - that I was in the same class. In the next composition class, the first sentence coming out of our Chinese teacher was, "When you write, be honest."

I still remember my last race in China, and I still remember what my Chinese teacher said. (I think he was talking about writing in Chinese, though.)

Running Stories (7): Losing Track in America

My experiences in America were not nearly as bad as the chapter title seemed to suggest. I simply meant that after our family came to the U.S. in 1987, I had never run again on a track. On the other hand, without the running week in and week out, my life had indeed missed something that was consistent.

One of the first things I noticed after I came to America was that people ran at all times. In China, people almost only exercised in the morning. After breathing the fresh air for some time, I accepted that it was definitely not a problem to run in the afternoon or evening. But whenever I ran outdoors, I still always chose the morning.

I could hardly find a track near the places I lived, so I began to run on the road in the neighborhood. Without knowing exactly how far I ran, I gradually lost my motivation in running. It appeared that my main motivation to run was to exceed myself in some way, either speed or distance.

But I never completely stopped running. Whether when I was in high school in California, or when I was in college in Chicago, or when I came back to California to work, once in a while, I would put on my running shoes and enter the morning air when it was still dark outside. I didn't run very seriously, but simply jogged. Usually after a mile or two, when I realized that I "still had it," I would be content and go home.

Interestingly, whenever an old friend back in China asked me if I was still running, I would answered with the expression, "No, but I still have it." What is "it"? No one really asked, and I didn't give it a deep thought until recently when I began to seriously run again (see next chapter). I happened to be reading a book called "Psycho-Cybernetics," and from reading that book I understood what that "it" is. It is my self-image as a runner. As long as I still know that I am a runner, I can always return to running.

Later I joined a gym and began to run on something called a treadmill. I hardly considered it real running. To me, it was simply working out. Then again, that also gave me a chance once in a while to see if I "still had it."

Whether jogging or working out, most of the "running" experiences were rather unmemorable.

Of course, there were exceptions. I still remember a few times when I was attending Northwestern University, I got up really early and jogged my way to the shore of Lake Michigan. My roommate, who was the complete opposite of mine as far as sleeping habit was concerned, later told me that he thought I was sleepwalking (or sleep-running, really). He missed something I was glad that I didn't.

In the early winter (well, you know that was the latest time in the season I would run outside in Chicago), the water near the shore began to freeze. Much water at the center was in its normal form, and waves continued to roll toward the shore, crushing the thin ice into crystal needles. It was one of the most beautiful things I had ever seen.

The sunrise at Lake Michigan was another sight to behold. The sun didn't just jump out of the water because there was so much cloud and fog around the lake. You could see the colors gradually change, then all of a sudden, the sun came out at the middle of the sky. At that moment, the cloud and the water were graced by practically every color you could name.

I can remember those few times because those were the few times that I forgot my running.

Running Stories (8): Running Again

In September 2003 I joined the San Francisco Road Runners Club. It was right after I came back from a mission trip to China, and I was full of energy and spirit. What prompted me to join the club was a magic little word, "marathon." Through all the "idle" years, running a marathon was a dream that would not die. Every time when I listed my life-time goals, running a marathon would be up there. But I always felt that one day when I had a lot of time and didn't have to worry much about making a living, maybe I would begin to train for a marathon. Joining the club changed my thinking. I was a lot closer to my dream than I previously thought.

I started with a group called Running 101, which was supposed to be the slowest and easiest group. To my surprise, the first time I was there they were doing 7 miles with the option of going 9 miles. Then they told me that they actually started back in May, when they were doing 2-mile walk initially. I arrived at the middle or almost toward the end of their schedule. I said no problem.

Back in China, the longest race I did was 5K, or about 3 miles. To do 7 to 9 miles was an unknown territory. But knowing that they wouldn't run very fast - in fact, they would run 4 minutes and then walk 2 minutes alternatively - I felt that I could handle it. Indeed, I handled it very well on the first day. Half way through, I felt awesome, so I joined the 9-mile group and completed it with satisfaction. I loved it! I was thrilled.

I rested it up for the whole week before I joined them again the next Saturday. This time we were doing 10 miles, again applying the 4-2 ratio. I got in trouble this time. 3-4 miles into the route, I began to feel pain in my hips. Luckily it was not a pain due to injury but due to tightness, so I knew that I could continue. I added stretches during the walk breaks, while I continue to struggle. Finally at 7-8 miles the pain was gone, but I was so tired. I finished the rest couple of miles almost entirely on guts.

At this point, you may be prompted to say, ah, that's what makes you a long-distance runner - You have the determination to complete the run even when it gets tough. If that's how you feel, I take it as compliment and I thank you, but no, that's not what makes me a long-distance runner. Or more precisely, that's not why I am still a long-distance runner. The key for me is the ability to make necessary adjustment so that the next time I won't get into the same trouble again. If every time I have to "gut it out," I wouldn't be running for long. I would have killed myself.

After that difficult 10-mile effort, I recognized the importance of mid-week workout. From then on, I made sure that between two long runs, I would do some short runs on the treadmill so that my body would be well conditioned. I also began to learn tips on nutrition, hydration and stretching. Quickly, running became fun to me.

Another example of how I made adjustment came after my first race on October 5, the San Francisco Bridge to Bridge 12K race. I completed the race in reasonably good time (by my own expectation), but I didn't feel comfortable the entire time. I had a hard time to find the right pace, and several times I could hardly catch my breath. Give myself credit: I was totally honest about how I felt, instead of only thinking, "Oh, my time was pretty good." Afterwards, I talked to some more experienced runners and asked for their opinions. They told me that they ran their races the way they trained, that is, including the walk breaks. I ran that 12K race straight, and I thought it should be my goal to run the whole race straight. One lady in particular, who usually ran with the faster groups, explained that when she began to apply the walk breaks, her pace didn't suffer at all.

Now my story can be included as a testimonial. Merely a month after Bridge to Bridge, I ran my first half-marathon in Monterey, the race you read about at the beginning of my running stories. With walk breaks, my average pace actually improved, and throughout the race, I was running faster and faster.

Running Stories (9): Finding the Right Pace

The moment I crossed the finish line at my first half-marathon, I was overwhelmed by a sense of exhilaration. The time board flashed 2 hours 17 minutes plus. Since I started behind most runners, I knew my time would be better. Later the official time came in at 2:14:57, much better than I expected. (Although that was not particularly fast. Among all the runners that day, that was about at the middle.) Before the race, I envisioned a finish time of 2:34:56 (well, that was my thing with numbers again). I beat that by almost exactly 20 minutes.

But what made me excited was not just the finish time, but really how I ran the race. As I mentioned above, half of the runners finished ahead of me, but I doubt that many of them would say that they had one of the best times in their lives. That was exactly what I would claim: I had one of the best times in my life.

After some stretching, I returned to the finish line to wait and cheer on for my training partners from Running 101. They all finished wonderfully. One of the ladies came in about an hour later. When she learned my time, she said, "You are fast! We really dragged you down, didn't we?" I said, "Not at all. In fact, now I know that training with you gals was the perfectly right thing to do."

That was the honest truth. I didn't train or race for speed, although every runner wishes to run faster. Shortly after I joined this group, I realized what a fun group it was! In fact, we were often refered by other groups as the fun group. We never pushed too hard, yet we were diligent to complete our goals. With an easy pace, I could chat with each and every runner in the group. For some reason I became the only male member of the group who came on Saturdays consistently. They liked me to be part of the group, and I certainly wouldn't complain. What more motivation do you need to get up early on a weekend morning to run with a group of gorgeous ladies? I also became their occasional teasing target. They would talk about some women things then suddenly turn to me, "Are you taking notes, Jim?" I would say, "Only if any of you could explain what you just said." Or they sometimes would be giggling, saying, "Oh, look at those cute boys running on the other side of the road - Jim, you must have noticed too?" I had to come up with something like, "Although this is San Francisco..." or "As a runner, I run straight." We had a lot of fun. Our ages were from the 20s to the 50s, yet somehow there didn't seem to be much difference among us. We were just runners who enjoyed each other's company.

That was the social aspect of running with a group, and it was of course drastically different from the days when I was running alone. Yet I still could enjoy moments of solitude, quietly running and allowing my imagination to take off. The spectacular sights of the Golden Gate Bridge and the Golden Gate Park became catalyst of my mind, and I could think whenever and whatever. Sometimes I went through my favorite verses in the Scripture, sometimes I reflected on what I did the previous day, sometimes I thought about a friend or two, and sometimes I just prayed. The easy pace allowed me to stop worrying about running altogether, and I was able to experience something close to meditation. Finally one day, I realized what I was really training for. I was training myself to appreciate every moment of the whole morning. It didn't mean that it was always easy. I appreciated the uphill runs just as I appreciated the downhill runs. That was when I knew that I had found the right pace.

Isn't it the same for life in general? Do we really want to go faster and faster without enjoying the journey? Perhaps slowing down would help? It dawned on me one day that my "idle" years eventually still had an impact on my running. In life, I finally learned to slow down after years of being an aimless workaholic. When I began to run again, I readily adopted a new attitude toward running: It was not only about speed anymore.

Life has taught me how to run, just like running has taught me how to live.

Running Stories (10): Power From Within

There have been very few times that as soon as I watched a movie, I knew it would be a friend for life. Chariots of Fire is one such movie. It tells the story of two British runners who each won a gold medal in the 1924 Olympic Games. They had their own passion, own motives, and followed their own paths. One in particular, a Scot by the name of Eric Liddell, so inspired me that, as I am ending this series of running stories, I'd like to devote the final chapter to tell the story of Eric Liddell and the things he said (recorded from the movie DVD).

Liddell was born in China where his father was a missionary. He went back to Scotland to receive his education, and at the same time, he discovered his gift in running. Under friends' encouragement, he began to race and train for the 1924 Olymics in Paris. People loved to come to watch him run. On a raining day, after the race, he spoke in front of a group spectators:

You came to see a race today. See someone win. It happened to be me. (laughters) But I want you to do more than just watch a race. I want you to take part in it. I want you to compare faith to running a race. It's hard. It requires concentration of will, energy of soul. You experience elation when the winner breaks the tape. Espeically if you've got bet on it. (laughters) But how long does that last? You go home, maybe your dinner's burnt. Maybe, maybe you haven't got a job. So who am I to say, "believe, have faith," in the face of life's realities? I would like to give you something more prominent, but I can only point the way. I have no formula for winning the race. Everyone runs in her own way, or his own way. Where does the power come from to see the race to its end? From within. Jesus said, "Behold, the kingdom of God is within you. If for all of your hearts you truly seek Me, you shall ever surely find Me." If you commit yourself to the love of Christ, and that is how you run a straight race.

Eric's devotion to running worried his sister Jenny, who also planned to go to China as a missionary. They argued, and Liddell said to his sister, "Jenny, you've got to understand! I believe that God made me for a purpose. For China. But he also made me fast! And when I run I feel His pleasure. To give it up would be to hold Him in contempt. You were right. It's not just fun. To win is to honor Him."

Liddell ended up going to Paris to compete with the finest athletes from all over the world. Initially he was to compete in the 100 meters dash, but because the heats before the finals were to be held on a Sunday, a day he dedicated entirely to the Lord, Liddell firmly refused to participate. (He only heard of the schedule after he left England.) Finally he accepted the solution to switch to 400 meters, where he won an Olympic gold medal. On the Sunday he was supposed to run but chose to skip the 100-meter race, he gave a sermon in a church. It was in that sermon he quoted:

But those who wait on the Lord
Shall renew their strength;
They shall mount up with wings like eagles,
They shall run and not be weary,
They shall walk and not faint.

Eric Liddell went to China after the Olympics. He served there as a missionary for 20 years, until his death at the end of World War II.

It amazed me every time when I watched this movie. It was as if I saw Eric Liddell in me.

[The end. Or rather, a pause. Taking a walk break.]

China Trips: Northwest (0)

This was the story, or rather a series of stories, of my business trips to the Northwest of China in 1997 and 1998. I wrote it prior to another trip to the same region in August, 2003, for quite a different purpose. (In fact, I am leaving today, August 14, with my wonderful teammates.) This new trip was what inspired me to write about those trips 5-6 years ago. More than once in the past I was compelled to tell these stories, but this time, I finally did it.

I posted the "chapters" to a "blog." For those of you who are not familiar with a "blog," it's a wonderful tool for you to keep a journal and share your daily thoughts. The thing with a blog, however, is that the newest entries are posted at the top, which makes perfect sense for a journal; people want to read your latest. But for a series like this, which I wish you would read in the order I wrote each chapter, you would have to scroll down to the bottom and begin to read it backward. I couldn't find a way to configure it such that it would display in the reverse order.

So this was what I did: I utilized the edit function of each blog entry combined with massive copy-and-paste actions to repost all the entries in the reverse order. Here, right in front of your eyes, you have all the chapters in the "correct order." Please pay no attention to the date and time stamp. I couldn't possibly write the last chapter two weeks ago and then the first chapter today. I am not that good.

Enjoy.

China Trips: Northwest (1)

The first time I saw China's Northwest was in the summer of 1997, during one of my business trips. According to my record, this was my sixth international trips for my customer support duties, but somehow, in my memory, this trip was almost like my very first trip to China. It was during that trip, I saw the China that I never knew.

Up to then I had enjoyed these international trips trememdously. The company I worked for was headquartered in Japan, although our division resided in San Jose, California, developing a network management software to monitor the telecommunications networks that were made up by equipments provided by our parent company.

My line of duty was to help customers to install or upgrade this piece of software, and if they ran into problems that they couldn't resolve, I would travel to the site.

The first such trip occurred in 1996, nine years after I left my home country, and the first stop was Chengdu, the captial city of the Southwest province Sichuan (or in America, often spelled as "Szuchuan" as displayed on those Chinese restaurants signs). Prior to that trip, I hardly ate anything spicy. That changed rather dramatically after merely two days of stay in Chengdu. After all, I didn't intend to starve myself. The second stop of that trip was Nanjing, which happened to be my birth place. Nanjing is close to the East coast, only 200 miles away from Shanghai.

The next few trips included stops at Shanghai and Nanjing (again), also a couple of cities in the Southwest China. It was hard to complain if I could keep going back to my hometown, but nothing was really impressive. True, China had been going through some incredible changes - on the outside, at least, but when I got closer to the people - oh, and those ever existing crowds - I saw that the changes on the inside were much slower. Shanghai looked quite different now, but more spectacular changes were yet to come at that point.

One exception was a trip to New Zealand at the beginning of 1997. That one was utterly impressive - not because of the job, of course, but because of the location. I had never experienced more clear an air. I went there with Sam, an American-born Japanese, who became one of my closest partners at work. We got sunburnt, and my explanation when we returned to California was that we worked in front of the Sun workstations all day every day.

Meanwhile, I actually began to look for a different job. I had some communication issues with my management, and these trips were a good escape. But for the long run, I thought I'd better get another job. In fact, I went to a job interview with Yahoo!, a company that was growing rapidly. The job ad was looking for someone to do "surfing" on the web to collect links. I didn't think that was particualr attractive, but I went to the interview anyway. Halfway through the interview, they suddenly asked me if I would be interested in a different position. Yahoo! was expanding to include services in different languages. For example, they were planning to launch a Chinese Yahoo!, and they asked me if I wanted to be a "producer" of such a project. As far as career advancement was concerned, this was like a dream opportunity. Naturally I said I was interested. They asked me to come back for a second interview.

I told them I had to go to China for another trip in August, and I would be happy to come to the second interview after the trip. Before I will describe this China trip in Auguest, 1997, let me move fast forward a little bit: The second interview with Yahoo! was also successful, and they asked me to come back for a third interview - in other words, I was getting very close to get the job. But I had to go to China again in September. These two China trips were for the same project and could very well be considered the same trip. In any case, I thought these were the last trips I would make to China.

Little did I know.

China Trips: Northwest (2)

The trips in August and September of 1997 were part of a major telecommunications backbone projects in China. At the time, the country was speeding up the development of its infrastructures, mainly in the forms of transportation (building new roads) and telecommunications (backbone networks of fiber optics). In the field of telecommunications, eight backbone project contracts were signed in 1997. The company I worked for, Fujitsu, took one of them, while the others were divided among companies like Siemens, Lucent and Alcatel, as foreign companies dominated this field.

The Fujitsu contract was called the ADB Project as it was funded by Asian Development Bank (ADB), but in Chinese it had a different name: Ji-Shi-Tai-Yin Project, as each character denoted a major city on this backbone network: Ji'nan, Shijiazhuang, Taiyuan and Yinchuan, respectively, each one a well-known capital city of a province. Here came an interesting twist: There was a fifth major city in this network called Yulin, but it was not included in the project name. Probably because it was not a major city like the others. In fact, I had never heard of it. But we were supposed to install a Sun workstation at this city along with our software. In that sense, it was as "major" as the other four. I kept wondering how come I never heard of this Yulin.

Later, of course, I learned more about Yulin. In fact, today when I speak of China's Northwest, I speak of Yulin more than any other cities.

My August schedule was hectic. Literally I ran from one city to another every day. By the time I reached Yinchuan, I had covered more half of the cities, with workstations booted up and software installed and running. I thought my work was almost completed, or so I thoguht.

Geographically Yinchuan was already Northwest. In fact, it was "more northwestern" than Yulin, which I was yet to visit. We flew in Yinchuan from Beijing, and it was already very dark outside when we arrived. It was a very cloudy night, as we could hardly see any stars, nor many street lights on our way to the hotel. That was my first impress of the Northwest: Not many people lived there. But it was really dark, and frankly I couldn't be too sure. In fact, I didn't have a good look at the city until I left Yinchuan a couple of days later.

Our customer at the Yinchuan Telecom (all these telecom companies we visited were state owned, under the same giant umbralla of China Telecom) was a Mr. Guo. He was a very bright and open young man with a shaved head, and I liked him immediately. It didn't take me long to explain the basics of running the software, and he was eager to learn a few more things. The installation went very smoothly, so did our training session. I was ready to leave the next day.

(During the remaining of this trip and my next couple of trips to China, Mr. Guo called me a number of times to ask questions about the software. I was very glad to do it because as he was able to resolve the problems, I didn't have to go to Yinchuan in person. In fact, I only went to Yinchuan one more time. Many times I wished that our customers at others sites could be as responsible and eager to learn like Mr. Guo. He actually came to America a few years later for some training, and he called my office from SFO airport.)

My next stop would be Yulin, but I was not going to take an airplane. Instead, I was going to travel with Mr. Deng, a hardware engineer from Nanjing (where Fujitsu had a partner company), on motor vehicles. The reason was that we needed to take a look at some hardware equipments along this line; there were a few optical cards to be replaced. I didn't give it much a thought until I saw the vehicle we were going to take to leave Yinchuan. It was a "mountain jeep." Not as bulky as a Hummer, nor as luxury as a Land Cruiser or a Land Rover, but it certainly beat anything I'd seen by then in China.

That was when I realized, the fun had just begun.

China Trips: Northwest (3)

Mr. Deng spoke fluent Japanese, as that language was his major when he attended the Foreign Languange School in Nanjing before he also studied telecommunications in college. This was obviously an advantage as we constantly needed to communicate with Japanese engineers. And with me, he didn't have to speak English. Mr. Deng was quite young, but he had lost quite some hair. I later heard from his coworkers in Nanjing that it was because he studied too hard in school. He didn't appear to be a bookworm type of person to me at all, however. Rather, he was quite down to earth and full of street smart. I couldn't complain to have such a company.

As we were leaving Yinchuan, I noticed that it was in fact a nice and clean city. I saw more green than I expected out of Northwest until I realized that Huang He, or the Yellow River, ran through nearby.

The landscape began to change gradually as the jeep drove further away from Yinchuan. There was less and less green on the ground. We stopped a couple of times as Mr. Deng went to examine the hardware equipments along the way. Without going into any technical details, we had a general term for these telecommunications equipments: We called them Network Elements, or in short, NEs.

The places we stopped at were not longer cities. Soon it was not even a town. Finally we arrived at a place where there wasn't even a complete street. Simply a few low buildings standing together out of nowhere. There was a post office and a restaurant. Then, in a room next to them, there were some NEs all by themselves. Nobody was there watching them. We wiped dust off the racks, and we were on our way again.

Now no more houses in sight, and the road became bumpy, very bumpy. Soon I realized that we couldn't get lost on this road, because there was just this one road. The jeep could only go forward. Of course, with the bumpy road, it also went up and down. Occasionally our heads hit the ceiling. Mr. Deng said, "You don't experience something like this in America, do you?" I said, "Sure we do. Have you heard of Disneyland?"

Finally we were able to adjust to the bumpy movements, and I began to look out the window to do some sightseeing. That was when, suddenly, something grabbed my heart. A certain feeling grew stronger and stronger inside until it became almost overwhelming. What exactly did I see?

I saw a vast land. Now, it wasn't that I didn't see a vast land when we first got on this portion of the road; I saw it at the beginning. But one look, however impressive it was, didn't really mount to much. It was after hours of driving that the endlessness of it finally caught up with me. And there was something else other than the vastness.

I certainly had seen big land before. Driving in California, say from San Francisco to Sacramento, there were plenty sights of large land. But looking at the crops on the sides of California highways, one could easily imagine the process of sowing and reaping. There was liveliness in that large land. Here in China's Northwest, however, I didn't see such liveliness. The land didn't appear to be able to grow anything except sparse grass. One could tell - one knew - that no one lived on this land. That vastness came with emptiness.

What I would remember the most, however, was neither the vastness nor the emptiness. Rather, it was a battle in my heart. I had this urge to shout, "What a waste!" But something inside me prevented me from letting it out. There was a little voice saying, "No, this cannot be all waste." That little voice was saying, "There is hope." I did not know where that voice came from, but that battle I would never forget.

China Trips: Northwest (4)

Our goal for the first day of driving was to reach a place called Ding Bian before dark. Ding Bian was on the other side of the border between two provinces. Thanks to the "mountain jeep" (or "cross-country jeep") we were riding, it looked like that we would hit our goal. The road had been uneven and bumpy most of the time, and a couple of times we had go over deep water pits. Several times we saw cars or trucks got stuck in some bad spots on the road, and even more times we saw vehicles broken down on the sides of the road.

Later I read on a literature magazine carrying a story describing exactly this same road. The story told how some local farmers made a living by helping out those vehicles that got stuck on the road - they simply charged the drivers. To increase their "earnings," some farmers created pits on the road to make it easier for vehicles to fall in. Luckily we didn't have to deal with anything like that.

However, once we reached Ding Bian, we had to say good-bye to the jeep. It belonged to Yingchuan Telecom, and we were now in a different province. (After all, we were taking a free ride instead of renting it.) Deng was confident that Ding Bian would provide the next vehicle for us to continue.

We were received by local officials. Now I realized that Ding Bian, although labeled as a city on the map, was really a town. It might have the administrative right over a much bigger area, but the town itself was really not that big. After dining at a local restaurant, for example, the restaurant owner gave me a lighter as a gift, although he knew that I didn't smoke. The name of the restaurant was engraved on the lighter, along with its address: "Next door to the theater." I had a feeling that the address of the theater was "next door to the restaurant."

Historically, however, Ding Bian was an important military checkpoint at the border - against invaders from the North. "Ding Bian" literally means "to settle the border." In other words, here was an ancient battlefield.

Deng introduced me to the local officals as a "foreign expert." I felt uneasy about that term, although I indeed held a foreign passport. Between me and Deng, we hardly felt like foreigners to each other, not to mention we grew up in the same city. But soon I found out Deng's intention: He was trying to gain extra favor in the arrangement for our trip. After all, not many "foreign experts" ever visited this place.

There was no hotel in this place, and I spent the night at a guesthouse where they received officals from other places. I didn't know where Deng spent the night. He probably handled it all right, as it was clear that he had been here before. He only worried about this "foreign expert."

China Trips: Northwest (5)

The next morning we were informed that the local officals couldn't find a car from their office, as all cars were sent out on assignments. What should we do then? The locals pointed and said, "You take that car to the next town, where they will have further arrangement."

I looked it up, and it was a car which exterior looked too familiar. We got in the car together, and I whispered to Deng, "Is this really a police car?" He nodded, as if he was not surprised.

My excitement didn't last very long, because quickly a few more people crawled in. When the door finally closed, there were three people in the front and four people in the back. One of the guys in the back - sitting next to me - even tried to light up a cigarette until Deng stopped him. The whole situation in the car was probably illegal by any country's traffic law, but for the moment, "we are the police."

The car ran very fast, to no one's surprise, and a couple of times they used siren to clear up the traffic in front. Not that there were many vehicles on the road, but the road was simply too narrow, and our driver was feeling very competitive that morning.

One by one people inside the car reached their destination. Before I could enjoy the breathing room, we arrived at the next town. We jumped on our next vehicle - a small van - and continued our journey.

Soon we saw the Great Wall. It was not at all what I had imagined.

To see the Great Wall had been one of my longest awaited dream. By then I had been in Beijing a couple of times, but each time the stay was too short to do any sightseeing, including to see the Great Wall nearby. Finally, here, near the ancient battlefields in the Northwest, I saw the Great Wall.

I couldn't believe my eyes. It was nothing like what I had seen in the post cards, where tall brick walls and broad pavement on the top symbolized a once magnificant empire. That was the sections near Beijing, which were restored in the Ming Dynasty (around 500 years ago). Here, we saw a section of the Great Wall that was built much earlier, more than 2,000 years ago in the Qin Dynasty. It was only about two-men tall. I couldn't see how wide it was from our van, but later I had a chance to walk on the top of it, and it was barely wide enough for two people walking side by side - unlike the sections near Beijing, where it was said that five horses could run side by side at the top.

The word for the Great Wall in Chinese is Chang Cheng, which literally means "long castle." Whoever translated it to "Great Wall" must have seen the sections elsewhere first, for here, the wall was nothing "great," but it was indeed very, very long. I couldn't see the end of it. Despite its unimpressive height, its sheer length did create an awesome feeling.

I soon learned two very interesting facts about this section of the Great Wall. One was that it was made of earth, not typical building bricks or stones. Or more precisely, tamped earth without any further treatment. How could such a wall stand 2,000 years? To answer that, one had to know the earth of the Northwest. It was the Yellow Earth. A main characteristic of the yellow earth was that when water washed through it, the yellow earth didn't absorb much of the water or got "resolved" by the water. Instead it let the water permeate; and that only made the earth more sticky and holding itself stronger. The more the water washed, the stronger the earth became, so to speak. That was the same yellow earth that the people in the Northwest had used to build their houses for many years.

The second thing I noticed was that the road we were driving on appeared to be in perfect parellel as the Great Wall. (Due to my work, I paid much attention to the roads because the optical fibers were buried along and off the roads - so that if any section of the optical fibers got damaged, the repairman could arrived at the scene quickly by the road, although ironically, often the optical fibers got cut because of road constructions.) The driver explained that when they first built the road, they studied the geography of this area, including the mountain shapes and river trends. The road builder finally concluded that the current route was the best route to take advantage of the natural barriers. The "perfect parallel" between the route and the ancient Great Wall could mean only one thing:

Somebody discovered the same thing 2,000 years ago.

China Trips: Northwest (6)

Soon after the Great Wall disappeared from our sight, our road ahead began to upward onto hills and mountains. We had entered the region called the High Plateau of the Yellow Earth. (Actually, the road before we hit the mountains was already on the high plateau.) Building this road - again, there was just this one road - must have been difficult, while the road construction was still going on during our trip, making the ride uneasy constantly.

In the mountains, we saw people living in caves. These cave were actually quite well built, but imagine a house that could receive sunshine from only one side all year long. But there was virtually no way for the local people to build the kind of houses like elsewhere. Building a caved house was probably the most practical and economical way.

We reached a town called Heng Shan (literally means "horizonal mountain"), where we had lunch and changed vehicle one more time. The lunch was not serve in a restaurant, but we were invited into someone's house - my impression even today is that it was a cave, but not like the caved houses I had seen in the mountains. Anyway it was a very simple dewelling. My entire lunch consisted of two bowl: One bowl of rice and one bowl of lamb. In nothern China, rice is not usually served - as opposed to the South - and it was probably out of courtesy of my presense, they served rice. The lamb was absolutely delicious. And that was it. There was absolutely no vegetable for that meal, extremely rare for me. But I could stand one meal, and honestly I enjoyed it.

Our next vehicle was a jeep, but not nearly as good as the cross-country jeep we had earlier in the trip. In fact, at times I thought the whole vehicle was going to collapse. The driving was "normal" by Chinese standard. In other words, "crazy" by American standard. That was an observation as soon as I first visited China. In the big cities, where roads were plenty and wide, it was not too bad except nobody seemed to pay attention to the traffic lights or other vehicles, but once you get to the countryside, where there was no traffic lights and you had to pay attention to other vehicles because the roads were so narrow, that was when I really opened my eyes.

Typically there was just one lane on the road - often this one lane was for both directions! But somehow a car could pass the car in front on this one lane. How was that possible? Well, it would be impossible in America. Also at times, a car would pass the car in front while there was another car coming this way. All these cars were sharing this same lane, right? Then incredibly, the passing car managed to get ahead just in time and avoid an almost certain collision. At first my heart almost stopped a few times, then I finally got used to it - or perhaps my heart indeed stopped.

From all my experience I had two observations: One, the drivers were extremely good at calculating the exact moment to avoid the collision. Sometimes I wondered why they made it so dramatic. Couldn't they just wait a little before passing? Then I realized that if they waited - like the way I would drive - they would probably never move ahead much. Two, while they had the concept of "road", the drivers had no concept of "lane."

What amazed me was that hardly ever I saw a traffic accident in China. The way most of the drivers drove, it was almost guaranteed to have accidents. Of course, there must have been accidents in China; I just didn't witness one, and I thought I should have seen them quite often like what I had seen - and a couple of times directly involved - in California. Finally it dawned on me that it was probably not a fair comparison. There were definitely a lot more cars in California; everyone drove a car, or two.

What impressed me the most that day on the winding road was not the driving; in fact, it didn't impress or scare me anymore. It was the pedestrians we almost hit a number of times. Usually it was an old man, wearing white cap and smoking a pipe, walking slowing across the road. Even when the jeep almost hit him, he did not change his pace. When we got close, I was even able to see the expression on the old man's face. And what an expression I saw!

The best way to describe that experssion was "expressionless." There was no fear, no scare, no surprise. Yet I couldn't say there was peace either. It was simply empty, almost reminding me of the vast land I saw earlier. I was shocked that he was shocked that a car almost hit him. Didn't he realize that his life could be taken away, or did he not care anymore?

China Trips: Northwest (7)

After two days of rocky ride, we finally arrived in Yulin. It turned out that Yulin was the center of the whole region called Shann Bei, or the northern Shann Xi province. ("Shann" is short for "Shann Xi," and "Bei" means "north.") Almost every educated person in China heard of Shann Bei, one of the poorest places in the country, although perhaps they never heard of the name of Yulin.

[Note: The actual pinyin for "Shann Xi" should be "Shan Xi," but since there is another province called "Shan Xi", this "Shan Xi" is usually spelt as "Shann Xi" to show the difference.]

When we arrived, the local hotel - there were actually a few hotels in the area, but near the center of the city there was only one hotel - was already fully booked. We had to check in a guesthouse where several people shared one room. It was awkward for me because I didn't know where to put my luggage; all the other guys didn't appear to travel with luggage at all. Not to mention there was no private shower. But I thought I could live without shower for a day. (I didn't shower the previous night already.)

But soon Deng ran to me saying that he found a room in the hotel, so I could stay there instead. Obviously a relief for me, although it was not quite life-and-death. Deng must have perfected his "foreign expert" pitch by then.

The next day I went to visit my customer in the local telecom. On my way there I noticed that there were altogether two long streets in the whole city. Between the two streets there were allies, of course, but overall I couldn't believe this was a center city of a fairly large region.

Once I got to the office, I asked, "Are there names for these two streets?" A man answered, emphatically, "Of course there are! This side is the First Street, and the other is the Second Street."

If I wrote this in Chinese, I probably didn't have to explain. In English, an extra note is required, I think. Now we've seen plenty of First Streets in America, and typically the numbers go to double digits or even triple digits. The term that man used for First Street was "Da Jie," and Second Street "Er Jie." "Jie" means "street", while "Da" and "Er" usually are used to decribe one's children: "Da" means the first born, and "Er" the second born, and so forth. If one calls his children not by names like "John" and "Mary" but by "The First" and "The Second", that was how that man was calling the streets.

Later I found a map of the city - I couldn't find such a map in the local stores, only found a book on the whole province where a map of Yulin was included - the two streets actually had official names. But all the locals I encountered called them "Da Jie" and "Er Jie."

A couple of years later during my last visit to Yulin, a third street was under construction.

China Trips: Northwest (8)

At the Yulin Telecom office, a Sun workstation already arrived. No one in the office had touched it, they explained that they knew nothing about this computer. I went ahead and installed Solaris operating system and our software. A group of people were watching on, but none of them showed intention to learn exactly how I was doing it. I figured that they had didn't have any advanced computer knowledge.

The installation was completed rather smoothly, then I explained how they could execute our software. They asked me to write it down in the greatest detail in Chinese, so that they could follow it exactly. I did that, then I tried to explain why and how they would perform each step. They asked no explanation. They said the instructions were good enough; they would just follow it (without understanding, it sounded). That was fine with me, but what a contrast to Mr. Guo in Yinchuan.

Then they had this lady to try out my instructions - all of them were middle aged, as opposed to other telecoms I had visited where most operators were young.

The lady sat down and began to read the instructions. Our software could be brought up by a simple command "FlexrPlus". She looked all over the keyboard until she finally found the key "F", and she typed it. I explained that since it was a UNIX environment, the commands were case sensitive. So instead of the lower case "f" she typed, she ought to enter the upper case "F." She looked at me and asked, "How do I do that?"

In my profession of technical support, there are many compilation of "jokes" to describe how stupid the customers are at one point or another. I enjoyed many such jokes, although personally I never intended to compile a set myself. I could laugh at those jokes only because I wasn't dealing with the people directly. Once I was, there was nothing stupid about anything.

And this lady in the Yulin office was not exactly stupid either. She was simply ignorant of computer knowledge beyond my initial imagination. Had I met her on the street, I wouldn't be as surprised. But this was one of the main sites of a project of many million dollars. I suddenly realized that I had to put myself into a different gear of customer support. Right away I wrote a little line of script so that they only needed to type "fp" to run our program.

From that day on I paid more attention to the Yulin office than any other site. Sympathy might have played a part in it, but as far as my job was concerned, for the whole project to succeed, obviously we couldn't allow any weak links.

Later I found out that few engineers from the three sides - China, Japan and the U.S. - were willing to go to Yulin. The condition there was poor, obviously, but perhaps it was also because when it came to technical issues, it was almost hopeless to try to communicate with the operators in Yulin. In fact, later whenever there was a need for a visit to Yulin, my name was automatically on the list. I apparently could handle the condition, but more importantly, I could handle the communication.

China Trips: Northwest (9)

My next trip to Yulin was a month later. I went back to China to make sure all the workstations and our software were up and running at all sites. Well, all sites except Yulin. They had some technical difficulty that no one seemed to be able to explain, so I had to go. Once I was on site, we were able to figure out what happened. It was rather simple, and if you are reading this, I ask you to hold your breath and not to laugh yet.

Basically I had a script written which ran periodically to check the entire environment for the software. It would store the data on a floppy diskette so that if anything went wrong, we would have the data to analyze. The script was automatic. In fact, I set up almost everything automatic. The only manual labor would be inserting a floppy diskette.

Well, that was exactly what went wrong. One of the operators tried to insert the floppy diskette upside down. If it was not the right way, the diskette wouldn't go in easily. So this person forced it in. Then of course they couldn't get it out.

Actually the floppy diskette was not eassential to the whole program; it could still run just fine. But they were so worried about the floppy diskette situation that they shut down the entire machine until I went there.

I asked if there was any computer shop in the city. Actually there was. An hour and 100 RMB yuan later, the problem was resolved. "I told them on the phone that it was the floppy diskette!" The team lead complained. I could imagine why no one on the other side of the phone believed or even understood what he said.

(Okay, now you can laugh.)

Yulin, in my memory, would always be the easiest and the most difficult site to support.

It was after that second trip, I sent Yahoo! an e-mail saying that I decided not to pursue the "producer" position. I simply stated that I had developed a heart for the customer in China (and you can say that people in Yulin were a big part of it). I never really talked much about this particular decision to many people. Likely my friends would try to talk me out of it, and I could end up changing my mind. Or perhaps I should go ahead and complete the interview process and see if I could get an offer from Yahoo! - then I could make a decision. But by then I probably couldn't resist such an offer. In short, I didn't put myself in a situation to follow my head. I was following my heart.

That phrase - "following your heart" - has been uttered many times. In reality people make most decisions based on both head and heart. Honestly I believe people who incline to follow their heart make more mistakes - short term, anyway - than people who incline to use their head. But aren't mistakes what make life more exciting, and at the end, more rewarding?

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The next few years I kept going back to China. In fact, from 1997 to 2000, I averaged 5 trips a year to China, literally going every other month, while the trips lasted between two weeks to six weeks. I personally loved to travel, even though most of these business trips were not close to places I wanted to go.

I often joked with Nanjing engineers if they had NEs in exotic places such as Gui Lin, Huang Shan (Yellow Mountain) or Xi Hu (West Lake). I'd love to go to support there. They said they did have NEs in Jiu Zhai Gou ("Nine-village Valley") in Sichuan, but they never seemed to have problems - not with the software anyway. I ended up keep going back to places like Yulin.

Twice I went to Yulin in the early winter (November to December), and I was warned that it was going to be cold there. That time I went through the route from Beijing to Xi'an to Yulin. Along the way I felt fine. It was cold, but bearable. Once I arrive in Yulin, it did feel different. I had to keep moving my body parts. I got in a cab, and asked, "How cold is it today?" He said, "18 degrees (Celsius)." Right away I thought that was impossible. It couldn't be that warm. But a second later I realized what he was saying. He meant 18 degrees below zero (Celsius), which was about zero degree Fahrenheit. Later I found people in Yulin regularly omitted the "below zero" part in winter when they talked about the temperature. I began to talk like that too.

I found there was actually a Bank of China in the city, the only bank system in China where you could exchange foreign currencies, as long as you had a valid foreign passport. That was somewhat a relief in case I needed to stay extra days. Cash in China was absolutely necessary in almost all the places. In Yulin, that included to pay for the lodging. Credit card was not accepted.

The only decent hotel in town was the Yulin Hotel. I didn't know how many stars it had, two or three, but I wouldn't have called it a hotel elsewhere. It offered hot water at limited hours. But I wasn't there for vacation anyway.

When I first checked in the hotel myself (previously the very first time, it was done by Mr. Deng), I enjoyed a little conflict with the lady at the counter. She told me the room rate, and I proceeded to hand her my U.S. passport. She filled out a form, and asked me to put down a deposit in cash in the amount of a night's stay. It was twice what she told me of the room rate. I said I thought the room rate was such and such. She said, oh, for foreigners, the room rate was twice as much.

I traveled enough in China to know that there was indeed such a widespread "rule." At that moment, however, I felt like to do something about such an "unfairness." I looked into the lady's eyes and said, "Now look at me. Do I really look like a foreigner?" She looked at me and couldn't say a word. Finally after a long pause, she said, "All right, I will treat you as a domestic guest then."

Well, I guess I wasn't really going for "fairness." I got that only because I was indeed a Chinese by birth. I did that for very practical reasons. I always tried to save as much cash as I could, especially in areas of lodging and transportation, because if I ever ran out of cash, I might have to sleep on the street. After all, a winter day was only 18 degrees.

The funny thing was, a few months later when I went to Yulin again, the same lady received me at the check-in counter - I only realized that it was the same lady when she uttered my name in Chinese without hesitation. I wondered how many people ever checked in this hotel in a year. But then again, not many people went to Yulin with a foreign passport. Even rarer was a foreigner who looked exactly like any other "domestic guest."

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Another place I had to pay cash was the airplane ticket. Well, that was the same almost anywhere in China. But one big difference in Yulin versus other bigger cities was this: Say if I was traveling between Xi'an and Yulin by air, in Xi'an I bought the ticket from Xi'an to Yulin, but I couldn't buy the return ticket! I had to buy the air ticket from Yulin to Xi'an in Yulin. That was due to of course a very underdeveloped computer system.

So typically the very first thing after I arrived in Yulin was to buy the airplane ticket back to Xi'an. Usually the flight was not fully booked yet if I took such an initiative. And if you ever saw the airplane they used between Xi'an and Yulin, you understood why I had to move fast. It couldn't hold many people. 48 assigned seats, to be exact.

See, Yulin was so small - rather, so underdeveloped - that there was not even a train station in Yulin. Oweing to the fact that it was historically a military base, it did have a military airport. The airport didn't have a runway of much length, so jets couldn't fly here. Instead, the aircraft they used was a propeller driven model, named Y-7.

I have a good friend who lives in Cleveland, and he used to travel in China as much if not more than I did during those years. He told me that he flew Y-7 once, and that was "enough" for him. He wanted no more Y-7 flights. I understood that sentiment fully. You see, a Y-7 couldn't fly very high, and it couldn't escape the high winds in the sky. If you were in a jet on a long trip, occasionally the aircraft ran into air turbulence. That was when the flight captain warned everyone to buckle up their seat belts. On a Y-7, occasionally you did not have air turbulence.

In fact, many people threw up toward the end of the flight. I have to confess that I was lucky in the sense that I didn't know that people were throwing up in my first dozen or so such flights. Only the last couple of flights, I actually saw people puking into the paper bags. That sight stirred me; had I had such a knowledge from the very beginning, I could very well end up being one of them.

The word in Chinese for air-sick is "Yun Ji" ("Yun" means dizziness, and "Ji" means airplane), and the word in Chinese for Y-7 is "Yun Qi" ("Yun" means transportation, and "Qi" is the number 7). What do you know, the two words sound awfully close in Chinese.

But that was what I needed to go through to go to Yulin. Other than the first trip when I took that unforgettable ride from Yinchuan to Yulin, all the other times I flew between Yulin and Xi'an on a Y-7. Also a couple of other times between Xi'an and Yinchuan, I took Y-7 as well. In all, I took Y-7 a total of 14 times.

If there was anything that I ever bragged about my China trips, it was this: I took Y-7 a total of 14 times.

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Since I have mentioned the city Xi'an a few times, I'd like to say a few words about this biggest city in China's Northwest.

Xi'an is the capital city of Shann Xi province, and historically it was the capital city of all China a number of times. Other famous ancient capitals include Beijing, the current capital of China, and Nanjing, my hometown city. There were so many dynasties in Chinese history, you could almost talk about how many times a city had been a capital as if you talk about how many Super Bowls an American city has won in the NFL.

In that sense, Xi'an is the overall champion. Since this is written in English, allow me to point out that Beijing literally means "northern capital," Nanjing literally means "southern capital," and Xi'an could be rightly called "Xijing," which would mean "western captial," although traditionally it was called Chang'an. It was the capital city of such famed dynasties as the Han Dynasty (where the majority of Chinese people, the Han people, get their name) and the Tang Dynasty (where the overseas Chinese people get their name, as in Tang Ren Jie, or Chinatown).

But the single historical significance of Xi'an (Chang'an) that attracted me the most was that it was the starting point of the Silk Road, the ancient commerical and cultural route from Asia to Europe, acrossing the vast land, and desert, in between. It was my dream to travel along the entire Silk Road one day. In fact, when I often had the temptation to tell my business trips in the northern to northwestern cities in China, I would like to entitle my stories "The Fiber Road," as in optical fibers. Well, my journey didn't cover exact the same route, but you could tell how much inspiration I had drawn from the Silk Road.

Today's Xi'an remained much of the city structure of the ancient Chang'an. The two main roads crossed the entire city, one horizontally, one vertically. At the end of each main road, there was a magnificant city gate - so there were altogether four main city gates acting as the city's entrances and exits. There were a few other main gates along the high and tall city walls, which were rebuilt in recent era. I liked the way they had kept that city, as opposed what they had done to my hometown city of Nanjing, another ancient capital. Nanjing didn't look like an ancient capital to me anymore. Well, it didn't look like one when I was growing up, but at least there was a chance. Today they tried to modernize it, and result so far was that it didn't look like anything.

As for the houses and building inside the city of Xi'an, I couldn't say that they remained the same as the ancient times. Most of them were modern houses now, although you could still spot a few "flying roofs" here and there. If you were interested in the details of the ancient Chang'an houses, there was another place you might want to visit. This was not from my personal experience because I had never been there myself, but it was said that the Japanese city of Kyoto was built as a copy of the ancient Chang'an. (The name Kyoto literally means "capital city.")

Xi'an had argubly some of the best historical museums in China. Once I went to Yulin with a Japanese engineer named Suzuki. I called him Suzuki-san, and he called me Jim-san. (Usually, in Japanese style, a person's family name went along with that "san," but somehow the Japanese engineers understood that the Americans preferred to call each other by first names. So I was Jim-san to them, and Sam, who actually was a Japanese born in the U.S., was Sam-san to them.) Suzuki-san was one of the quietest people I had ever known. He just did his work. He hardly ate anything during our stay in Yulin; he probably couldn't get used to the food anyway. All he had was a bottle of wine a night, which he could buy very cheaply in Yulin, like less than one U.S. dollar a bottle, and he smoked a lot. With all that maybe one could eliminate food, but I didn't know for sure.

Suzuki-san didn't smile much either, except this one time during our stop in Xi'an, we went to a historical museum. The museum wasn't a gigantic one, but it had everything, covering all different eras of Chinese history. The arrangement of the exhibition items was in such a fluence and elegance, it was one of my best museum experience. I looked at Suzuki-san, and he was all smiles, even though he didn't understand a word of Chinese.

Or perhaps after Yulin, anything could make him smile.

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People in Yulin were simple and straight, and one almost never had to guess what they meant when they said things. That was different from some people I had met in the big cities. If one had enough experience, perhaps such a generalization could be expanded to small town people versus big city people.

But my experience in Yulin led me to gradually think somewhat differently. It was true that most small town people were simple and straight, but to say that they were relatively "good" - that is, to put on a judgment - was probably hasty. In the same token, to say that big city people were complicated and twisted, and thus relatively "bad," would be also a rush in judgment. This much I could say, certain elements of human weakness were universal; sometimes they just didn' t have the opportunities to be exposed. The same thing could be said about human strength. In other words, the small town people were indeed simple and straight in general, but that was probably because they hadn't been tested enough - through interactions with other people - like the big city residents. Certainly some of the small town people would keep their simple and straight ways even after they lived in the big cities for many years, but only those - along with the ones who grew up in the big cities and kept their own simple and straight ways - could claim to be truly simple and straight. It was the same as saying that one found true peacefulness in the middle of turbulence.

Well, that probably sounded too philosophical in a story-telling. The famed writer Lin Yutang once said, "Every Chinese person is a philosopher." As a big fan of his, I am entitled to sound philosophical once or twice a year, wouldn't you say?

In Yulin, I met some of the least ambitious people I had ever known. Most of the men were very good at drinking. The liquor they consumed was usually very strong - unlike the bottles of wine Suzuki-san bought - and they used very small cups to compete against each other. I heard that in China's Northeast, where men also drank obsessively, they used big bowls, but I could see why men here in the Northwest used small cups. This way, they could easily drink up a whole cup with one sip, and on with the next cup. Thus the "drinking competition" could be more heated and more long lasting. I often heard them bragging the next day how many cups (usually in the 30s or 40s) or how many liters they had last night.

I didn't ever hide my disgust against such a drinking habit. When they bragged about their drinking, I never showed sign of admiration. When they at the beginning tried to invite me for a cup or two, I refused rather firmly. A couple of times one of them, usually already drunk by then, would say, "Hey, aren't you Chinese?" My answer typically was like this, "In America, I drive a lot, and drinking and driving don't go too well together, so I never developed a drinking habit." I guess that was my way of saying I was actually American (at least, at that moment), although of course American men developed drinking problems too. Luckily usually there were others at the dinner table who were not as hot headed, and they would try to take away that man. After some struggles, that drunk man would escape and say to me, "Mr. Yu, it's okay that you don't drink. I know you come to do good work for us, and in your heart, you are still a Chinese." That was what I meant when I said they were simple and straight.

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I didn't think that women in Yulin drank as much as the men. Some of them probably could drink too, but since it appeared that men often used drinking as a "proof" of their manhood, women probably didn't want to be a part of it.

Some of the ladies at the Yulin office told me some things that I appreciated very much at the time. They told me about their families and lives, and occasionally they would express their frustration that "Yulin could be a better place." Yulin produced some of the brightest high school students in the nation every year, and they went on to attend famous universities in Beijing, Shanghai and Xi'an. They didn't return to Yulin, if ever. My observation was that this was certainly not a healthy environment if a young man or woman wished to continue to grow personally. If those young people decided that their talent could be better recognized and utilized elsewhere, they were probaby right and they earned their trips.

I would never forget the ladies' comments that "Yulin could be a better place," though. But how? I don't pretend that I could answer that question, so I wouldn't.

Sometimes I tried to help the operators, men and women, at the Yulin office more technically. One funny thing about customer support was this, usually the difficult problems arose when the customer tried to too much with the product. Of course, since they bought it, say the software, they had all the right in the world to make the software work the way they wanted it - they wanted it "customized," so to speak. On the other end of the spectrum, a customer didn't want to touch anything. They bought the software as is and they used it as is. Needless to say, they would be easy to support technically. You would never encounter such a customer in the U.S., but in Yulin, it was almost exactly the case.

Of course, in China, things were often not what it appeared to be. First of all, the local offices didn't have enough power to do things their own way. The Yulin customer might not be able to make a change in the software without the approval from the central office, say in Beijing, even if they wanted to. And of course as I have described, the Yulin customer were simply not technically equipped to come up with any ideas anyway. I was mildly shocked when I discovered that there was another reason that they didn't want to touch the software.

I discovered it when I was trying to be helpful. I said to one of the ladies, "I could teach you more on this. I will try to make it easy for you to understand. It can't be harmful." She refused and smiled, saying, "If I learn it, I will have to be responsible for this part of the operation."

I was of course speechless. What a thought! But I bet many people in that industry in China thought the same way. They would be paid the same no matter how much they did at work. There was no incentive to learn or do more. But only this lady in Yulin could tell me without hiding what she really thought.

Sometimes people, especially people with a complicated city life, would envy the simple lifestyle other people enjoyed in the countryside or in the underdeveloped nations. The kind of life with no ambition was almost admirable. But perhaps this was just another "grass is greener on the other side" story. I personally believe that a simple lifestyle would be a worthwhile goal, but there is a difference between people who, after going through many years of complicated life, pursued simple life and got it, and people who were born and grew up with a simple life and never knew anything else.

Oh, did I sound philosophical again? That's twice this year already. I have just used up my quota.

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During the third or fourth trip to Yulin, I was able to do some sightseeing around that area. The whole place was greener than I anticipated. On the flight from Xi'an to Yulin, I could see from the window of the Y-7 aircraft the vast desert underneath. The locals told me that people planted many trees in Yulin in recent years as an effort to control the fast growth desert in northern China.

As far as sightseeing went, there were only one or two places in Yulin worth going, the locals told me. One was a cliff wall full of ancient inscriptions - Chinese characters engraved on the rock. These were typical praising phrases of the Heaven, the Earth, the emperor and the empire. They were engraved in different years, and they were some of the best calligraphy in display. The place was called Hong Shi Xia ("Red Rock Gorge"). Actually the rock was not red, but the characters were often in red.

I was more interested in another place, a gigantic beacon tower built 400 years ago in the Ming Dynasty. The name of the tower was Zhen Bei Tai, literally means "Pacify the North Tower." It was not very far north from Yulin.

Beacon towers were usually built along China's ancient border against the north. They were used to send signals to the inland in case the northern invaders were in sight. Naturally many such beacon towers were built along the Great Wall, such as this one. But the history of beacon towers was longer than that of the Great Wall. In fact, a famous story occurred before the Great Wall was ever built.

There was this ancient king of the Zhou Dynasty, which was before the Qin Dynasty of the first Chinese emperor, who ordered the building of the Great Wall. The king had a beautiful wife - naturally he had many - who he absolutely adored. There was one problem with this beauty. She never smiled. The king thought of many ways to make her laugh or smile to no avail. Finally the king came up with an idea which had himself ended up in the history book (maybe that was what he wanted, not the lady's smile).

He invited the woman to the top of a beacon tower near the capital city, and he ordered the torch to be lit, sending the smoky signal to the sky - even when there was actually no invaders in sight. Thousands of loyal troops rushed to the capital to protect the king. But of course when they realized that there were actually no invaders, they retreated with anger and embarrassment. Upon seeing this, the beauty laughed. The king's wish was fulfilled.

You could easily guess what happened later. The real invaders eventually showed up, and this time when the signals were sent to the sky again, nobody came to protect the king (and his beauty). The kingdom was overthrown.

Zhen Bei Tai was such a beacon tower, although when I was there, there was no beauty in sight. There was no invaders in sight, either. In fact, I was the only invader. They charged 5 yuan for admission. They'd be lucky if they could gather 50 yuan a day. I did enjoy the view from the top of the tower, and I could see miles of Great Wall from that angle. In fact, Zhen Bei Tai had a reputation as the "First Tower of the Great Wall."

The second time I went to see the tower, I went along with a Nanjing engineer. Suddenly an idea came to me, and I asked him a question that I already knew the answer.

"You know what they used the beacon tower for in the ancient times, don't you?"

He said yes.

"And do you know what we use today in place of the beacon tower?"

He thought about it and smiled, "The telecommunication equipments. The NEs."

I nodded, "Exactly, the tower builders and us were in the same industry."

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My last visit to Yulin was in December, 1998. After that, I continued to travel to China, but the focus shifted from the Northwest to the Southeast. In fact, Yulin was not my most visited city during my China trips. The city of Zhangzhou in the southeastern province of Fujian would claim that "title." And in my memory, Zhangzhou trips were much more fun - it was more of a city than Yulin, anyway. If I could write here these many lines about my visits to Yulin, I could easily do the same for Zhangzhou, and call it "China Trips: Southeast."

In Zhangzhou, I made friends with a local stationary store owner, who ran the store as an extra income on top of his regular job, and a taxi driver, who invited me to his home for dinner and played ping-pong. Not to mention I could exchange my U.S. dollars with a few trusted old ladies on the street with a much better rate I could get in the bank. Oh, how about eating snakes in Zhangzhou? Not that it was something truly special about me eating snakes. After all, I grew up in China, with Cantonese parents, no less. But I was able to convert those Japanese engineers into snake eaters. Now that was an accomplishment.

In Yulin, I couldn't say I made any friends. As you would probably recall, I found people in Yulin mostly unambitious (the ambitious ones already left) and apparently without much passion or drive for a better life. I would rather stay away from such an association.

But the truth was, I kept going back to Yulin - and the Northwest in general - willingly. It was quite true that I felt more "at home" in Zhangzhou, but that was exactly the point I am trying to make here. If you traveled a long way across the Pacific Ocean, and you came to a place where you felt like home, what was the point of the trip (outside your job)? Among all the fun and pleasure I could enjoy in Zhangzhou, nothing could touch me like the Northwest. But exactly what touched me in the Northwest?

I couldn't quite pin-point. If it was not the people - although conversations with them often opened my eyes in unexpected ways - then what was it? Was it the Yellow Earth, which became stronger in the face of destroying forces? Or was it the Land of the Northwest, the vast and empty land?

I kept saying that I saw "emptiness" in the land and in the people of the Northwest. Perhaps that emptiness allowed me into a different state. Perhaps my mind wouldn't run as busily as usual, for a change. Perhaps I had a chance to look into my heart and my soul even when I was not fully aware of it. Perhaps the Northwest was doing a similar thing to me like the snow mountains did to the Tibetan people, whom visitors often found to be very spiritually oriented. Or perhaps that emptiness was a reflection of the emptiness I felt deep in my heart - and perhaps a desire to fill that emptiness was then inspired?

Apparently I had more questions than answered. In fact, I didn't have any answer. Perhaps the only way to get more clues was to return to the Northwest. That was indeed a land I shall return. Again and again.