THE GREAT CHINA SCHOLAR

I have never been quite sure why but even when very young I knew exactly what I wanted to be in life.  I wanted to be a Great China Scholar.  I was fascinated by Asia, especially anything Chinese.  And in those days in Groton, Connecticut, we didn’t know much about things Chinese.
   
So I began my quest for knowledge by going to yard sales and buying anything I thought might be from China and later to estate auctions still looking for items from the mysterious Middle Kingdom.  While others had heroes ranging from Elvis to Wyatt Earp, I wanted to be a scholar of things Chinese like John King Fair bank or A. Doak Barnett.  The example today would be Yale’s Jonathan Spence.  And I bought books on China, books on Mao Tzekung, books on American Far Eastern Policy, and learned what I could of China’s history and culture.
  
I had no doubt I would one day become the head of the East Asian Studies Department at a prestigious American university or, failing that, might accept the head of Chinese Affairs at the State Department, or, failing that, would end up in charge of the American Secret Agent fighting the Chinese Compiles while Saving the Beautiful and Grateful Chinese Girl Section at the CIA.
 
I was of course very young when China went communist, but I still remember the radio announcers speaking hysterically of a “bamboo curtain” descending around China like the “iron curtain” which had descended around the Soviet Union.  For better or worse, I had a writer’s imagination even then, and when I heard the term “bamboo curtain” it conjured up the image of a lovely and mysterious Chinese woman with dark almond eyes peering out at me from behind the bamboo strands of a curtain in the back room of Rick’s Café where I was supposed to meet an important Chinese defector and escort him to freedom.
 
Then, when the Vietnam War was getting underway, the announcers all described Southeast Asia as part of “China’s soft underbelly.”  I mean, Jesus Christ, was it just me and my oversexed imagination or was everybody describing Asia in sexual terms? “Bamboo curtain?” “Soft underbelly of China?”  How could I not want to go there?

So I crossed the Thames River to New London, marched into the Army Recruiter’s Center and announced that I would like to join if I could get to learn the Chinese language at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California.  He gave me the language proficiency test and I passed.  I then had to list three languages in case I didn’t get my first choice.  I desperately wanted Chinese so I listed Chinese mandarin, Chinese Cantonese, Chinese Hokkien dialect. 
 
He was not pleased with that and had me list again.  So I put down Chinese, Japanese, and Vietnamese.  (I had no fear of being sent to Vietnam because I was in my early 20’s and, being young and indestructible, no harm could come to me.)
 
It was only after I had left his office that I realized I had nothing in writing. Duh.  But, as it turned out, the Army was as good as its word.  I got my year of Chinese mandarin at DLI, got a bit more training at Petaluma, and, in its wisdom, the Army then sent me off to– you guessed it – Bangkok. 
 
Where for the first time in my life I came face to face with Thai women.  In the flesh.  And that was the end of my plan to be a Great China Scholar.  In fact, that was the end of any sensible plan I have had for several decades.

Not that I’m complaining, understand.  Because the way things are in America today, had I actually become a university professor of pimply faced, beer guzzling, politically correct, health Nazi, nonsmoking, college kids, I might not have lasted too long.  I would have made some jocular remark about a coed’s curvaceous legs or some coed in search of better grades would have come  to my office and seduced me (not difficult to do) and I would have faced scandal, dishonor, disrepute and possibly legal charges. So it is just as well that I washed up on Thailand’s humid shores that happy and sweltering day in March of 1966.  And in any case I am happy to report that I have continued my China studies even while in Thailand.  Because over the years, I have noticed more and more Thai go dancers with the tattoo of a Chinese character on their shoulders or backs or elsewhere.   And whenever I see one, I always invite her over for a drink immediately so I can try to make out what the character is.  Because the Chinese language does not have an alphabet so it is easy to forget characters if one doesn’t use them often or gets drunk too often or both.

Usually, the character on the girl’s arm or shoulder or back will be a common one and after a drink or two, I thank the lady and leave.  Sometimes, I will spot an accursed simplified Chinese character and, needless to say, do not associate with any woman who would put such an unsightly Chinese scratch on her shoulder.

However, occasionally, I come across a dancer with a complicated Chinese character tattoo, the meaning of which I am not sure of.    In that case, it becomes necessary to bar fine her and take her back to my apartment because that is where I keep my Mathew’s ChineseEnglish Dictionary.

This is a very special dictionary listing Chinese characters by number of strokes in the character as well as by 214 “radicals,” for example, the “fire” radical or “water” radical or “bamboo” radical.  The radicals give clues to the meaning and/or sound of the character.  So, unless the character is one of the communist simplified characters (which may have eliminated the radical), it is possible, with patience, to track down even complicated characters. The problem comes about because Thai go dancers have very little in the way of patience.  While she lies naked on the bed nibbling on some shrimp chips or beetles fried in oil and watches some god awful Thai soap opera, I prop the dictionary against her breasts and, carefully checking the character on her shoulder (or wherever), attempt my scholarly research.  Always a firm believer in combining scholarly research with sensual pleasure, I happily go about my business occasionally having to ask the girl to HOLD STILL, DAMN IT!

So, although living now in Thailand, I am pleased to report that I am still taking time out to study Chinese characters.  Once a scholar always a scholar.

Whether I would have been happier as a respected professor of Chinese Studies on the green and spacious campus of a prestigious university doing my research in a musty library or am happier doing my research with a naked Thai go dancer on my bed in a Bangkok apartment, who can say?  But a local newspaper has just described the troubled Muslim southern part of Thailand as “Thailand’s soft underbelly.”  Ye gads, here we go again.