julia ross
writer/journalist
By Julia Ross
Special Correspondent, South Florida Sun-Sentinel
June 19, 2005
Had my father lived to see the new century, he would have counted high among his life's accomplishments raising three daughters who set out to see some of the world: daughter No. 1, via China, Uzbekistan and Haiti; daughter No. 2, via Albania and Russia; and daughter No. 3, via the more conventional tourist venues of Italy and Mexico.
His legacy has meant a hundred different things, hovering over the choices we make and guiding us down unforeseen paths, but it is most sharply felt an ocean away when we find ourselves making mental notes of the things we might have told him.
An attorney with a Walter Mitty wistfulness and an enduring fondness for Jimmy Buffett songs, my father longed to travel but managed only a few trips abroad in his adult life. This was before globalization made the trans-Atlantic leap seem little more than a weekend jaunt.
An early marriage and my soon-thereafter arrival precluded the youthful journeys of self-discovery (or, alternatively, tours of duty in Vietnam) that some of his peers embarked on in the '60s. But he scratched the itch in other ways, poring over the original Banana Republic catalogs, their ivory pages beckoning would-be adventurers with ink-wash drawings of pith helmets and mosquito nets, and buying colonial-era maps on weekend antiquing trips.
As a family, we ventured overseas together only once, on a two-week journey through England, Scotland and Belgium. Photos from that trip now look charmingly dated -- my sister's acid-washed jeans and my mother's pink espadrilles clearly mark us as an American family abroad, circa 1987 -- but what sticks with me are the memories of my father's full-on adrenaline rush.
My sisters and I endured daily 6 a.m. wake-up calls so that he could lead us, with appropriate historical commentary, through the canals of Bruges and the pews of St. Paul's Cathedral, ensuring that we'd return home with a greater understanding of our place in the world. At the time, we were too young to fully appreciate his push to imbibe new cultures, but he made clear his wishes for us.
Fifteen years later, I heard my father's words reverberate in a place he never dreamed of reaching. Dispirited by a deskbound job in Washington, D.C., I tendered my resignation and lit out for a semi-rural township on the outskirts of Shanghai, where 500 7- and 8-year-olds wearing red kerchiefs warily awaited the arrival of the foreign teacher.
In the first weeks, I fell into bed exhausted each night, composing would-be e-mails to my father before the BBC World Service lulled me into a dreamless sleep. The sights and sounds of San Lin provided a rich and varied travelogue: three-wheeled pedi-cabs seeking out souls with too much to carry and not far to go, reed-like young women in stiletto-heeled boots shouting "Wei??!" into their pink Motorola cell phones, Uighur men in embroidered skullcaps selling yellow raisins from wooden carts and -- at the town's central market -- pig snouts stacked 10-high. This was what I had come for.
By week six I had gained enough footing to plan a four-day pilgrimage to Beijing with an Australian friend. Over the National Day holiday, we braved the crowds at Tiananmen Square and watched fresh-faced American parents videotape their newly adopted Chinese infants in the lobby of the gleaming Novotel. I was ambivalent about slogging through a daylong tour to the Great Wall, but forged ahead regardless, joining a group of 15 Chinese tourists, a German family and a United Airlines trainer from L.A. taking full advantage of her free-flight benefits before the next round of layoffs.
The sun was working its late-day magic by the time we reached our destination at Badaling, having endured a series of "Chinese medicine shop" tourist traps and hours of sluggish traffic. I climbed the steep steps and emerged onto a broad walkway, the rolling vista below me framed by ancient stone. I had expected to be impressed with the view but, until I stood there, I hadn't really thought about what it means to be Chinese and to visit the Wall.
What I saw were families, many of three generations, who had traveled from places like Wuhan and Qingdao to instill in their youngest a sense of legacy.
As I took in the scene, a kindly grandfather in a blue Mao cap gestured with a camera, asking me to pose with his granddaughter. She was about 10 and, in keeping with the current pre-teen trend, wore two pigtails bound at intervals by rainbow-colored hair bands. I obliged, and wondered what they'd tell those back home about the golden-haired waiguoren in the blue fleece jacket. He nodded his thanks and the two continued for a while, hand in hand, the grandfather bent low to explain what had happened there centuries ago.
In the cities and hamlets of China, Buddhist temples traffic in people burning artificial paper money to ensure their loved ones are cared for in the afterlife. I tend to my father in subtler ways: I do it when I teach a first-grader how to say, "I live in China." I do it when I bargain in shaky Mandarin. And I do it when I stand atop the Great Wall, lifted for an instant across continents and the years he's been gone.