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After the first impromptu English class, that small handful of kids and I agreed to meet again for another English class at 5:30 the very next day. But the next morning the crew and I were invited to the village chief's house for dinner that night. I was torn about going because I'd just made this promise to the kids but you could hardly turn down the village chief and they told me he was quite a character. Happily It all worked out as you'll see in the next post. But first -- the village chief:

We took the opportunity while we were there for dinner to interview him for the documentary. We were trying to get some honest talk from him about conditions in the village and prospects for better education for the kids. Predictably he wasn't too forthcoming about that or just wasn't too well informed. He wasn't too well informed about many things we'd expected him to be on top of, such as the electricity outages. At random times and for hours at a time the electricity in the village would just stop. Supposedly it had to do with the mining that was going on all around and from which we could occasionally hear the long low rumble of distant explosions.



It was quite a feast. He supposedly got first dibs on the food in the village. Zhang Laoshi told us to notice how the village chief and his wife were fat, unlike the rest of the people in the village. (maybe they were fat but not by American standards. Just like me. Nobody there had any problem telling me I was fat, though now that I'm back in the States I'm at a stroke if not thin then relatively not fat even though I've put on a few pounds since I've been here.)

Throughout the meal I had been sort of quiet. I was enjoying picking up what I could from the animated conversation and I didn't want to slow it down with my halting Chinese. But I was very curious to know what the village chief thought of the US. I knew that if I asked him a simple little question like "uh, what do you think of America?" it would get a simple little answer. I finally decided to ask him if he remembered Nixon's visit to China in 1972. That got the ball rolling. Nixon's trip was a huge event in China (I'd already learned this from other older Chinese people I'd spoken to) and he remembers it well. All of a sudden we were chatting away about all sorts of things and eventually declaring that China and the US are now great friends. And before it was over the Chief and I were also the greatest of friends. In the middle of all this I said to him "It looks like we are the only two people still eating." Which was true. There were about ten of us at dinner that night and a whole tableful of different kinds of food had been set before us to pick and choose from family-style as is common in China. And if there's food in front of me, I'll keep eating. He took this as a great symbol of our friendship and was soon loading both of us up with more rice and beer and making challenges to see who could eat and drink the most. We became the hit of the show that evening and everybody was laughing at us and enjoying it all, laughing all the more when I'd get up to fill my bowl with more rice.


This is the village chief's house. Over the door is a sign that says something like "Village Family Planning Center". The chief, it seems, was quite proud of how well his village had maintained China's one-child policy and I'm sure there are some brutal and heartbreaking stories to go along with that. Inside in a prominent place were hung plaques from the government honoring the village for achieving this goal.

When it was over and we were saying our goodbyes the chief got me in a bear hug and wouldn't let go. It was quite a night for international diplomacy. Though not as nice as the night of what you might call international diplomacy I'd had with Gong Li. [REMEMBER: there's a prize.]