On the morning of Nov. 19, Hwa Nan Honorary Council Chair Gordon Trimble was invited to give a speech at the kick off ceremony of the 3rd Maritime Silkroad(Fuzhou) International Tourism Festival.
Here are the full remarks of his speech:
Honored Guests, Gracious Hosts. . .Gordon Trimble is my name and I grew up on a ranch north of San Diego dreaming that someday I would follow the footsteps of Marco Polo. From Confucius I knew that traveling companions would always teach me something and from Zhuangxi I knew that life’s possibilities were to be imagined unfettered by words.
The air was hot and humid; my pores were full of dust during that first visit to Fujian. But images of Fuzhou people are still vivid even after three decades. Their inquisitive eyes, the determination of their face, their intensity—you can feel it when they rode their bicycles. They prepared Fujian food with love; it smelled great and tasted even better. But it was the sincerity of their greeting that touched my heart. I visited Hwa Nan where girls lived 30 to a room and carried buckets of hot water up four stories to sponge bathe.
Three years later I stood in awe at the magnitude and immensity of the Gate House of Xian that accommodated caravans of more than 1,000 camels fresh from their journey East across the Silk Road. But even as I stood in silence my thoughts returned to that dusty stretch between Quanzhou with its mosque, maritime museum and totally surreal stone bridge . . . It was there I saw a crew of 30 building a road by hand of stone. A few days later it was still hot and dusty as now I traveled south but in that brief period the crew had advanced the road five kilometers. Napoleon was right; the Lion is now awake and look at Fuzhou today.
I soon discovered that Chinese knew much more about America than Americans knew about China or Chinese. This lack of understanding would not bode well so we sat down with the University of Puget Sound in the early 1990s. We knew we were not going to change either America or China but that didn’t mean we should not begin, much as Yu. Gong had done when he began to deal with his mountain. But where would we start? The City needed to be significant—cosmopolitan--without being too American. It needed to be surrounded by exciting places filled with beauty, with culture . . . with history. But most importantly were its people.
An American psychologist and educator arrived in China, 98 years ago, for a two week visit but he wound up staying two years. As he started to talk to people his understanding of China began to evolve. He reasoned that when people sincerely try to communicate this process invariably brings them closer together. His name -- John Dewey and yes he came to Fuzhou in 1919.
Life is wonderful—incredibly blessed. Our Banyan Tree first put down roots in Fuqing, then Pingtan, then Fuzhou, Tacoma and Hawaii. What about you? Why not let your banyan spread to Fujian and sink a root or so in Fuzhou to let some of that Fu in Fuzhou also bless your life. Yes, we came for a visit like John Dewey and wound up spending half a lifetime and now you know why we call Fuzhou home.
