Ben Hassenger

Fri­day evening, we hopped on the sleeper train to Xi’an and to see the Ter­ra­cotta War­riors. I had some reser­va­tions about the 16-hour jour­ney; my thoughts were that the train would be extremely dirty, we’d end up with a cou­ple of obnox­ious drunks in our cabin, and that I would not be able to sleep. I am pleased to say that we expe­ri­enced none of the above.

Our car was split up into 10 — 12 cab­ins with four bunks in each. Bill and I had the two bot­tom bunks, which were basi­cally like sin­gle beds and com­fort­able. They were a bit shabby, but had clean sheets, blan­kets, and pil­lows. Two broth­ers were in the upper bunks; one a police­man. They spoke some Eng­lish and were pleas­ant and friendly. The police­man had a girl­friend in the next cabin who came over and spoke with Bill in Eng­lish for quite a while. After she left, all four of us pretty much fell asleep to the rhythm of the rails and woke up after the din­ing car had closed for the evening; no sup­per for us. Luck­ily we had some fruit and munchies on board with us and that was just enough to make it through the evening.

We arrived in Xi’an around 8:00 am and were met by some friends of a friend from Changzhou. Proud own­ers of a medium-sized Buick, they drove us to a restau­rant just out­side of town where we had a huge break­fast of fish soup, sar­dine salad, mush­rooms, and veg­etable dumplings. I was so hun­gry I ate about twice as much as I usu­ally would have, and was very sat­is­fied. Then, we headed off to see the Ter­rra­cotta War­riors at the mau­soleum of Qin Shi Huang, China’s first Emperor.

Qin wanted to recre­ate the impe­r­ial palace in which he lived to pro­tect him in the after­life so he had over 8,000 sol­diers along with horses, char­i­ots, and other fig­ures — all out of ter­ra­cotta (“baked earth” in Ital­iano} clay, and each one unique in its char­ac­ter­is­tics. Appar­ently, over 700,000 work­ers, most of them pris­on­ers and slaves, toiled for years to build the fig­ures and sur­round­ings, with many of them dying in the process. Very high lev­els of mer­cury have been mea­sured in the area and the con­jec­ture is that shim­mer­ing rivers were sim­u­lated using the toxic liq­uid metal. There is still much of the mau­soleum that has not been exca­vated, so many sur­prises still await dis­cov­ery. It’s truly fas­ci­nat­ing; you can find out more about it at these sites: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terracotta_Army, http://whc.unesco.org/pg.cfm?cid=31&id_site=441, and http://www.china-family-adventure.com/xian-terracotta-army.html.

After the war­riors, we were dropped off at the Xi’an air­port for a trip back to Bejing. We got back to Bill’s apart­ment quite late (after a rather way­ward taxi ride), grabbed about two hours of sleep and shower, and then returned to the Bei­jing air­port for the trip back to the US. I had a few tears in my eyes when I left them; it was such a spe­cial and won­der­ful expe­ri­ence and it reminded me all the rea­sons I left my sales rep job a cou­ple of years ago after a very sim­i­lar expe­ri­ence in Vietnam.

Trav­el­ing and shar­ing music, the Eng­lish lan­guage, and Amer­i­can cul­ture to peo­ple around the world, learn­ing about other’s cul­tures and coun­tries, and mak­ing new friends is truly what I wish to be my life’s work. At the age of 56, I feel I have at least 20 years left in which to pur­sue these dreams; stay tuned …

What a great Thanks­giv­ing Day we had at Hohai Uni­ver­sity in Changzhou, China. We spent the morn­ing pop­ping in and out of class­rooms with my uke and gui­tar, singing and talk­ing about the songs and their mean­ings. We took turns play­ing the straight man and the funny guy and the stu­dents really ate it up. At 3:45 in the after­noon, we put on a lecture/concert to an over­flow­ing hall of about 225 stu­dents. We kicked it off with everyone’s favorite, “You Are My Sun­shine”, and pro­ceeded to keep every­one engaged for the next 1–1/2 hours with a mix of tra­di­tional folk songs and my orig­i­nals. I added a cou­ple of new tunes to the set list, includ­ing “Habi­tat” by Bill Oliver: espe­cially appro­pri­ate to this sci­ence uni­ver­sity focused on oceans and rivers. My song to young Ben and his mother, “Because of You”, seemed very mean­ing­ful to many of the stu­dents and “500 Miles Away From Home” was cer­tainly one most of them could relate to. We had another “seventh-inning stretch” singing “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” and fin­ished with “This Land is Your Land” and “Coun­try Roads”. That evening we got together with the MSU Vis­it­ing Inter­na­tional Pro­fes­sional Pro­gram stu­dents for a lav­ish Chi­nese din­ner includ­ing fish heads (which I never did quite fig­ure out how to eat) and lots of red wine. One of the more inter­est­ing Thanks­giv­ings that I have had, for sure!

Today (Fri­day) we are teach­ing a class in the morn­ing, then doing a bit of sight-seeing and shop­ping before we take a 16-hour train ride to Xi’an and the Ter­ra­cotta War­riors http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terracotta_Army. Stay tuned for more …

I landed in Bei­jing Fri­day night around 10:30 after a 14-hour flight. Luck­ily, I ended up with a whole row to myself and could lie down and sleep, which I did for about 1/2 of the trip. My friend and ex-MSU col­league, Bill Eubank and his girl­friend Sun­shine picked me up and we took a bus and a “black taxi” (unli­censed) to their apart­ment in DaX­ing; about 1–1/2 hours south of the air­port. After a light meal of shrimp and soup, I finally got to bed around 2:00 am. At noon Sat­ur­day we had a nice lun­cheon with a group of my for­mer stu­dents from MSU; we were all very happy to see each other. Sun­shine ordered enough food to feed the Chi­nese army so we ate well and sang a few songs together. That evening I played a con­cert for a group of about 40 chil­dren at a pri­vate Eng­lish school. They ranged in ages from 3 — 10 and it was quite the scene. Bill kept say­ing (in a very poor Scotty imi­ta­tion) “Cap­tain, she’s gonna blow!” and things seemed like they were about to get out of hand when I crawled on my knees into the mid­dle of the mob with my uke and started play­ing “Old Mac­Don­ald Had a Farm”. We made a vari­ety of ani­mal sounds, sang “ee-i-ee-i-oh” and had a great time.

Sun­day morn­ing we caught the bul­let train to Jinan and Shan­dong Sports Uni­ver­sity, where Bill teaches Eng­lish. We hit speeds of 311 kph (193 mph) and the ride was smooth and relax­ing. The train was clean and the seats com­fort­able. Why we can’t get it together in our coun­try to invest in this mode of trans­porta­tion is beyond me; it’s so much more enjoy­able than fly­ing. Our for­mer MSU stu­dent Rose picked us up at the train sta­tion in Jinan. Rose was one of my favorite stu­dents at MSU; attrac­tive, smart, and a great sense of humor. She has been Bill’s “right-hand woman” in Jinan: she is very con­nected and helps him nav­i­gate the often con­fus­ing struc­ture of Chi­nese bureau­cracy and cul­ture. I had an amaz­ing peanut dish at a very nice restau­rant which seemed to con­tain peanuts, soy sauce, cilantro, onion, and tomato: I am going to have to try and re-create it when I get home. She dropped us off at Bill’s small dorm room on cam­pus and we set­tled in to get pre­pared for a con­cert in the school audi­to­rium that evening.

We did a sound-check around 3:00, which I insisted on after my expe­ri­ence in Viet­nam with the karaoke-type approach many col­lege Asians have to mix­ing, set it up so it sounded rea­son­able and then headed over to the col­lege radio sta­tion for an inter­view. Sophie, the inter­viewer, was well-prepared and we did the inter­view in Eng­lish and Chi­nese, with a very capa­ble young inter­preter by my side. I sang a few songs and then it was time for the show. We had well over 200 stu­dents in the 300-seat audi­to­rium, so it was rea­son­ably full. Many of the stu­dents were Eng­lish majors, but oth­ers knew lit­tle Eng­lish at all, so I had another inter­preter with me, along with Bill on stage. The stu­dents were engaged most of the time and enjoyed singing along on the songs. I mixed in a few of my orig­i­nals with some folk clas­sics; the big hits were: “This Land is Your Land”, “Erie Canal”, “500 Miles”, and of course “Coun­try Roads” (which I have found to be the favorite Amer­i­can song any­where in the world.) A per­sonal high­light of the evening was get­ting all the stu­dents to sing “Root, root, root for the TIGERS” in “Take Me Out to the Ball­game”; it was a funny moment. I spent at least 30 min­utes after the show get­ting my pic­ture taken with var­i­ous stu­dents and had many nice com­ments from them about the performance.

Bill and I spent Mon­day and Tues­day teach­ing together in his Eng­lish classes and it was like old days back at MSU. We have a good back and forth with each other that the stu­dents really enjoy. Every­where we went on cam­pus, we were greeted with “Hi” or “Hello” from stu­dents who Bill said had never said any­thing to him in Eng­lish before. The ones that were at the show or in the classes came up and told us how much they liked the songs and the singing; it was very heart-warming and reminded me of my trip to Viet­nam two years ago which made me embark on this new career. We had a hot-pot din­ner with Rose and her friend Sherri, choos­ing var­i­ous veg­eta­bles and other addi­tions to the soup from a toy train that would pass our table.

Sophie, the young lady who inter­viewed me on the radio, and her mother (a for­mer colonel in the army) took us to the train sta­tion with a cou­ple of stops at the Black Tiger Spring in Jinan, one of 72 in the city: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Tiger_Spring. We also went to a beau­ti­ful lake and stopped at a friend’s music store where I gave Sophie a gui­tar les­son and jammed with the owner on Amer­i­can folk clas­sics. Then it was on to the bul­let train sta­tion for another smooth ride in the coun­try­side, this time to Changzhou. After we arrived, I played my uke and sang “You Are My Sun­shine” with a cab dri­ver, had din­ner with some VIPP alumni and went back to the hotel where we both crashed about 7:30.

I’m up at 1:00 am Thurs­day typ­ing this — so that means its Thanks­giv­ing; a very happy one to you all! I hope to get some pho­tos posted soon, but no video until after I return (no YouTube allowed in China).