Posted Sunday night, August 6, 2017.
My father can strike up a conversation with anybody. If a workman comes to the house, my father knows his life story by the time the project is finished. Once, a plumber repaired our bathroom, and he got along so well with my father that they still go deer hunting together in northern Missouri. During my childhood, if my father and I happened to be sitting somewhere with nothing to do---a bus station, a hotel lobby---he would pick out an individual and ask me what I noticed about him. Is there anything interesting about the way he's dressed? The way he carries himself? What do you think he does, why do you think he's here?
He had picked up this activity from his teacher in graduate school, a sociologist named Peter Kong-ming New. Peter New grew up in Shanghai but went to college in the United States; after the Communists took over in 1949, he stayed in America. He taught my father in at the University of Pittsburgh, and then for a couple of years they worked together at Tufts, in Boston. Peter believed that I had been named after him, and although this wasn't exclusively true---my parents had other friends and relatives with the same name---it was true enough that they didn't disabuse him of the sense of honor. He was an unforgetable presence from my childhood. He stood well over six feet tall, with broad shoulders and a big belly. He had a huge bald head and a face as round as a mooncake. In addition to the way he liked to observe people, he developed a technique he called "creative bumbling." If Peter was in a situation where he needed to get something done ---placate a traffic cop, or get a table at a crowded restaurant---he suddenly became a waiguoren, a stranger in a strange land, and invariably people did everything they could to ease this confused and stuttering Chinaman along without further incident. Peter New had a booming voice, and he loved telling stories; like my father, he had the rare combination of being both loquacious and observant. He also had the exile's ability to make himself at home anywhere. That was my first impression of Chinese people--as a child I assumed they were all massive, charismatic figures. Whenever I heard the word "Shanghai," I pictured a city of giants.
Many years later, when I came to live in China, I realized how unusual Peter Kong-ming New really was. It wasn't just his size---it was the way he talked, the way he observed. Most Chinese tend to be wary of strangers, and there isn't a strong tradition of sociology and anthropology, of taking an interest in communities that are different from your own. In my experience, the Chinese aren't natural storytellers---they are often deeply modest, and they dislike being the center of attention. After I began working as a journalist, I learned to be patient, because it often took months or even years to get a person to talk freely. I remembered my father's approach---if you want to truly understand somebody, you can't become bored or impatient, and the everyday matters as much as the exceptional. And there were many moments in China that called for some creative bumbling on the part of the waiguoren.
---Peter Hessler. Strange Stones.
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