And please, do not get me started on the food. I am a big man - standing more than 6’0” tall (185 cm) and I love to eat. In all the years in China, I have never had a bad meal. I have eaten in restaurants from Harbin to Hainan and all are great … except that I won’t eat anything that is still moving. The Chinese people are joyful in defining themselves on the food they eat which likewise then expresses where someone comes from. The food in Shanghai is sweet and melts in your mouth. I took a trip there once and at the uppermost floors of a natural wood-paned restaurant that has been in the same place for centuries, I had a wonderful dinner, culminated with a bubbling-hot beef brisket that had been marinating in a sweet honey sauce for hours. When I close my eyes, I can still taste every succulent morsel as it melted around my tongue.
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Skeptics abound throughout this beautiful blue planet that we all reside. As humans we unfortunately tend to look at the negative rather than the positive. As a trained and professional journalist, I am also so experienced in seeking out truth. But what is truth? Whose truth? When I worked for the Beijing Olympic Organizing Committee I stood proudly side by side with the most dedicated people who were committed to the values of Peace through Sport.
Let me repeat … Peace through Sport.
Is there anything more noble and pure than that? Can we not quietly agree that the Games of the XXIX Olympiad were the greatest of all Olympics? Yes, it was, and I am honored that that Chinese nation allowed me, an American citizen, to have an extensive role deep inside the Media and Communications “machinery” of these Games and through the course of this book, you will read it all. Just as it happened and if you were standing beside me every day.
While preparing to write this book, I’ve pondered in reflection often times in the years since the Beijing Summer Olympics to ask ... why me? I am merely human and like you Dear Reader, have far too many foibles. I am nothing special, although I have talents granted to me from God in this life. So, why did the Chinese Government hire me? The Chinese Olympic Organizers could have hired anyone in the world. If you were to advertise for the senior position I held in China in preparation for and during the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympic Games in the New York Times, the phones at BOCOG would have been ringing off the hook.
How about this example:
WANTED - Once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for an internationally-focused sports marketing publicist with the Beijing Olympic Organizing Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad. Your role will be help guide the worldwide publicity of the Olympics in China. Must be highly motivated and able to travel. You will receive the second highest salary of any staff or management of the Olympics, free apartment, free car and eventually you will become the international spokesman of the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics to the world. Only serious inquiries. Please send your current CV and salary requirements to [email protected]
My goodness, if this ad did appear, you would have 1,000 applicants in the first day; probably twice that in day two; and that from New York City alone. If the word did get out that such a position might even remotely or even slightly be possible, BOCOG would have been swamped with resumes from Tulsa to Timbuktu. So instead of putting this ad in USAToday, the Financial Times of London or The Provo Daily Herald, the Chinese selected me.
I think it has to do with trust. The Golden Rule and all that. I have never given the Chinese Government or the Chinese people a reason to fear me as a stranger in their nation… but I’ve had to fight and claw for everything I’ve gotten in China, so at the end of the day, yes, I am very grateful to the Chinese people to have earned their trust that brought me to the highest levels any American can rise to. I’ve earned it. Trusting an American in China almost never ever happens here and took me more than nine years. Nine very long years. Much like Joseph toiling away in the service of the Egyptian Pharaoh, it takes a foreigner in China years of dedicated service with an open mind and willing heart to think of life in a different way. To see a thing, analyze it and offer constructive thoughts to make it better. This is the Chinese way. Not to strike down. Not to be critical but to find a way to make it better. Because of the senior management positions I have held in the PRC since the late ‘90s, I have been able to travel throughout China and around the world with my daughter. Because of the trust the Chinese people have in me through countless tasks, I have been able to feed my family, watch my daughter grow and start her small steps from childhood into adult. I am very grateful and my heart is full with gratitude for what I have been allowed to do and herein thank the Chinese people for their generosity to both myself and my daughter.
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I am a half-glass full type of guy, and as you can tell, look at life on the sunny side. I’ve had the rare opportunity of traveling around most of our world (although I have yet to visit Peru), I have seen and witnessed enough to make up my own mind as to what I believe is righteous and truthful. Yes, and like you Dear Reader, I’ve seen my share of dirt. The world we inhabit is filed with enough of both. But I look at life through glasses colored … rose. I have always sought out the beautiful things. I have been allowed and entrusted by the Chinese people to do great things, many of which I will share with you in the pages within.
And yes, like every great movie there has to be a sequel and you will find it soon. The sequel will highlight the abject failures of Major League Baseball to export itself to the People’s Republic of China. It is entitled: Major League Baseball Strikes Out! Originally part of this manuscript, I elected to remove it, extrapolate it and will present it to you, Dear Reader, very soon.
We all have had that one special day in our lives. I’ve been fortunate to have many. For the Chinese nation it was Li Ning running around the top of The Bird’s Nest to light the Olympic Cauldron and start the Olympic Games in China. For me, of course, the day that my daughter Danielle was born was the best. I was in the delivery room moments after she took her first breath and I fell to my knees thanking God for this great and wondrous blessing that came in to my life.
I wish you all could meet her one day.
I have also pondered while thinking on how I would tell you of my story here in China, on the so many people who have entered my life, many who have left and some who have stayed on to accompany me along this journey. Do I start the story at the Beijing Olympics and move backward. I think that would be a bit anticlimactic, don’t you?
So … let’s start our journey together this way.
As I write to you today, I live in Guangzhou in Southern China. You may have heard of Guangzhou and its previous name of Canton, being the start of the Silk Road; but Guangzhou was and continues to be my personal entry point into China and the start of my journey of what has been more than 12 years now here in the marvelously mysterious and mystical land of China.
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Try this allegory: Imagine you’re a Mormon pioneer crossing the American wilderness in the mid 1800’s heading for the safe and secure land the Native Americans you have met call Utah. The wagon train you have been leading has been obliterated in a sudden October winter blizzard. You are tired. Hungry. Alone. You carry your now-dead horse