by Martin Young
Note: To introduce our new Travelogues column, we present an excerpt from a piece by United Spinal Board member Martin Young about a trip to China that he took in November 1997.
Board member Martin Young (right) was as interesting to this 82-year-old monk in Shanghai’s Jing’An Temple as the temple and monk were to Young!
When I began to practice table tennis at the Burke Rehabilitation Center in White Plains, New York, I became acquainted with Peizhen Shao, our team coach. Zhen, as we call her, came to us from Shanghai, China, and has been in table tennis all her life. It’s amazing that this sport, used to establish a bridge between the US and China 30 years ago, also served to bring me to China with Zhen as my friend and guide.
It was past 10 pm, when we arrived at Shanghai’s Hong Qiao Airport (Rainbow in Chinese). Zhen told me that in 1991, when she accompanied the American Wheelchair Table Tennis Team to Shanghai, this airport had been under construction, and there was no elevator service from the arrival area to ground level. So the Shanghai Athletic Sports Commission appointed two weightlifters to carry the athletes, one by one, in their wheelchairs down to ground level. Shanghai Airport is now much more modern.
The next morning I wandered outside to enjoy my first day in China. The weather in November was balmy and I was comfortable in my polo shirt. Much of Shanghai’s older buildings and infrastructure had been built after World War I. Thus, it resembles a cheerful, bustling European city of the 1920s, but it is rapidly being overlaid with the latest generation of post-modern buildings and plazas. There are bicyclists everywhere, as this is the principal mode of transport. Bikes are modified to be taxicabs or to carry every conceivable object. I saw one biker carrying about 12 live chickens in separate baskets!
Shanghai, with a population of 12 million, is the biggest city in China. It is a center of finance, and is known as the best city for shopping. Mention shopping to any native, and he will think of Nanjing Road, the busiest of Shanghai’s streets. Just off Nanjing Road West, there is a Buddhist temple that is 1,750 years old. I met an 82-year-old monk there who had come to this temple when he was 16. But here I was, a 67-year-old American in a wheelchair that he had never seen before. It seemed that I was more of a novelty to him than he was to me!
In 1874 a poor British Jew, lame in one leg from childhood polio, came to Shanghai from India. By the 1890s, he had risen to become one of the richest men in the Far East, the world famous Hardoon. He left a monumental hotel on the waterfront and donated the spacious and beautiful Hardoon Garden, where the Shanghai Exhibition Center would be built.
In the 1930s and 1940s, the rise of Nazism in Germany precipitated a wave of Jewish refugees, who were herded by the Japanese occupiers into the Hong Kou district. When I visited it, I saw elderly people there playing cards and Chinese chess. One who was over 80, told me that he still remembered these refugees. He was in animated conversation with Zhen’s brother-in-law, but I could catch two or three familiar words like “pastrami,” “knockwurst,” and “wiener schnitzel” as he described their butcher shop and their diet.
I enjoy playing table tennis and I didn’t forget it in Shanghai. One afternoon we went to a table tennis club with Zhen and her sister-inlaw, who is a senior coach for the Shanghai Table Tennis Team. In one large gym there were 12 tables in a row. It was full of children from ages 7 to 16. Clearly, this was a very serious business and they were all working incredibly hard. Now I know why China has so many top players. I practiced with some of them. They were too good, and they were so serious and so respectful. After playing with each, I shook hands and congratulated them. I played the whole afternoon. Their enthusiasm was contagious and I almost forgot my age!
Martin Young is a long-time Board member of United Spinal. He lives in White Plains, New York.
Travelogues Wanted!
Have you taken a memorable trip-good or bad-that you’d like to tell United Spinal members about? You can send it to Orbit and we may include it in a future Travelogues column. Send your travelogues (750 words max.) to: Orbit magazine, United Spinal Association, 75-20 Astoria Boulevard, Jackson Heights, NY 11370-1177. Or e-mail them to orbit@unitedspinal.org.
