So far, I have collected many BEAUTIFUL STORIES about FRIENDSHIP AND FRIENDSHIPOLOGY for my websites, but very few SAD or VERY UNFORTUNATE ones. I decided today to write about a true story belonging to the latter category.

This story is about two old friends ( both deceased now ) who came to America from Shanghai, China, to pursue their Western Education. They were about the same age, rich, handsome, and suave. They joined an elitist Chinese Fraternity and were very popular with their women friends. So many wonderful times they had together, double-dating as well as leading various faternity’s social and philantropical activities together. They considered each other Best Friends.

After graduate schools, the one from Wharton, stayed on in New York City and did well in Finance. The other became an eminent professor in the Mid West. Both got married and had happy families and professional careers. They kept in touch and met fairly regularly at their fraternity reunions etc..

Much later, both in their late seventies, they migrated to the S.F. South Bay. Single now, the finance fellow had an apartment near San Jose. The professor and his wife had a nice house near Stanford University. They were delighted to live not huge distance from each other any more, but the half hour drive between them still made it difficult for them to see each other often – especially since the finance fellow no longer drived.

So here is the story. The Finance Fellow was flying back from a long trip from Hong Kong. The professor went to pick up his friend from S.F. Airport then delivered him back to the San Jose apartment . After entering the apartment, the Finance fellow immediately went up to his second floor bedroom. He said he was exhausted. The professor was also exhausted from driving, so he plopped down in the living room sofa and turned on the TV to relax a bit. His hearing was not good so he turned the volume on really high.

The old friend from the second floor was furious because the loud TV was disturbing. He bluntly reprimanded the professor, ” How can you be so inconsiderate ? “. The professor was not at all happy about that. He instantly got up to leave, complaining “How can you be so ungrateful for all I have just done for you ? They parted angry at each other. Due to various reasons they never apologized to each other. That was the end of their Old Friendship. It’s so sad and truly unfortunate.

The lesson I learned is that when people are tired they are often not at their best. We need to be more forgiving. Also, I really feel guilty myself for not having tried harder to help them regain their good feelings for one another. In such cases the third mutual friend should really do more to help out.

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Thank you for inviting me to say something about FRIENDSHIP. I shall say what I feel most acutely in meeting people cross-cultural, and making friends, especially around Stanford Campus in recent years. 

There is a paranoia about Chinese women, as though we were thieves, whores, and hookers, that would steal men away.  I was personally insulted a couple of times. 

Once at an academic seminar on Chinese American immigrant history, I was properly introduced to a faculty working on the Railroad Project. When I informed him that the Northern California  Chinese Community Railroad Project would host a gala in SF in a couple of weeks, celebrating Chinese contribution to the construction of railroad, this white male immediately turned his back, and said to me, “Oh, my wife has a surgery. ” Then he immediately walked away. 

Does he think of me inviting him to dance, or for a date?  Stupid swine! 

When I confided to a white woman friend, she explained to me why people have such paranoias. Her high school lover and husband over twenty years went to work in Hong Kong, fell in love with a Chinese woman. Only a few months later, he came back asking the wife for a divorce. Now she was left alone. “Chinese women are real horrors.”  I was sympathetic. After all, she was a Stanford woman, able to tell the difference to trust me with her story.

In American society male and female relationships are often sexually interpreted. It’s not the same in China. Sexual harassment is not a widespread social problem there.I taught in China in recent decades. In Chinese society, I could invite a male colleague or graduate student out to dinner without his wife. It is perfectly normal. There is no sexual expectation. 

Students are very close to their professors, like their children, friends and families. Men and women could be close friends for years without sexual involvement. 

The wives wouldn’t feel insecure unless the husband did not come home after ten or eleven o’clock. Women were expected to manage their own men, and respect other women. Fighting with another woman out of jealousy is considered bad manner, disgrace, lost of control, failure of her management.  That is why many Chinese women disrespect Hilary Clinton, who failed to manage her own man. How could she manage a country? 

I was raised in China after Women’s Liberation. In my time, mostly men went after women, not vice versa. To suggest for a woman to approach, flirt, or seduce a man truly makes her “cheap”, losing respect in public eye. Therefore, it is degrading, humiliating, and insulting even to suggest the woman is plotting after a man. Indeed, when the Concerned Asian Scholars Delegates came to visit China in 1970s, they reported in a book, “Inside China”, that women’s status in my hometown was first rate in the world.

Of course things changed in recent decades, but this was only because contemporary women in China blindly imitated Hollywood culture. In the meanwhile, isn’t  the “success” of American feminist agenda to “Engender China by sexual revolution in Western style” that have brought such changes—creating alienation between men and women at the same time ? That has liberated “ Chinese female sexuality ” in Hollywood style?  And that has reduced our status to the stereotypes of thieves, whores and hookers? 

In this Age of Corruption, academic whores are everywhere, I have seen, on and off campus, inside and outside of office. Some were Asian, some black, white, hispanic. . .not all Chinese, please. Not me, at least. True Friendship is possible only when men are liberated from Orientalist fantasy,  and women are cured of “penis envy.” 

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JENNIE WANG PH.D. Professor of English, Independent Thinker, Scholar, and Critic; Author of Novelistic Love in the Platonic Tradition, The Iron Curtain of Language; Editor of Querying the Genealogy, China Men’s American Dreams; and numerous academic articles on Postmodern Fiction, Transnational Studies in Chinese American Literature.  After her retirement, she continued to write, and published two memoirs–The Education of Jennie Wang (2015) and License Plate Number One (2018).  She received an Albert Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement Award for “career longevity and demonstrated unwavering excellence in her chosen field”  in 2018. Her books are available at amazon.com

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A Collection of  hard hitting, humorous comments… 

*”In my many years I have come to a conclusion, … that one useless man is
a shame,  two [useless men] is a law firm and three or more [useless men] is
a government.”*

~John Adams 

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*”If you don’t read the newspaper you are  uninformed, if you do read the
newspaper, you are  misinformed.”*

~George Bernard Shaw  

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*”Foreign aid might be defined as a transfer of money from poor people in
rich countries to rich people in poor countries.”*

~ Douglas Casey, Classmate of Bill Clinton at Georgetown University 

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*”Giving  money and  power to  government is like giving whiskey and car
keys to teenage boys.”*

~P.J. O’Rourke,  Civil Libertarian 

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*”Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn’t mean politics
won’t take an interest in you!”

~ Ronald  Reagan  

               *******
*”The  only difference between a tax man and a taxidermist is that the
taxidermist leaves the skin.”*

~Mark Twain 

                   *******
*”What this country needs are more unemployed politicians.”*

~Edward Langley,  Artist (1928-1995)  

                 *******
*”A  government big enough to give you everything you want, is strong enough
to take everything you have.”*

~Thomas Jefferson  

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*”We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office.”*

– Aesop

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IN ANTICIPATION – ( another article for your friendship website )

As the days and weeks lie ahead, we are anticipating that the lifting of the lockdown can’t come soon enough. I’m a bit tired of the confinement plus, I need a hair-cut badly. Our venturing out would be dramatically different than what we could ever have imagined just 3 months earlier. 

The New Normal 

After 3+ months within the confines of our homes, we will shortly venture out of our protected cocoons. Will we all function as before? I have always been quick to greet and extend shakes with others, particularly with my students. Each of us will be behind virus protected N95 masks, where smiles will partly shield our enthusiasm with each encounter. Do we greet each other with elbow bumps now that the proverbial handshakes are taboo? How about the enduring embrace? 

Let’s step back and examine the pre-Covid 19 days. The word, social distancing, didn’t exist at least not in the context of today. Perhaps it did for others previously too, who didn’t want to share their world’s with ours. The ease of befriending someone certainly was easier back then. How about coffee or lunch sometime? Our smile and handshake reaffirms our sincerity. Facial expressions now hidden behind our masks, could connections still be made? Post Covid 19, are we to be leery of others particularly in making new friends? Can we trust others even if both parties have been tested negative? Has our society erected a shield that makes it impenetrable to meet others and making new friendships? It will certainly be a challenge and we must extend ourselves even more than before. 

A Brave New World

My Conversational English classes previously have been populated with students from all corners of this planet. The union and blending of each rich culture meshed nicely with our American ideologies, makes for a bright future. I’ve always consider my classes as the sharing of ideas and the love for one another. These thoughts are paramount for me. My legacy is to leave my class and this world happier, always with a sense of hope. Whenever the school year resumes again, I will as always explain the virtues of love and the caring for all.

During the last several months, we found how fractured we are as a society and the depth of the financial divide amongst us. Even more so now is the need for unity. To coexist in this world, we depend on one another. After each of my sessions, I will continue to say, “be good to someone new and love those who are close to you”. Then off to lunch at a nearby restaurant for eats, treats and more stories. Creating the environment of caring and love must be nourished by all of us. The enrichment by all is what makes our world a better place. This can be achieved mainly by making friends. 

Will my students return and will new ones attend? I’m looking forward to the Brave New World and what it brings. 

Phil

‘Every day is unique and special’

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Koo helped found Self-Help for the Elderly’s San Mateo senior center. During our present Coronavirus Epidemic, Self-Help has closed their physical spaces, but they still deliver food to those who need it. And they offer Connection From a Distance. Koo and eight (or so) others have split the duty of calling 1,000 of the center’s users. They have another 100 to go. They speak to them in Mandarin or Cantonese or English. “Mostly they appreciate someone calling them. I tell them this all will pass, and we can come back to the senior center again. Something to look forward to.”

Roz is also Co-Founder of the The 1990 Institute <www.1990Institute.org>

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