Wong’s Family

As we saw in Part One of Traditional Chinese Medicine, the tour guide in my coach was also a teacher, Wong supplemented his low income by working on the tourist coaches, and in selling works of calligraphy. His son, Shuchang, helped on the tour buses.

The writing of Chinese characters is an art form which Wong had become interested in as a hobby.

He soon became a master of the art.

Wong knew how to combine his visual art with his interpretation of the meaning.

He also presented us with a house nameplate for our UK home in Panfield, Essex. It was drawn in Chinese characters and was his rendering and interpretation of our house name, “Badgers Leap”

We got to know Wong’s family quite well and visited their home several times during our holiday.

They were a lovely family.

Similar in style and meticulously clean inside, Wong’s home was in the heart of Beijing , and not in rural China where this photo was taken. They had no inside toilet. You had to sit over a hole in a plank which was positioned over a running stream.

I remember Shuchang referring to my son, who was of the same age but not on the tour, as “the friend I have not yet met”.

He spoke excellent English and his job was to ensure tourists did not wander off on their own.

Because Shuchang had to keep them “rounded up” like sheep, the tour operators gave him the nickname “Collie”.

The giving of nick names is common in both China and Thailand.

Later, during our vacation, we visited the Great Wall of China.

Shuchang was again instructed to keep the tourists under observation.

He was in his “collie” role again.

We got chatting and he told us that it was the first time he had been allowed out of the area in which he lived.

It’s almost unbelievable to think how the Chinese government control the lives of ordinary people.

Our tour of China certainly showed us how the cultures and lifestyles of other nationalities can influence how much control a country can have over its people.