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<\/a>July 25, 2002 \u00e2\u20ac\u201d Well, I don’t have the plague.<\/p>\nNot yellow fever, psychosis or leprosy, either.<\/p>\n
How do I know this, you ask? Did I feel a case of the plague coming on and run off to the doctor?<\/p>\n
“Hey, Doc. I think I’m coming down with some of that, uh, plague that’s going around. Got any Robitussin?”<\/p>\n
No, nothing like that. It’s just that there are certain diseases — plague among them — that you must be tested for before moving to China. And I’m moving to China.<\/p>\n
Seriously. Cross my heart. Pinky shake. Booga booga. This is for real.<\/p>\n
My year-long gig as an English professor at Shanghai University starts Sept. 1. My flight leaves in 35 days.<\/p>\n
Thirty-five days! I better write quickly. I’ve got a lot of packing to do.<\/p>\n
My last day at The Times is Saturday. This is the last Sporting Life column I will write for a while.<\/p>\n
Now, I know what you’re thinking: Dan, you’re crazy. But, c’mon. Admit it. You’ve thought that before.<\/p>\n
You’ve likely got two questions for me. Everybody else has.<\/p>\n
1. Do you speak Chinese?<\/b><\/p>\n
My answer is always a quick, “Yes.” But then I laugh and admit that I’m lying. Seems my future employers were interested in my grasp of my own language, not theirs.<\/p>\n
Native English speakers are a hot commodity over there. Shanghai is a city of more than 15 million — and less than 1 percent of the population speaks English. Yikes!<\/p>\n
But that’s nothing new for me. I didn’t understand half of what y’all said when I moved down here almost four years ago.<\/p>\n
Just kidding.<\/p>\n
Kind of.<\/i><\/p>\n
2. Dan, are you a spy?<\/b><\/p>\n
Well, duh. Obviously. Why else would I spend one-seventh of my life in the Chicken City. Poultry world, you have a new capital. Its name is Shanghai.<\/p>\n
But seriously, I do plan on doing some spying while in China. However, I will spy on no one important, no one in particular. I will choose people at random and follow them. I will jot down notes on a yellow legal pad and take photos with my new digital camera.<\/p>\n
I will send my findings via carrier pigeon to Back Porch columnist Jim Chapman, who seems like he’d be into such nonsensical espionage.<\/p>\n
(Mental note: Try to keep fake talk of spying to a minimum before moving to communist country.)<\/i><\/p>\n
Perhaps the most difficult question is also the most simple. Why?<\/p>\n
“Why not?” is what I usually say to that. It’s purposefully vague and has a certain gung-ho-I’ll-try-anything-as-long-as-it’s-not-bull-riding-again spirit that fits perfectly with the concept of this column.<\/p>\n
Truth is, I’m not sure why I’m moving to China. Truth is, if three months ago you had told me that I was going to be moving to China, I would have looked at you as if you were dying of the plague.<\/p>\n
I wish I could cite some higher calling, some deep and burning desire to teach the people of the world the joys of the English language, or even a longstanding longing to learn about everything and anything non-Western.<\/p>\n
Nope. I was just trying to figure out how I could get my summers off. Really.<\/p>\n
This plan — both silly and shallow, I know — was hatched innocently in Honolulu in late May. I was there for my brother’s wedding, lying on the beach during the last day of my 10-day vacation. And I didn’t want to leave.<\/p>\n
I daydreamed about Natalie Portman and more days off. I determined that Natalie Portman was probably unattainable, so I concentrated on the days off.<\/p>\n
“That’s it!,” I thought, “I’ll become a teacher.”<\/p>\n
(Now, teachers, please don’t get mad and send hate mail. I know that teaching is really a year-round job. I know that most teachers need to get a second job during the summer, anyway. I know that 35 days from now, I will likely be in way over my head. Please understand that this was just a daydream … and that I was likely still feeling the ill effects of a poorly-prepared batch of poi.)<\/p>\n
I thought about going back to school. But then I stopped thinking about that, because I never much cared for going to school — the actual schoolwork part of it, anyway.<\/p>\n
Then I remembered hearing that some teaching jobs abroad require nothing more than a bachelor’s degree and a willingness to travel. I was qualified.<\/p>\n
I mentioned the daydream to my dad, a college professor. He mentioned that he had some connections in Shanghai. Ba-da-bing-ba-da-boom, I’m headed to China.<\/p>\n
Of course, I’m now realizing, it’s not that simple. I need to sell off most of my possessions (if you’re interested in any furniture or appliances, drop me a line). And I need to get stuck with so many needles even Scott Weiland would cringe. Gotta stave off that nasty Japanese Encephalitis bug, you know.<\/p>\n
But with every unexpected step in the moving process, with every goodbye that crosses my lips, I realize — more each day — that there is much I will miss about this town I’ve called home since the fall of 1998. (I was never able to refer to Gainesville as a “city.”)<\/p>\n
I suppose I always figured I was just passing through, though. I kept the Pennsylvania plates on my car. But one year quickly turned into two … then three … now four.<\/p>\n
Other than the town I grew up in, I’ve never lived anywhere longer than Gainesville. And it’s grown on me. I’m a small-town boy at heart. I like the fact that I can walk into a grocery store, a bar, a barbecue joint and be referred to by name.<\/p>\n
So, naturally, I now choose to live in the most populous city in the world’s most populous country — where most people won’t be able to pronounce my name, let alone remember it.<\/p>\n
This column was originally going to be a list of things I would miss about Gainesville, but the list got too long. And I got hungry.<\/p>\n
I jotted down items like “seeing the mountains while driving north on Pearl Nix Parkway on a clear day.” But then it turned into a roll call of my favorite local foods (Monkey Barrel pizza, Hickory Pig barbecue, Los Rayos quesadillas, etc.). I had to break for lunch and get some Brunswick stew.<\/p>\n
I did more than eat here, of course. I tried to do a little living, as well. Items not on my resume before I moved here: bull riding, lawnmower racing and handgrabbing for giant catfish in Mississippi, to name a few.<\/p>\n
I found it fitting, in an odd way, that my swan song was a swan dive into a pit of mud at the Redneck Games. Quite a Southern sendoff.<\/p>\n
So now it’s on to the next column, er, chapter of my life. It comes with subtitles, and I have no idea how it ends.<\/p>\n
Just the way I like it.<\/p>\n
(By the way, I’m off next summer. Anyone want to backpack to Tibet?)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
(It’s even harder when you have to say it in Chinese) July 25, 2002 \u00e2\u20ac\u201d Well, I don’t have the plague. Not yellow fever, psychosis or leprosy, either. How do I know this, you ask? Did I feel a case of the plague coming on and run off to the …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37,10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/sportinglife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/sportinglife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/sportinglife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/sportinglife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/sportinglife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/sportinglife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":510,"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/sportinglife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42\/revisions\/510"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/sportinglife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/sportinglife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/sportinglife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}