Life is Beautiful

 Life is beautiful not because everything is smooth, no struggle In life; but exactly the opposite.  There are a lot of struggles in life.  However, in each struggle, we learn lessons from them and continue to grow. During this growing process, we appreciate life.  In the end, life is indeed beautiful.

Some of the lessons are quick to learn because our  body's five senses could be a good  thermometer.   For example, if we touch a hot object, we get burned and will not touch the hot object again.  

However, some of the lessons are not so easy to recognize and require being mindful to find the cause and to avoid it in the future.  Here is one example.

When I was in college in Taipei, Taiwan, I participated in mountain hikings with classmates.  Each time after hiking, I had a very difficult time falling asleep.  Sometimes, I was lucky I was asleep but often woke up in the middle of night, then could not go back to sleep.  Then, there was one time, not only I didn’t sleep well, my liver enzymes spiked after the walk.  Usually, the insomnia episodes subsides and abnormal liver enzymes go away after a few days of rest.  For many years, I did not know why.

Then back in Wisconsin in 1998 when I was participating in 50 miles bike riding in the country.  I got all the gear.  It was breezy, I did not feel thirsty nor I was sweating too much.  I felt fine until the last mile when I came down from the bike and tried to walk and rest.  My feet literally could not walk a single step.  The event ambulance took me back to the headquarters and gave me orange juice and something to eat.  Then miraculously, I could walk again.  

All those years of insomnia, liver enzymes spike and even being unable to walk are all symptoms of dehydration.  That was a big lesson to learn in my life. Dehydration is indeed very serious and dangerous.

Recently I had  a phone conversation with my brother, David.  He lives in Westchester County, NY.  One day, he and his wife took a train to New York City and walked around New York City.  In the evening, they took a train back to Westchester County.  At the train platform, David could not move his feet for a while.  When I told him about my experiences of dehydration, he suddenly understood the cause of his symptoms.  Because it was difficult to access public restrooms in New York City, he limited his water intake during the walk so that he wouldn't feel rushed to a restroom.  Under such circumstances, dehydration occurred and it’s symptoms surfaced.  I am glad that I was  able to help my brother by  passing along the lesson I learned .  Life is beautiful.

Yet, there were circumstances where I learned the lessons in a much harder way.  It was a bright sunny winter day and I had an urge to go cross country skiing on a ski trail.  That was the time when there was no GPS, no WiFi, and absolutely no communication tools.  That day, I told my wife that I went skiing, without telling her where I went.  I just told her I would be back in a few hours.  I went to Ioda town in Wisconsin which is approximately 20 miles from my home.  The ski trail loop was approximately one and half miles which could be easily completed in less than two hours.  Because it was a loop, I should go back to the original starting point if I follow the trail.  As a result, I did not pay too much attention to the trail map.  

After 2 hours and not seeing the trail's original place, I began to puzzle about what was going on.  I looked at the map and trail sign, and was shocked, a really big shock.  I was not only off the ski trail but I was on the Ice Age Trail which runs approximately 1000 miles from the Minnesota border to Lake Michigan along the edge of the last continental glacier in Wisconsin.  

I was well off the trails and did not know how to get back.  The sun began to set, and the air temperature began to drop.  It was on a New Year holiday, and no car could be seen.  I began to be very afraid.  

I searched around the wood and no one could be seen.  Then I saw a hut.  I knocked on the door and hoped to see someone, and nobody could be seen.

I silently said to God that all my life, I did not steal. I did not rob.  But this time, if I saw no one, I was going to break into the hut to take shelter.  

I took the last chance to wait on the side of a road. Ten minutes passed, then 15 minutes, then 25 minutes, then 30 minutes. Then a big relief;  I saw a car pass by.  I waved to the driver, and the driver stopped and thankfully, he took me back to the original spot of the ski trail where my car was parked. 

I was lucky because the driver didn’t have to stop. After all all drivers were advised not to pick up a hitch hiker. But the driver, Bob, did stopped and I thank Bob and God deeply. Life is indeed beautiful, and my life was saved The lesson ?  Never take an adventure without telling other people. This indeed was a big and hard lesson to learn.

I moved to Ann Arbor in 2023.  I did not get a chance  to go cross-country skiing last winter.  But I walk everyday.  Few days ago, I was briskly walking along the Gallup Park Pathway.  Then a young lady in her 30s passed me.  What really bothered me was that she was walking leisurely, not like me briskly .  I then speeded up my walk so that I could pass her.  What did I see ?  The distance between her and me only got larger. I admitted that even she walked leisurely, she still walks faster than I. 

What should I say ?  That was my most recent lesson; a body of near 80 year old person is different from that of a 30 something person.  That is wisdom.   Isn’t life beautiful of learning this lesson when I am 78 years old.

I love Storytelling

 In the last 15 years, I tell stories whenever  I have chances.  But the adventure into the storytelling was an accident. It was a byproduct of something else of  totally different intention. 

In 1997, when I was still at Kimberly-Clark, I had the chance to take an online Technical Japanese class.  The company wanted me to translate Japanese technology articles to English so that they could learn Japanese technology.  

I was thrilled as I would have an opportunity to learn another language, Japanese.  Although Japanese is quite different from Mandarin which I learned since elementary school,  the Kanji in Japanese is the same as in Mandarin.  I worked very hard on learning Technical Japanese because I was confident of being successful in this new language.  I was.  Three years later, I was able to translate most of the technical Japanese articles into English. 

Then, I got ambitious.  I wanted to be able to translate English stories into Japanese.  My teacher smiled.  He said that I could try  and he would be happy to take a look; but he warned me that translating English back to Japanese required another level of skill.

He was right.  I tried to write the script of the Hiroshima story back to Japanese; but I was unsuccessful. 

However, something amazing happened.  Hiroshima itself is an  interesting but very sad  story.  The story starts with the Trinity Project, proceeds  to the President's cabinet meeting to decide whether to drop the bomb on Japanese soil.  Then, there was the aftermath. Because I knew the Hiroshima story inside out, I began to tell this story to other people; starting first with my family, then to a Taiwanese group, then to a storyteller guild, they all became hits.  The storytelling was very successful, and I began to fall in love of storytelling. 

Although telling Hiroshima to a big audience was very successful, the story’s script was not my story.  I took the script from a popular movie.  What I did  was really tell other people’s stories.  What I need is actually to tell my own stories so that stories become authentic.

My next story was the bonding between a grandfather and a grandson.  In 1987, we took Victor and Leo back to Taiwan.  Victor was 10 years old and Leo was 8.  My dad was walking with us; Victor and Leo came along.  My dad was a heavy smoker.  During the walk, my dad smoked one cigarette after another.  Victor spoke.  He spoke in broken Taiwanese, “Grandpa, smoking is not good for you, “. My dad tried not to hear it, and continued to walk.  A month later when we were back in the States, we received a letter, saying that my dad quit smoking because Victor said so.  That storytelling was also very successful. 

By the time I was venturing into storytelling, I retired from my first career of Kimberly-Clark, and began my another 20 year career at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay.  Although I took a deep salary cut from the industry job to a teaching career, I loved the work of teaching, research, and service. More importantly, I have audiences. 

During the teaching career, I participated in many storytelling events and observed other great storytellers’ styles.  Some used music as part of tool very effectively.

My story of Sakura incorporating a Japanese folk song was also very successful.  The story told of a Japanese widow who lost her husband during the Japanese-Russian war planted a Sakura tree in her backyard to commemorate her husband.  50 years later, Japan was in another war with the American. The Japanese authorities wanted to cut the tree for the war materials.  The woman chained herself to the tree to protest.  That story was also well told.

In short, I enjoy very much storytelling and I also enjoy very much to write those stories.  However, those adventure came from my failing intent to translating English into Japanese. 

I walk because I am alive

 We lived in Appleton, Wisconsin from 1984 to 2023, almost 40 years of my life.  It is my hometown.  It is a small town compared to any cities in the East Coast or the West Coast.  My brother (from New York City) told me that Appleton has only one major street, the College Avenue. My sister-in-law (from Los Angeles) calls Appleton, the place where even a bird would not lay her eggs.

Yet at this place, I raise my two kids, I have 2 satisfactory careers. I have a difficult diagnosis.  I have stories that can make me laugh, or make me cry. 

Precisely, it is a small town where I can walk to any part of the town by foot or by bicycle.  Because my jobs required me to commute and to sit at the office during the week, I tried to walk as much as I can on the weekends . The church we went to regularly on Sunday was  2.5 miles away from home; the library is 2 miles away.  Even I am what people say not the “church goer”, I went to church anyway because in doing so, I would walk 5 miles on Sunday; 2.5 miles one way. 

When we were at Appleton, most churches were involved in the Crop Walk. Crop Walk is an ecumenical church activity to walk for hunger. Basically, the participants ( the walker) asked for pledges from friends and relatives; those money then was used to help the hunger. 

In 1984, our next door neighbor, Ms. Dorthy Johnson was the mayor of the city of Appleton. She organized the walk.  We therefore went to walk to support the event.  I signed up for a 10 mile walk; my wife brought 2 boys, Victor (7 years old) and Leo (5 years old) to the City Park to cheer me up.  

As soon as we arrived at the City Park, Victor saw the excitement of the crowd. He told his mom that he wanted to walk with me.  My wife then hurriedly found some pledges for Victor at the last minute; actually, one of the pledges was from Mayor Johnson who pledged $3 per miles thinking that a seven year old boy could only walk as far as 3 miles.  Actually that was my wife’s thought.  She told Victor that anytime she wanted to quit, he could called home and mom would pick him up.  

Amazingly, that day, Victor, the 7 year old boy, walked side-by-side with me completing the 10 miles walk.   Eight years later, when the pastor of my church said that he could no longer run the 10 miles for the walk, Victor said that he would run for his pastor.  He ran the 10 miles Crop Walk.  Victor stays physically active.  He leads the bird walk and run frequently at Ann Arbor now.

Participating in the annual Crop Walk was  a family event. Both Leo and my wife walked in 1985 and the following years.  My wife walked the shorter routes.  Both Leo and Victor walked or ran at a much faster pace.

While Victor ran, Leo took on the swimming and tennis. In swimming, we still had a photo of Leo’s butterfly swim photo that was published in Appleton local newspaper. One year, when my wife took Leo to Whitewater tennis camp, he played so hard that he broke his collarbone. The coach called my wife to take Leo home.  Leo cried so hard not because collarbone hurt so much, but because he had to miss the tennis camp which he loved so much.

I have walked the Crop Walk every year since 1984 and always walked 10 miles from 1984 to 1990 when the Crop Walk committee changed the maximum length from 10 miles to 6 miles.  It changed again  to an even shorter length of 3 miles in 2020.  There was a year in which we had pouring rain in Appleton on the Crop Walk day. Still, I wore a raincoat and walked the full length of the course.  There was a year that we did not walk; that was the year we had the pandemic. All churches were closed at the time. In 2023, the organizers including my wife ran out of steam and still could not find people to continue to organize the event.  The Crop Walk was closed in 2023.

In the Crop Walk, I had a walking partner. His name is Tom Neal. We both belonged to the same church and even sang in the same choir. When we walked the 10 mile event, we always stopped by an ice cream shop at the 8 mile mark and enjoyed the ice cream.  That was the best part of the walk.  

My wife and I even walked 13 miles in 2002 in the half-marathon. 2002 was the year I retired from my first career of Kimberly-Clark and took on my teaching at University of Wisconsin-Green Bay.  Being a walker of 10 miles very often, I did feel it until I passed the 10 mile mark.  The next 3 miles was a drag; I was glad that both my wife and I completed the race.

The most strenuous walk I have had was the 20 miles backpacking from Algoma to Sturging Bay, Wisconsin along the Ahnapee State  trail in the year I was still working at Kimberly-Clark, probably in the year of 2000.  This is a 48 miles winding along the Algoma and Kiwanis rivers.  I camped at Algoma the night before. The plan was to backpack and walk 20 miles from Algoma to Sturgeon Bay then stayed at a hotel in Sturgeon Bay and walked back another 20 miles on the next day. It was a very hot summer day and the mosquito was totally intolerable. Because of the mosquito, I was unable to take the outfit off and wore just a T-shirt to walk. There were even snakes on the trail and I had to dodge them to proceed. Backpacking meant I had to carry not only food but enough water to complete the walk. By the time I arrived at Sturgeon Bay, I was completely exhausted.  Instead of walking back another 20 miles back to Algoma, I took a taxi and back to my campsite site where I could drive my car home. 

When we moved to Ann Arbor in 2023, I organized a Saturday morning walk for the Taiwanese retiree community.  We walked in many different city and county parks of Ann Arbor. We even walk both at the State Parks such as Maybury State Park and several Metro parks such as Hudson Mill Parks.

Recently I came across a report from Dr. Ronda Patrick. She is a biochemist who runs the Foundmyfitness podcast.  In this report, she talks about metabolic health. She says that a perfect recipe for developing diabetics is being sedentary, eating meals at a wrong time, and neglecting sleep. The definition of sedentary is more than 2 hours of sitting at a time.  My dad walked everyday to his 90.  When he was 90 years old, he rode his bicycle and fell and was sent to ER.  My sibling in Taiwan followed the doctor’s advice and restricted dad’s movement.  My dad’s health declined rapidly.  He died at age of 94.  My brother, Dr. Ting-Kai Chen, physically active all through his life.  He ran when he was in the 60-70’s.  He even ran New York Marathon in 1979.  Today, at age 89, he is still very vibrant and physically strong.  He is my role model. 

I am glad that my hometown Appleton gave me opportunities for being physically active.  I walk because I am alive.  I walk because I want to be alive. 

Amazing Grace

 The time was between 1954 and 1960, and the place was Chang-Hua, Taiwan. 

Lilly was her name.  Actually, I have forgotten her original Taiwanese name. Since Lilly is such a beautiful name, I will call her Lilly in this memoir. When I knew Lilly, she was 8 years old, and I was 10 years old.  We were neighbors. 

Taiwan was very poor at that time.  The neighborhood I grew up in did not have running water.  Everyday, we walked to a well to get all the water we needed for the day. 

At the time, the house in Taiwan was simply built with 4 living quarters.  At the most front was the worship room.   In that room, we put ancestor’s images and other god or goddess including Kawnging images on an altar. 

The bedroom was behind the worship room.  There was only one bedroom in the house.  Everybody in the household, mom and dad, brothers and sisters slept in the same  room.  Behind the bedroom was the kitchen and behind that was the toilet. 

Lilly and I and other kids of similar ages played together.  We did not have toys to play; however, we were very inventive, trying to use whatever was available such as pebbles, mango seeds, etc. to play.

Taiwan is situated in the subtropical region; it is hot most of the time especially in the summer.  The temperature in the summer could reach as high as 100 F. There was no air conditioner, not even an electric fan to cool off.  We cooled off the heat by opening  the door to allow the cool air to flow in.  When we opened the front door, we knew every household was worshiping their ancestor as well as similar gods and goddesses. 

Then one day, Lilly ‘s house was different.  The worshiping altar of her house was gone. Lilly’s household was converted into Christian. 

There was a small Christian church in our neighborhood.  Since it was a different religion from most Taiwanese families at the time, we did not pay too much attention except at the times when there were food distributions through the church.  

During the 50’s and the 60’s, Americans were generous in providing  food assistance to Taiwan.  When it was the time, the neighborhood would line up at the church door to receive the food.  The food we received was butter and bread.  When my mom received those ‘free food’, the bread and butter, she would bring them home ; first, she would put the butter in the wok, heat up until it melted, then she cut the bread and dip the bread in the butter.  In today’s nutritional point of view, it is absolutely a no-no way of eating because it could clog up our arteries.  But at the time, it was the calorie we were hungry for.

About a week after I realized Lilly’s family was converting to Christianity, she invited me to go to her Sunday School.  My mom did not oppose, Taiwanese are not avert to other religions especially to the church which had provided food assistance.  At Sunday School, I love to sing songs and collect bookmarks by memorizing Bible verses.  The hymn I liked most was Amazing Grace.  Here are a few phrases of the song.

The Lord hath promised good to me,

His word my hope secures;

He will my shield and portion be

As long as life endures.

Of course, these phrases were sung in the Taiwanese language.

Few months later, a pandemic hit our neighborhood.  It was diphtheria,   Diphtheria is a serious infectious disease of the throat and nasal. The disease produces a sheet of gray matter, covering the back of the throat, making it very difficult to breathe.  The disease is very infectious, affecting a lot of children at the time.  

The school was closed, and the church was close.  People were advised not to be in close contact. 

Few weeks passed. Then there were a group of people convened at Lilly’s home, singing hymns and saying prayers.  Then they left.

A month later, the pandemic was lifted; the school was open and the church was open. 

One Sunday, I went back to the church to memorize Bible verses and collect bookmarks.  Lilly was no longer there at the church. Dispheria had killed Lilly.

The day when people convened at her house singing hymns and saying prayers was actually to say goodby to her.

I was heartbroken and did not go back to church for a long time until I was at the United States.  A Taiwanese Presbyterian Church was formed in the Princeton area in 1974 and was baptized in 1974. 

I still love to sing the hymn, Amazing Grace, although now it is in English.  When I sing this hymn, it reminds me of good time I had with Lilly.  It reminds me of all the good things I have received.  It also reminds me, despite that, God took Lilly away with such a terrible disease.