I was finally able to take all of my tree cores out of the college walk-in freezer to dry and mount them. However, I found out that I was missing quite a number of cores. I just couldn’t figure out how. I went back to recheck my field records and found out that these were the plots I had cored the most, 15 to 17 trees per plot on six or seven plots. Just in case I never put them in the college freezer, even though I was sure I did, I checked the field trip dates and my signatures in the sign-out book for our department’s freezer key. I did take the key and went to the freezer the day after each field trip. So, I went to talk to my major professor about the matter. He sounded not surprised. Well, they must have been lost. I told him that I would like to find out how they were lost. Maybe someone took them accidentally. I told him that I bundled each plot together with tape and each region together with another piece of tape. Then, I put these into a closed box. Someone had to open the box and unwrap the tape to get them and wrap the rest back together again, and that person knew what he was doing because he took my most abundantly sampled tree plots. And these were useless to someone else because only we (he and I) had the sampling data codes for the cores. They were only useful to someone who had both the field records and the cores. My professor was the only one besides me who had those data.
His attitude made me suspect that he had something to do with the missing cores. Though I did notice there were a few days that his lab window was covered with brown paper and no one could see through so I assumed that was for a test for the undergraduates. Now, everything together made me upset. I said that he should try to help me get those cores back. He said that he didn’t know what to do. I said that I was going to complain to the department chairman that the college freezer was not secure. My hardest labor didn’t allow me to let it go that easily. Plus, how were we supposed to do research if we didn’t have a safe place to store our samples? Finally, he said that I could initiate a memo and he would have the secretary distribute it to the entire department to see if anyone had seen my lost cores. I did as he said.
Our department technician Joe came to offer his help right away. He said that he knew what hard work I had done to core those hardwood trees. If I needed to go back to the forests to recollect them, he would volunteer to help me on the weekends. I told him that I just wanted the cores back or if someone wanted them, they should have come to ask me for them.
One day while Anthony and I were having lunch in the office, my professor walked in and told me to hand over my cores to Mark who was supposed to be studying the pathology of decline. He told me that he would do similar studies like I had done. I was shocked. I said, “My cores. I have not finished all the processes. He wants my cores.” I could not finish what I had to say. I started to cry. I spent three summers of hard labor collecting cores from more than 500 trees. I was just about to get the tree ring data from them. My professor asked me to give them to Mark. How was I supposed to finish my research and degree independently plus I considered myself as having the best knowledge of the three of us graduate students about cores and tree ring research. I was working on the same amount of work from my proposal that all my other committee members had said was impossible to finish. I was doing the work myself day and night, on weekends and holidays. I had never worked this hard physically and mentally in all my life; sometimes, I thought I would go crazy. I hadn’t even gotten any results from my work yet.
My professor left when he saw that I was crying. Anthony said, “Well, it’s not nice for him to do that to you but he is your boss. I will help you carry the cores to Mark after lunch.” I tried to explain to him that maybe my work was slow since Mark hads an assistant in the lab to help him. He only had three trees in each plot to analyze and I had 7–12 trees in each plot, plus I didn’t have an assistant. Now, he was taking over my work. I had never done anything wrong or showed any incapability to do my work. After lunch, we started to carry my boxes of cores out from my lab to Mark’s. My professor came back and saw us in the hallway. He said, “No, no. I meant corers, not cores.” We misunderstood each other. He could have said more clearly “increment corer” or “your tools.” Still Mark had his own work to do, so why would he want to do mine which was completely different, not to mention at a very late stage.
Mark got my “increment corers” and he went to collect a few cores here and there at nearby forests. Then, he came and asked me to teach him how to process the cores. The process included drying, mounting, sanding, and measuring. I was working on two cores from each of 500 trees, for a total of 1000 cores. I told him that I could show him the processes involved, but I didn’t know how to transfer the data and how to run the tree ring program yet. I would have to try that or learn the program myself when I got there. I could see his frustration because he mainly used Mac personal computers. He was not familiar with mainframes and large databases. I told him that I had just taken a computer-modeling course, and that he should take it too. A former Ph.D. graduate student friend tried to figure out the tree ring program but couldn’t. I would be very glad if he could try to help with the program before I reached that step because he had only a dozen cores, not 1000. I just didn’t understand why Mark had to repeat my part of the work; he should finish his own. But it was the idea of two major professors, just to make sure that I was doing it right, I guess.
Friday, February 15, 2013
Confrontations
One day, my professor and co-professor came to me and said that Porter told them that I only chose small trees to core, these were suppressed trees not representative of the population, but would have been easier for me to core through. If the results were wrong, I would be responsible. That lit my temper instantly. I told them that I did not choose small trees to core and that I always tried to locate the largest trees in each plot. Except the first three trees in each plot were out of my control because Mark chose them for collecting root and leaf samples. And yes, most of Mark’s trees were suppressed trees since he would not be able to get the leaves if they were too tall. I had to core his trees, so I intentionally chose bigger ones after Mark’s first three trees.
“Why didn’t you ask me about my job instead of Porter? I was the one doing the work. Porter had his own job to do in the field. I had the basic training in China as part of my undergraduate studies. I know what suppressed trees look like.” My professor said that he trusted Porter’s undergraduate training here in the U.S. first. I was angry. I told him that what he was doing was wrong. He should not have accused me of doing something that I didn’t do, but had just heard something from another student. He had all my field data. He should have at least checked the data before that accusation. He told me that there was no way he could check it because he didn’t follow me around while I did my work. I said, “if you don’t have a way, may I suggest a way to you?” He wouldn’t listen to me until my co-professors suggested he listen to what I had to say. I said, “You are right that you cannot follow us around, but your job is figuring out how to check our work out there. You have all of our data. Porter measured every tree in the plot so he would have the average tree size for each plot. I only cored 7–12 trees in each of his plots of which Mark decided the first three trees of mine. And Mark and I would also have an average size of the trees I cored. If my trees were smaller than the average size of Porter’s, then you and Porter would be right. But if my average is larger, that indicates that my trees were dominant trees and not small suppressed trees.” Even if you think that I made up the data to make them bigger, I took every one of my tree samples back to the college and you could measure the cores yourself which would tell you the diameter of all my trees,” I added. Finally with my co-professor’s help, he agreed to check my data against Porter’s. He said, “Okay, I will go home tonight to calculate all of Porter’s averages, you do yours. Tomorrow at 8 o’clock sharp, let’s meet here to compare them.” I was hoping Porter would do his own calculations and I would do mine and Mark’s data.
The next morning, I compared my data against his. Every one of mine was 2–3 cm larger than Porter’s average. Not a single one was smaller. Then my professor said, “Okay, you are right. You did not choose small trees.” I received no apologies from anyone.
This incident forced me to take charge of my own research. I had been always out of the decision-making process too many times. Sometimes, I didn’t even know where we were going and what we were going to do there. One week, we went back to one of our old sites from which we had already collected samples in the previous year. For me, I didn’t know what to do because I already had all the samples I needed. Porter said that we needed to help Mark find the three trees that he sampled for roots and leaves in the woods. The trouble was, there was no way to find them because he did not tag or mark the trees. All the shrubs covered up everything and they all looked alike now. I was upset most because I did not even think that this was the purpose for revisiting the site after driving and walking for so many hours, and because I knew it was a waste of time and energy. I had a big argument with my professor after I got back. I asked him why not let me know if there was a meeting before the trip. He said that he had told Porter to let me know. Porter said that he left me a note on my desk but wasn’t sure. So I told my professor that he should simply leave a note in my mailbox or inform me directly, since I, like Porter, was also his research assistant. Secondly, if all of them claimed that they had better, or basic training on sampling here in US, it was a stupid idea just even to think they could go back to a forest to find a few untagged or unmarked trees a year later. Then, my professor said, “It was my idea, okay; am I stupid?” I was upset. I said, “Yes, you are a stupid professor.” My sharp criticism shocked everyone because I was always quiet. I said, “My being quiet doesn’t mean that I don’t think. Just because I don’t say anything, does not mean that I don’t have anything to say. Plus you guys never gave me a chance to say anything. Then you wanted to dump all your problems on me. I let everyone else go first to show my respect. But that doesn’t mean that you guys should take over and not gave me a chance to speak.”
Later on, Mark wrote an abstract about our work for the annual pathological conference. He put Porter’s name first, then, his, then mine, followed by the two professors’ names. I thought it was okay until the second round I saw this red circle around my name and a note “I wonder if her name should be here at all?” I asked Mark about who wrote that and he said that Porter did and they already had disregarded his comment. My name should at least be there, if not second. I said, “Porter again?” I was upset. I sat there for a long time and I wrote him a nasty open letter telling him what was on my mind because I could not say it myself without crying. We did not have email back then. I don’t remember most of it now. Basically, I said that he must drink too much beer, smoke too much whatever he was smoking, forgot what I had done in the field, forgot how I had helped him set up his each and every one of his plot before I even started my own work. For the lab work after the fieldwork, too bad that he was not my major professor and I did not report to him what I did in the lab. I wouldn’t mind waiting for him to finish his Masters first, then Ph.D. then find an assistant professor position somewhere and maybe then I would report to him or let him check my work. I was just angry with him for the years we worked together and he never stopped undermining me all the time.
My professor came to my office with the letter on his hand and asked me to go with him to his office where Porter and Mark and my co-professors were already seated. I noticed that he tried to keep himself from laughing on the way downstairs. Porter was standing at the farthest corner. My professor said, “How could you write something like this to your fellow graduate student?” I stated “there were all the facts, and I asked how could he treat me like he did.” My professor again on his side, asked me to apologize for what I said in the letter to Porter. The others said nothing. I was not happy; I apologized to him about the letter, and said he should not have pushed me into a corner and left me with no choices.
I complained that I was not fairly treated there. My professor said he already had given me special treatment. I said that I knew, so special that I could not take it anymore. He said that I made a big deal out of little things and it was so hard to cooperate with me. I said to my professor that I only wanted fair and equal treatment as one of his graduate students.
I did not say anything earlier since Mark did not care. Let’s be fair. “Why was Porter’s name first anyway, Mark wrote it and he was going to the meeting? I think that Mark’s name should be first on the abstract since he wrote the abstract. Then, whoever contributed after Mark more, should follow in that order.” Mark seemed to wake up; he said, “Yeah, you are right, Ying, my name should be first.” And he did move his name to first place.
From then on, Porter was very nice to me. He asked for my opinion every time we went somewhere and said hi whenever he saw me. But for me, I was exhausted. I really didn’t have much enthusiasm like when I first started to work with him and my professor. I thought that in China it was very difficult to fight professionally with men. Sometimes, I wondered why he even accepted women graduate students, unless that was the way he trained us to face the real world.
During all this time, Anthony gave me strong support. Without him, I don’t think that I would have kept fighting to the end—to the completion of my degree. We were good friends. He took me out for hiking, every time I was on the top of the mountain looking down and far away, it really helped me rise up from all my problems. He and his father always used to go hiking on weekends. He also introduced religion in my life since I did not have any before. I actually prayed very hard for God’s help to get through.
“Why didn’t you ask me about my job instead of Porter? I was the one doing the work. Porter had his own job to do in the field. I had the basic training in China as part of my undergraduate studies. I know what suppressed trees look like.” My professor said that he trusted Porter’s undergraduate training here in the U.S. first. I was angry. I told him that what he was doing was wrong. He should not have accused me of doing something that I didn’t do, but had just heard something from another student. He had all my field data. He should have at least checked the data before that accusation. He told me that there was no way he could check it because he didn’t follow me around while I did my work. I said, “if you don’t have a way, may I suggest a way to you?” He wouldn’t listen to me until my co-professors suggested he listen to what I had to say. I said, “You are right that you cannot follow us around, but your job is figuring out how to check our work out there. You have all of our data. Porter measured every tree in the plot so he would have the average tree size for each plot. I only cored 7–12 trees in each of his plots of which Mark decided the first three trees of mine. And Mark and I would also have an average size of the trees I cored. If my trees were smaller than the average size of Porter’s, then you and Porter would be right. But if my average is larger, that indicates that my trees were dominant trees and not small suppressed trees.” Even if you think that I made up the data to make them bigger, I took every one of my tree samples back to the college and you could measure the cores yourself which would tell you the diameter of all my trees,” I added. Finally with my co-professor’s help, he agreed to check my data against Porter’s. He said, “Okay, I will go home tonight to calculate all of Porter’s averages, you do yours. Tomorrow at 8 o’clock sharp, let’s meet here to compare them.” I was hoping Porter would do his own calculations and I would do mine and Mark’s data.
The next morning, I compared my data against his. Every one of mine was 2–3 cm larger than Porter’s average. Not a single one was smaller. Then my professor said, “Okay, you are right. You did not choose small trees.” I received no apologies from anyone.
This incident forced me to take charge of my own research. I had been always out of the decision-making process too many times. Sometimes, I didn’t even know where we were going and what we were going to do there. One week, we went back to one of our old sites from which we had already collected samples in the previous year. For me, I didn’t know what to do because I already had all the samples I needed. Porter said that we needed to help Mark find the three trees that he sampled for roots and leaves in the woods. The trouble was, there was no way to find them because he did not tag or mark the trees. All the shrubs covered up everything and they all looked alike now. I was upset most because I did not even think that this was the purpose for revisiting the site after driving and walking for so many hours, and because I knew it was a waste of time and energy. I had a big argument with my professor after I got back. I asked him why not let me know if there was a meeting before the trip. He said that he had told Porter to let me know. Porter said that he left me a note on my desk but wasn’t sure. So I told my professor that he should simply leave a note in my mailbox or inform me directly, since I, like Porter, was also his research assistant. Secondly, if all of them claimed that they had better, or basic training on sampling here in US, it was a stupid idea just even to think they could go back to a forest to find a few untagged or unmarked trees a year later. Then, my professor said, “It was my idea, okay; am I stupid?” I was upset. I said, “Yes, you are a stupid professor.” My sharp criticism shocked everyone because I was always quiet. I said, “My being quiet doesn’t mean that I don’t think. Just because I don’t say anything, does not mean that I don’t have anything to say. Plus you guys never gave me a chance to say anything. Then you wanted to dump all your problems on me. I let everyone else go first to show my respect. But that doesn’t mean that you guys should take over and not gave me a chance to speak.”
Later on, Mark wrote an abstract about our work for the annual pathological conference. He put Porter’s name first, then, his, then mine, followed by the two professors’ names. I thought it was okay until the second round I saw this red circle around my name and a note “I wonder if her name should be here at all?” I asked Mark about who wrote that and he said that Porter did and they already had disregarded his comment. My name should at least be there, if not second. I said, “Porter again?” I was upset. I sat there for a long time and I wrote him a nasty open letter telling him what was on my mind because I could not say it myself without crying. We did not have email back then. I don’t remember most of it now. Basically, I said that he must drink too much beer, smoke too much whatever he was smoking, forgot what I had done in the field, forgot how I had helped him set up his each and every one of his plot before I even started my own work. For the lab work after the fieldwork, too bad that he was not my major professor and I did not report to him what I did in the lab. I wouldn’t mind waiting for him to finish his Masters first, then Ph.D. then find an assistant professor position somewhere and maybe then I would report to him or let him check my work. I was just angry with him for the years we worked together and he never stopped undermining me all the time.
My professor came to my office with the letter on his hand and asked me to go with him to his office where Porter and Mark and my co-professors were already seated. I noticed that he tried to keep himself from laughing on the way downstairs. Porter was standing at the farthest corner. My professor said, “How could you write something like this to your fellow graduate student?” I stated “there were all the facts, and I asked how could he treat me like he did.” My professor again on his side, asked me to apologize for what I said in the letter to Porter. The others said nothing. I was not happy; I apologized to him about the letter, and said he should not have pushed me into a corner and left me with no choices.
I complained that I was not fairly treated there. My professor said he already had given me special treatment. I said that I knew, so special that I could not take it anymore. He said that I made a big deal out of little things and it was so hard to cooperate with me. I said to my professor that I only wanted fair and equal treatment as one of his graduate students.
I did not say anything earlier since Mark did not care. Let’s be fair. “Why was Porter’s name first anyway, Mark wrote it and he was going to the meeting? I think that Mark’s name should be first on the abstract since he wrote the abstract. Then, whoever contributed after Mark more, should follow in that order.” Mark seemed to wake up; he said, “Yeah, you are right, Ying, my name should be first.” And he did move his name to first place.
From then on, Porter was very nice to me. He asked for my opinion every time we went somewhere and said hi whenever he saw me. But for me, I was exhausted. I really didn’t have much enthusiasm like when I first started to work with him and my professor. I thought that in China it was very difficult to fight professionally with men. Sometimes, I wondered why he even accepted women graduate students, unless that was the way he trained us to face the real world.
During all this time, Anthony gave me strong support. Without him, I don’t think that I would have kept fighting to the end—to the completion of my degree. We were good friends. He took me out for hiking, every time I was on the top of the mountain looking down and far away, it really helped me rise up from all my problems. He and his father always used to go hiking on weekends. He also introduced religion in my life since I did not have any before. I actually prayed very hard for God’s help to get through.
My Third Field Season
The third summer of my fieldwork, I started to get more familiar with the forest sites, common tree species, and so on. I could finish all of my increment cores on time or even slightly earlier than my co-workers, so I could take a little “cat nap” to restore my energy for the next plot. Usually we measured two or three plots per day depending upon the driving distance. Also I became more comfortable working with the two guys from the department. The most important thing was that I didn’t have to worry about anything else, for example, looking forwards to coming back and checking my mail. I was more concentrated on my work. Nothing else except hard work drew my mind away. Plus, it didn’t look like I was going to finish the project and my degree in two years but my scholarship was ending. I began to look for possibilities to fund my continued studies.
By chance, I found a summer job to work for another professor. That provided some extra savings for later. This was an opportunity since my professor said that he was not sure when he would be able to support me as a research assistant on this funded project. When I mentioned that I would take this summer job because of the flexible time, he was not very happy. He said I should have told him I needed a summer job. I was confused since he knew I was working in a Chinese Restaurant far away from college and I asked him about funding.
One afternoon before the fall semester began, my professor came to the lab where I was working on this summer job. The other professor, his postdoctoral associate, and I were all there. Surprisingly, he told the other professor that he was going to give me a research assistantship in the fall, which he had not told me about. Then he told him that I could not get two checks from the college, implying that I had to quit. So the other professor said that actually the job was ending in October so it was no big deal, just for one month after fall start. However, my professor thought that I should quit by the end of August. The other professor was very nice to let me quit my job considering that he had to find another person for two more months. Unfortunately, my assistantship did not start until November because my professor did not handle all the paperwork correctly. That made me feel very sorry for quitting, not to mention the money that I really needed.
I received $7500/year based on 20 hours per week, also last year funding which I did not know, even though every granduate student was working overtime. I worked day and night plus weekends just like all the other graduate research assistants. The light in the office was always on till midnight everyday. I sure felt the pressure from my professor right away. He really made sure that I did my job and did it right. I quit my Friday night restaurant job so that I could concentrate on that one project.
Now I had saved a little money. Before I started my third summer of fieldwork, I asked Anthony to give me a ride to buy a good sleeping bag, good boots, and a raincoat. For the last two summers, I did not have my own sleeping bag or raincoat. I had borrowed a sleeping bag from Mrs Wang but I always woke up feeling cold in the morning. My feet were always wet in sneakers. I was so shocked when I saw the price tags in this camping supplies store. If a Chinese person had given me a ride all the way to the store, I would not have bought anything. He told me I would not be cold or wet anymore after I ended up spending more than $200 for all these things. I was very uneasy because it was way above my budget. I never spent that much for myself except on textbooks (average $400 per semester). Actually, I never spent any money on my clothes or anything except my rent and simple food and my share of local phone calls, absolutely essential things. On the way back, Anthony asked me whether I wanted to go to his place for dinner since it was on the way and it was after dinnertime. I said no, I had to go home to get over today’s big spending and re-budget. The sleeping bag really did let me have a good rest and kept me dry in rainy weather.
I was still collecting samples in the field, then coming back to store them in the freezer, then drying the cores from each tree, mounting them in a piece of grooved wood, then sanding them to make them smooth. After that, I measured the width between each set of rings under a binocular microscope and recorded the data on an Apple IIE computer. After obtaining the data, I transferred the data to a mainframe computer at the university, ran a tree ring analysis program to analyze the data, and produced growth curves to reconstruct the growth of the tree since its beginning. I then examined correlation between the growth of the trees and drought, temperature, and disease.
By chance, I found a summer job to work for another professor. That provided some extra savings for later. This was an opportunity since my professor said that he was not sure when he would be able to support me as a research assistant on this funded project. When I mentioned that I would take this summer job because of the flexible time, he was not very happy. He said I should have told him I needed a summer job. I was confused since he knew I was working in a Chinese Restaurant far away from college and I asked him about funding.
One afternoon before the fall semester began, my professor came to the lab where I was working on this summer job. The other professor, his postdoctoral associate, and I were all there. Surprisingly, he told the other professor that he was going to give me a research assistantship in the fall, which he had not told me about. Then he told him that I could not get two checks from the college, implying that I had to quit. So the other professor said that actually the job was ending in October so it was no big deal, just for one month after fall start. However, my professor thought that I should quit by the end of August. The other professor was very nice to let me quit my job considering that he had to find another person for two more months. Unfortunately, my assistantship did not start until November because my professor did not handle all the paperwork correctly. That made me feel very sorry for quitting, not to mention the money that I really needed.
I received $7500/year based on 20 hours per week, also last year funding which I did not know, even though every granduate student was working overtime. I worked day and night plus weekends just like all the other graduate research assistants. The light in the office was always on till midnight everyday. I sure felt the pressure from my professor right away. He really made sure that I did my job and did it right. I quit my Friday night restaurant job so that I could concentrate on that one project.
Now I had saved a little money. Before I started my third summer of fieldwork, I asked Anthony to give me a ride to buy a good sleeping bag, good boots, and a raincoat. For the last two summers, I did not have my own sleeping bag or raincoat. I had borrowed a sleeping bag from Mrs Wang but I always woke up feeling cold in the morning. My feet were always wet in sneakers. I was so shocked when I saw the price tags in this camping supplies store. If a Chinese person had given me a ride all the way to the store, I would not have bought anything. He told me I would not be cold or wet anymore after I ended up spending more than $200 for all these things. I was very uneasy because it was way above my budget. I never spent that much for myself except on textbooks (average $400 per semester). Actually, I never spent any money on my clothes or anything except my rent and simple food and my share of local phone calls, absolutely essential things. On the way back, Anthony asked me whether I wanted to go to his place for dinner since it was on the way and it was after dinnertime. I said no, I had to go home to get over today’s big spending and re-budget. The sleeping bag really did let me have a good rest and kept me dry in rainy weather.
I was still collecting samples in the field, then coming back to store them in the freezer, then drying the cores from each tree, mounting them in a piece of grooved wood, then sanding them to make them smooth. After that, I measured the width between each set of rings under a binocular microscope and recorded the data on an Apple IIE computer. After obtaining the data, I transferred the data to a mainframe computer at the university, ran a tree ring analysis program to analyze the data, and produced growth curves to reconstruct the growth of the tree since its beginning. I then examined correlation between the growth of the trees and drought, temperature, and disease.
Dinner at our Professor’s house
At the end of the semester, Anthony’s professor invited us to his house for dinner. I asked Anthony for a ride. He told me that he would pick up another friend first, then me and maybe Yuli, another Chinese student. I heard Yuli’s story in China before I met her. Her Chinese professor and colleague came to my institute the year before I came to the U.S. Yuli was a Masters student of this professor. From the conversation, I noticed that something really bad happened and that she just couldn’t get over it. I didn’t know what had happened until she came to our school in the U.S.
Her fiancé was one of the earliest students who went abroad to study in 1980. He was in Canada while she was still in China. She was always very proud of him. One day, she got a letter that said he would be back home in one week. She was so excited and prepared everything for their wedding. But a week later came with news of his death. He committed suicide because he could not get along with his major professor and couldn’t deal with the stress from his studies and research. She was so devastated. She had a nervous breakdown and ended up in a hospital for over a year.
The good thing was that she recovered and continued what her boyfriend didn’t accomplish. She came to the US for her Ph.D. She joined our field trips a few times and she tried to help me core the ash trees, but only broke the tool. My professor said he never had anyone break the tool and she was the first. He took us out for pizza to reward her for her help. Then, he took us to the ice cream shop, we told him we each only needed a small cone; he did give her a small cone, but gave me the biggest one he could find in the shop.
I was surprised that evening when Anthony came to pick me up alone. He explained that his friend had changed her mind, and Yuli had gotten a ride from someone else. When we got our dinner plates and lined up for dinner, there were goldfish crackers and snacks on the dinner table. So we put the tiny crackers on the big dinner plates hoping that real dinner would be coming soon, but that never happened. My professor left first; he took all his beer on the way out. Very soon we left as well. His wife must have been on strike for the day. Later, we did have more parties at the professor’s house with a lot of food.
Anthony had this big green Plymouth Voltaire from his grandmother; the car was 10 years old with only 10,000 miles. It was cold and icy that night. On the way home, he was embarrassed since his car did not cooperate well. It was difficult to start at first. Then, the car kept dying on the road. He said, “come on, I know it’s cold. Keep going.” I thought it was funny. I heard about the trouble of owning a car. Now, I finally saw one in person.
Her fiancé was one of the earliest students who went abroad to study in 1980. He was in Canada while she was still in China. She was always very proud of him. One day, she got a letter that said he would be back home in one week. She was so excited and prepared everything for their wedding. But a week later came with news of his death. He committed suicide because he could not get along with his major professor and couldn’t deal with the stress from his studies and research. She was so devastated. She had a nervous breakdown and ended up in a hospital for over a year.
The good thing was that she recovered and continued what her boyfriend didn’t accomplish. She came to the US for her Ph.D. She joined our field trips a few times and she tried to help me core the ash trees, but only broke the tool. My professor said he never had anyone break the tool and she was the first. He took us out for pizza to reward her for her help. Then, he took us to the ice cream shop, we told him we each only needed a small cone; he did give her a small cone, but gave me the biggest one he could find in the shop.
I was surprised that evening when Anthony came to pick me up alone. He explained that his friend had changed her mind, and Yuli had gotten a ride from someone else. When we got our dinner plates and lined up for dinner, there were goldfish crackers and snacks on the dinner table. So we put the tiny crackers on the big dinner plates hoping that real dinner would be coming soon, but that never happened. My professor left first; he took all his beer on the way out. Very soon we left as well. His wife must have been on strike for the day. Later, we did have more parties at the professor’s house with a lot of food.
Anthony had this big green Plymouth Voltaire from his grandmother; the car was 10 years old with only 10,000 miles. It was cold and icy that night. On the way home, he was embarrassed since his car did not cooperate well. It was difficult to start at first. Then, the car kept dying on the road. He said, “come on, I know it’s cold. Keep going.” I thought it was funny. I heard about the trouble of owning a car. Now, I finally saw one in person.
Western Standards
I took one of our department chairman’s classes, the “History of Ecology.” We explored a lot of early ecology that eventually became its own science today. Our term paper assignment was to research our own topics exploring the history of ecology. So, I decided to write a paper on China and how early ecology developed into ecology today. I was surprised how much English and Chinese literature we had in the libraries and how much I did not know. I explored how ancient Chinese a few thousand years ago actually already used ecology even though our national ecological society in China following western standards was formed in the late 1970’s. I stated a number of examples.
Famous food chain and pyramid theories were summarized by a famous ecologist named Lindemann in the early 1900’s. He studied organisms in a small pond in Minnesota for a few years while collecting lots of data. He tried to make sense of his massive data and was very frustrated. He had a Chinese roommate who had a little book of ancient Chinese proverbs. One day he was bored. He happened to pick it up and read. A “light bulb” went off in his head, “yes, my data was just like that, like, the ‘big fish eat little fish; little fish eat shrimp; and little shrimp eat mud.’” There was a food chain in the pond. Later he found that the food chains overlapped forming a food web. My Chinese ecology book said that Lindemann acknowledged his Chinese roommate in his original thesis but I did not have anyway to check it, so I could not put this in my paper. Also an ancient Chinese proverbs book stated, “A bird was chasing a cricket, but the bird did not know someone else was behind it.” “There was only one tiger that could dominate a mountain” implying the food pyramid. You could have a mountain full of grass, sheep, and other herbivores, but the tiger was at the top as the carnivore. Also, I explained how Chinese farmers used the natural ecosystem to help their farming. For example, raising fish in the rice paddy, fermenting farm waste to produce natural gas for cooking, then reusing the waste as fertilizer in the field to help new crops, adding to the diversity of species to decrease pests and diseases, and mixing plantings to benefit each other.
I asked my major professor Dan to read my paper first to check my English. He was shocked to find out how much was new to him in my paper. He praised my paper as a very interesting paper and was sure that I would get an “A.” But, different people can have different opinions. Our chairman almost failed me saying what I wrote had nothing to do with ecology in China. I should have instead written about what happened after the 1970’s when the Chinese Ecological Society was founded. My emphasis had been on the time before ecology as a science in China. I defended that we talk about history, not the present just like he had talked about how the science of ecology was formed in Europe and America, not just after the European and American Ecological Societies formed. He did not care; he could talk about prehistory of ecology anywhere. I had to write about China his way. He asked me to rewrite my paper and to delete most of it which made me feel very uneasy. I revised it as much as I could. He gave me a “C+.” That was the lowest grade that I had ever received during my entire studies.
I strongly disagreed with my chairman’s point-of-view of the “history of ecology in China” which was not consistent with its definition. The definition of ecology is the study of the relationships between organisms and their environment and surroundings. Although the Chinese did not have the words “ecology” or the “Ecological Society of China” until the early 1980’s, it didn’t mean that the Chinese over the last 5000 years did not study or apply their ecological knowledge. They knew of the relationships between living things and their environment—how to live more harmoniously with the maximum diversity of living organisms. We now call this an “ecosystem.” Although, it has been a challenge to balance our ecosystems as long as our existing, Nature tried its best to balance itself and we humans tried to learn our lessons. There are thousands of examples in the ancient Chinese literature. Sometimes I think the ancient people knew more about ecology than modern people. They knew how to keep our natural world in balance and treated the ecosystem as a whole because they respected nature.
Modern people think “science” gave us a “license to kill” since we do not like the world as it is. We lost the basic value of life. We want more and our desires are endless. When the pursuit started for the maximum of everything we wanted, we put ourselves at the center of the universe. We eliminated all those other life forms, germs, fungi, and bugs that make us uncomfortable or sick. The only thing is that we speed up their adaptations and mutations, and they come back hundreds and thousands generations later to fight our same generation. The longer we live, the less we adapt to change.
Since the Industrial Revolution and capitalism took over the world, greed and mass production became a way of life. We forgot that we are part of nature, not above nature. We change how the crops grow and how the farm animals are raised for maximum profit, forgetting we are what we eat. We eat fat and weak chicken fast grown in just a few months, and we become fat and weak. Life needs care, love, and freedom. Almost everything we eat has a life of its own; animals usually kill only when they are hungry and they have to work hard to get it.
Food is the most important factor for all survival after fresh air and water. Throughout Chinese history, 80% of the people were small family farmers and farming was the most important occupation. China had a very strong tradition to put agriculture first. Now, China is following Europe and America with only about 3% of the population as farmers. Farming has been industrialized like a “biological assembly line,” without ethics or morals. Commercial fertilizers and pesticides are problematic. Genetically modified organisms (GMOs) threaten the integrity of the natural ecosystem. Americans once believed that we had the best, safest, most secure food supply in the world. Industry’s preoccupation with making foods that “taste good” with fats and sugar, and that “look good” by being artificially shaped, colored, or ripened, fails to meet good nutrition and health. Widespread use of agrichemicals, hormones, antibiotics, and artificial food additives are problems for food safety. We bred crops in which no pest was interested or lethal to pests as if we are different than pests. You cheat the food and the food cheats you in return. More and more people became weak and fat; more and more people became allergic to food.
For a shiny diamond or a lump of gold, we didn’t mind turning a huge mountain upside down. For our endless need of water, we used up most fresh clean water on the earth. For our endless desire for new things and comfort, we create new things everyday. We created so many things that our bodies had a hard time to recognize and adapt. We trashed so much that we ran out of dumping ground.
We change our surroundings so much that our bodies and minds can not keep up. We used to have more visible dirt but that was part of the natural process, such as soil from rocks, plants, and animal origins. Our body was made to process most of it. Now we create so much human-made material from industrial to household goods and altered the world we live in. Our body genes simply go crazy try to adapt, which may be the reason we have more cancer and other physiological imbalances. Our poor body simply tries to adapt to every change in the world.
People build large homes with constant temperature and humidity regulation. We drive in air-conditioned cars to air-conditioned shopping malls and so on. Wherever we go or stay, we spray, clean and clean, to make sure there are no germs, bugs, and so on. We do not realize that we are actually taking ourselves out of the natural world originally created for us. We create a whole New World just for our own needs and for what we think we need. We worked very hard to create a differing, distant route from the rest of the living things. We have already changed much of the gene pool leading us into the deep unknown and there seems to be no return. I just hope that we are prudent and wise in our creations even though so far it seems that everything we have created cannot pass the test of time; it keeps going astray or coming back to haunt us later.
Other life forms are destroyed to satisfy our comfort. By building large houses, shopping malls, and indoor stadiums, etc., natural ecosystems have vanished and have been replaced by big concrete structures nearly entirely sealing the outside away by power, light, temperature, humidity, artificial fibers, and chemicals. We gradually set up our own standard of acceptance and rejection. We can’t even stand our own body odors, although it is crucial for animals. We have to be covered with all kinds of deodorizers and perfume. That is maybe one reason why humans have become so confused about their sex. Even babies have a whole line of products to eliminate their odors. In a word, we are not happy with who we are and we want to change ourselves from head to toe. We do not care about the cost, as long as we get whatever we want. Humans wanted to be “god.”
We should recall our great-great grandparents sweating more for a lot of things. They were more in control of their own bodies and minds. They got paid for their work, their sweat. Now, it costs us to work out and sweat whether you go to a health club or buy a treadmill or drive somewhere for a walk or run. We have machinery for all kinds of labor. We have computers to do all kinds of thinking for us especially after introducing “artificial intelligence.” Computers could do the job faster and better for us, jobs that would be impossible for us to do. We only needed to sit on the top, figuring out how to control them. So, we have a group of people working day and night to improve this machine to replace themselves. The groups of people already replaced by a machine sit around depressed, or desperately trying to find some way to feel worth living. It has become a vicious cycle that no one could control.
To solve the problems that we created, there are more antidepressant drugs. A whole institution of scientists either re-educate children or re-educate the losers. Every now and then, some madness came out of nowhere and the madmen basically wanted to destroy the whole world. Revenge has become a classic term because now we have random terrorist acts around and people die for random reasons.
The most dangerous things are global pursuits of the same thing. Freedom is not free; someone has to pay. We are part of nature, not above it and we are connected with everything around us. Everything we do will affect others (not just another human but everything around us). Everything would still evolve forward or backward, up or down with or without us. Knowing our limits, we could coexist with nature better.
There was one more class that I took in which I had a serious disagreement with a professor, “Concepts of forest decline.” He was a pathologist. I disagreed with his putting too much emphasis on pathology as if the germ was the root of everything. It seemed that every forest decline could be rooted to disease. He was different from the chairman though and invited me to talk about my opinions with him in his office. We had long discussions and even argued. I put more emphasis on the forest development ‘time factor.’ For example, if there was an old growth forest, the trees were old; of course, it looked like it was declining. Diseases and pests took advantage of the situation and sped up the decline. But this process helped restore the nutrients and energy for the next generations of forests. I told him about observations that I had made when I researched forests in China. We were worried about the bamboo dying because it was flowering in region after region, and the Giant Panda died from lack of food. The whole world was watching. We even tried artificial regeneration by digging out those dead bamboo roots and planting new ones. It was not successful to stop massive death. After about a ten-year break, the new generation of bamboo was shooting up again. Even without our interference, the forest will grow in its own time. With our positive or negative help, it only slowed down or sped up the process. The forest population develops like a spiral spring. It is three-dimensional. From the top, it looks like it is running a circle. Only from the side you could see it was up or down or stayed still. He praised me for our very interesting discussion and gave me an “A” on my term paper after our discussion and my revisions. I liked him because our discussions were what graduate studies were all about.
Famous food chain and pyramid theories were summarized by a famous ecologist named Lindemann in the early 1900’s. He studied organisms in a small pond in Minnesota for a few years while collecting lots of data. He tried to make sense of his massive data and was very frustrated. He had a Chinese roommate who had a little book of ancient Chinese proverbs. One day he was bored. He happened to pick it up and read. A “light bulb” went off in his head, “yes, my data was just like that, like, the ‘big fish eat little fish; little fish eat shrimp; and little shrimp eat mud.’” There was a food chain in the pond. Later he found that the food chains overlapped forming a food web. My Chinese ecology book said that Lindemann acknowledged his Chinese roommate in his original thesis but I did not have anyway to check it, so I could not put this in my paper. Also an ancient Chinese proverbs book stated, “A bird was chasing a cricket, but the bird did not know someone else was behind it.” “There was only one tiger that could dominate a mountain” implying the food pyramid. You could have a mountain full of grass, sheep, and other herbivores, but the tiger was at the top as the carnivore. Also, I explained how Chinese farmers used the natural ecosystem to help their farming. For example, raising fish in the rice paddy, fermenting farm waste to produce natural gas for cooking, then reusing the waste as fertilizer in the field to help new crops, adding to the diversity of species to decrease pests and diseases, and mixing plantings to benefit each other.
I asked my major professor Dan to read my paper first to check my English. He was shocked to find out how much was new to him in my paper. He praised my paper as a very interesting paper and was sure that I would get an “A.” But, different people can have different opinions. Our chairman almost failed me saying what I wrote had nothing to do with ecology in China. I should have instead written about what happened after the 1970’s when the Chinese Ecological Society was founded. My emphasis had been on the time before ecology as a science in China. I defended that we talk about history, not the present just like he had talked about how the science of ecology was formed in Europe and America, not just after the European and American Ecological Societies formed. He did not care; he could talk about prehistory of ecology anywhere. I had to write about China his way. He asked me to rewrite my paper and to delete most of it which made me feel very uneasy. I revised it as much as I could. He gave me a “C+.” That was the lowest grade that I had ever received during my entire studies.
I strongly disagreed with my chairman’s point-of-view of the “history of ecology in China” which was not consistent with its definition. The definition of ecology is the study of the relationships between organisms and their environment and surroundings. Although the Chinese did not have the words “ecology” or the “Ecological Society of China” until the early 1980’s, it didn’t mean that the Chinese over the last 5000 years did not study or apply their ecological knowledge. They knew of the relationships between living things and their environment—how to live more harmoniously with the maximum diversity of living organisms. We now call this an “ecosystem.” Although, it has been a challenge to balance our ecosystems as long as our existing, Nature tried its best to balance itself and we humans tried to learn our lessons. There are thousands of examples in the ancient Chinese literature. Sometimes I think the ancient people knew more about ecology than modern people. They knew how to keep our natural world in balance and treated the ecosystem as a whole because they respected nature.
Modern people think “science” gave us a “license to kill” since we do not like the world as it is. We lost the basic value of life. We want more and our desires are endless. When the pursuit started for the maximum of everything we wanted, we put ourselves at the center of the universe. We eliminated all those other life forms, germs, fungi, and bugs that make us uncomfortable or sick. The only thing is that we speed up their adaptations and mutations, and they come back hundreds and thousands generations later to fight our same generation. The longer we live, the less we adapt to change.
Since the Industrial Revolution and capitalism took over the world, greed and mass production became a way of life. We forgot that we are part of nature, not above nature. We change how the crops grow and how the farm animals are raised for maximum profit, forgetting we are what we eat. We eat fat and weak chicken fast grown in just a few months, and we become fat and weak. Life needs care, love, and freedom. Almost everything we eat has a life of its own; animals usually kill only when they are hungry and they have to work hard to get it.
Food is the most important factor for all survival after fresh air and water. Throughout Chinese history, 80% of the people were small family farmers and farming was the most important occupation. China had a very strong tradition to put agriculture first. Now, China is following Europe and America with only about 3% of the population as farmers. Farming has been industrialized like a “biological assembly line,” without ethics or morals. Commercial fertilizers and pesticides are problematic. Genetically modified organisms (GMOs) threaten the integrity of the natural ecosystem. Americans once believed that we had the best, safest, most secure food supply in the world. Industry’s preoccupation with making foods that “taste good” with fats and sugar, and that “look good” by being artificially shaped, colored, or ripened, fails to meet good nutrition and health. Widespread use of agrichemicals, hormones, antibiotics, and artificial food additives are problems for food safety. We bred crops in which no pest was interested or lethal to pests as if we are different than pests. You cheat the food and the food cheats you in return. More and more people became weak and fat; more and more people became allergic to food.
For a shiny diamond or a lump of gold, we didn’t mind turning a huge mountain upside down. For our endless need of water, we used up most fresh clean water on the earth. For our endless desire for new things and comfort, we create new things everyday. We created so many things that our bodies had a hard time to recognize and adapt. We trashed so much that we ran out of dumping ground.
We change our surroundings so much that our bodies and minds can not keep up. We used to have more visible dirt but that was part of the natural process, such as soil from rocks, plants, and animal origins. Our body was made to process most of it. Now we create so much human-made material from industrial to household goods and altered the world we live in. Our body genes simply go crazy try to adapt, which may be the reason we have more cancer and other physiological imbalances. Our poor body simply tries to adapt to every change in the world.
People build large homes with constant temperature and humidity regulation. We drive in air-conditioned cars to air-conditioned shopping malls and so on. Wherever we go or stay, we spray, clean and clean, to make sure there are no germs, bugs, and so on. We do not realize that we are actually taking ourselves out of the natural world originally created for us. We create a whole New World just for our own needs and for what we think we need. We worked very hard to create a differing, distant route from the rest of the living things. We have already changed much of the gene pool leading us into the deep unknown and there seems to be no return. I just hope that we are prudent and wise in our creations even though so far it seems that everything we have created cannot pass the test of time; it keeps going astray or coming back to haunt us later.
Other life forms are destroyed to satisfy our comfort. By building large houses, shopping malls, and indoor stadiums, etc., natural ecosystems have vanished and have been replaced by big concrete structures nearly entirely sealing the outside away by power, light, temperature, humidity, artificial fibers, and chemicals. We gradually set up our own standard of acceptance and rejection. We can’t even stand our own body odors, although it is crucial for animals. We have to be covered with all kinds of deodorizers and perfume. That is maybe one reason why humans have become so confused about their sex. Even babies have a whole line of products to eliminate their odors. In a word, we are not happy with who we are and we want to change ourselves from head to toe. We do not care about the cost, as long as we get whatever we want. Humans wanted to be “god.”
We should recall our great-great grandparents sweating more for a lot of things. They were more in control of their own bodies and minds. They got paid for their work, their sweat. Now, it costs us to work out and sweat whether you go to a health club or buy a treadmill or drive somewhere for a walk or run. We have machinery for all kinds of labor. We have computers to do all kinds of thinking for us especially after introducing “artificial intelligence.” Computers could do the job faster and better for us, jobs that would be impossible for us to do. We only needed to sit on the top, figuring out how to control them. So, we have a group of people working day and night to improve this machine to replace themselves. The groups of people already replaced by a machine sit around depressed, or desperately trying to find some way to feel worth living. It has become a vicious cycle that no one could control.
To solve the problems that we created, there are more antidepressant drugs. A whole institution of scientists either re-educate children or re-educate the losers. Every now and then, some madness came out of nowhere and the madmen basically wanted to destroy the whole world. Revenge has become a classic term because now we have random terrorist acts around and people die for random reasons.
The most dangerous things are global pursuits of the same thing. Freedom is not free; someone has to pay. We are part of nature, not above it and we are connected with everything around us. Everything we do will affect others (not just another human but everything around us). Everything would still evolve forward or backward, up or down with or without us. Knowing our limits, we could coexist with nature better.
There was one more class that I took in which I had a serious disagreement with a professor, “Concepts of forest decline.” He was a pathologist. I disagreed with his putting too much emphasis on pathology as if the germ was the root of everything. It seemed that every forest decline could be rooted to disease. He was different from the chairman though and invited me to talk about my opinions with him in his office. We had long discussions and even argued. I put more emphasis on the forest development ‘time factor.’ For example, if there was an old growth forest, the trees were old; of course, it looked like it was declining. Diseases and pests took advantage of the situation and sped up the decline. But this process helped restore the nutrients and energy for the next generations of forests. I told him about observations that I had made when I researched forests in China. We were worried about the bamboo dying because it was flowering in region after region, and the Giant Panda died from lack of food. The whole world was watching. We even tried artificial regeneration by digging out those dead bamboo roots and planting new ones. It was not successful to stop massive death. After about a ten-year break, the new generation of bamboo was shooting up again. Even without our interference, the forest will grow in its own time. With our positive or negative help, it only slowed down or sped up the process. The forest population develops like a spiral spring. It is three-dimensional. From the top, it looks like it is running a circle. Only from the side you could see it was up or down or stayed still. He praised me for our very interesting discussion and gave me an “A” on my term paper after our discussion and my revisions. I liked him because our discussions were what graduate studies were all about.
Presenting My Research Proposal
My research proposal was ready to submit to my master’s degree committee. I had revised it many times under the direction of my major professor until it was ready for my committee. At the meeting though, I was so shocked that my committee thought that my proposal was too large and impossible to finish. I knew my proposal was basically what my professor wanted me to do in order to finish my master degree. He should have known how much work is proper and it was out of my control. Dr. Ron asked me, “Do you want to finish your research? Do you know how much work that involves? You would need three assistants just to prepare your cores for measuring. I would hate to see you unable to finish. Practically, this proposal is not a master’s proposal. It is more than a Ph.D. You mentioned that you are going to use these two computer programs in the lab. Dave, my former Ph.D. student did not figure out how to fit these two programs into our mainframe. I hope that you can but I don’t want you to become frustrated and fail.” I didn’t know what to say. My major professor was quiet also. After they finished, my major professor said, “Yes, yes. They are right. Ying, you have to make some changes.” In fact, I did not change anything in terms of the amount of work. After the meeting, I felt that there was no way I could finish in one more year. Field trips were planned for three summers. There was no other way around it except to try to go along with the big project. Plus now, I really didn’t have anything to hurry for. I was ready for the challenge.
The second fall semester came. I started to take classes again. Two new students arrived. One was Anthony. The other was Barbara. One morning, Barbara and Anthony came to my office door and asked whether I was ready to go to statistics class. That was the first time I met Anthony. He was of medium height, rather on the thin side, with dark hair and a moustache. Barbara soon got a job somewhere and left; her husband had just joined the college as an assistant professor. Anthony and I continued to go to statistics and other regular classes together. Except for statistics that involved lots of symbols and mathematics that I understood well, I borrowed Anthony’s notes for the other classes each day. Although I have been there for a year, he just came as a new graduated student. I felt more comfortable with him as if he was there much longer. He understood what I was trying to say because he made a effort.
The second fall semester came. I started to take classes again. Two new students arrived. One was Anthony. The other was Barbara. One morning, Barbara and Anthony came to my office door and asked whether I was ready to go to statistics class. That was the first time I met Anthony. He was of medium height, rather on the thin side, with dark hair and a moustache. Barbara soon got a job somewhere and left; her husband had just joined the college as an assistant professor. Anthony and I continued to go to statistics and other regular classes together. Except for statistics that involved lots of symbols and mathematics that I understood well, I borrowed Anthony’s notes for the other classes each day. Although I have been there for a year, he just came as a new graduated student. I felt more comfortable with him as if he was there much longer. He understood what I was trying to say because he made a effort.
Start to Change
Life became so meaningless after that. Nothing looked good and nothing tasted good anymore. I became impatient and cold. I started to find that everywhere in our apartment house was dirty. I cleaned and scrubbed everywhere. Then, it became dirty and messy again. I started to complain to everyone to clean up after themselves “It’s clean everywhere, if you don’t think it’s clean enough, then you clean it yourself,” they said. I couldn’t sleep well at night. Little noises started to bother me a lot. Hua came back at midnight as usual, but the girl who loved him started waiting up for him and cooking for him, which made even more noise since they talking. My bedroom was next to the bathroom. I started to complain that they made too much noise at night especially the girl. She seemed so overjoyed, so proud of herself. I could not stand for her disrespect and messiness anymore. She was the youngest girl in her family even though she was a few years older than I was. Her sloppiness made me angry. “If you use my pots, wash them right away, don’t just soak them until I need to use them and I have to wash them for you.” “Don’t dump your tea leaves in the sink. They are going to clog the drain.” “Wrap your sanitary napkins with toilet paper; nobody wants to see your blood,” I complained to her.
One weekends, her friend came all the way from Cornell University to see her. He was a visiting scholar for a year and would go back to China soon. He made the trip to see her, and for some site-seeing. I never saw a worse host. She practically left him alone in the house without any help while chasing after Hua. She treated him like he had not come to see her and like they were not even friends. Her friend was very embarrassed and ready to go back right away. So I told him, don’t worry. I don’t mind your staying. You should take the opportunity to see a little of city. I could cook extra food for you so you don’t have to spend extra money to eat outside. So, he agreed. But his car did not cooperate. He went back disappointed.
We all saw how much she tried to impress him and tried to show everyone, especially me, that they had something going and I didn’t really care. One morning though, I think it was on a weekend, three of us were eating our breakfast. She decided to open Hua’s bedroom door and went inside to wake him up for breakfast. Oh, he was upset. He shouted, “get out, get out my bedroom.” She ran into her own room crying. We did not see her the whole day.
I sympathized with her that she tried to make the effort to win his love. I tried to tell her best friend to tell her that she didn’t have to worry about me, I was not interested in her Hua. She shouldn’t go so low to please a man. She had always changed her sleeping gown whenever she was home and she didn’t even close her door or window curtains when she was changing. We did have another man whom she was not interested in living in the house. He was middle aged and married back in China. I didn’t think that it was proper. I was sure that men could enjoy seeing her transparent gown, but I didn’t.
For a period of time, we got strange calls from someone. He would only talk if a girl picked up the phone. Of course every time, she picked it up. She was so scared and hung up the phone right away and it was the stranger again. I told her that she should close the curtain in her room window. She said that she did not think it was the man in the other house. They talked some time by their window because the two windows were on opposite and so close to each other. I was sure that he saw her through that window. Finally, we told the two men in our house. Hua, of course, immediately asked me if there was someone strange in the Chinese restaurant where I worked on Friday nights and that I should stop working there. I was furious, “Strangers? I work in the kitchen with the husband, and his wife waits on the table". I implied that he should check her instead. Then, I got the same call for the first time. I said, “no.” He said, “$250” and adding more each time and I said, “no.” I said, “no, you got the wrong number. No one here in this house is interested. So please don’t call us again". I told him not to waste money on sex, but instead he should invest in love which was priceless. I didn’t know if it was because of what I said or the man was tired of calling but he didn’t call again. Marjorie and Lucille suggested that I should blow a loud whistle into the phone the next time. I just thought that the man was confused. He did not know that money couldn’t buy love. He needed to find real love on his own.
The girl in our house was on my nerves even more when she found out that my ex-boyfriend in Japan returned to China married. She thought I would be a real threat to her now since she knew Hua was trying to impress me behind her back and trying to hinder their relationship. She waited until he came back, and he was back later and later in the middle of the night or early morning. I felt sorry that she had to get up early while working as a research assistant in the lab for her professor while pursuing her degree. I could feel that she was deliberately making noises by slamming the bathroom door or going into the bathroom quite often, or walking around noisily, just to get back at me for whatever Hua was doing to her.
Finally, I had a perfect chance to get even. She always forgot this or that, or lost this or that. So while I was home alone one evening, Hua had gone for a business trip; I am not sure where the other guy was. She went out to visit her friend and forgot her keys. It was not very late, probably 8 or 8:30 PM. She returned knocking on the door downstairs and calling me to open the door. I just pretended that I had fallen asleep. She went back to her girlfriend’s house and spent the night there. The next morning about 7:30 am, she and her girlfriend came together knocking on the door and calling my name. So, I went down and opened the door for them. “I’m sorry, I must have been sound asleep last night and didn’t hear anything.” She and I both knew that I did that on purpose. She cried to Hua when he walked in the house, blamed me for hiding her key and not allowing her into the house while he was gone. I just had it up to my neck.
I did not move out earlier because this house was the closest to my office and the price was the best I could find in the neighborhood. I told Marjorie and Lucille that I would like to move into their friend Kathryn’s house if a room was still available. I did not want to move into her house even through I knew she was Marjorie and Lucille’s lifelong friend since college, just a few houses down the street from the house I lived. Now I did not have any other options. I could be alone there, even though I would have to pay more each month. I would be crazy to stay where I was.
Kathryn was an Afro-American widow. She and her husband were well educated. Her husband had a good job to which he devoted all his life. He died around 60 years old, left Kathryn alone with the house. She rented out a bedroom to student. The house was very quiet. She lived there alone most of the time. Her grandchildren sometimes came to visit her. I treated myself to a 13-inch color TV with a remote control. Often I watched TV until I fell asleep. I found that whenever I was stressed out, it was best for me to take a nap in my quiet room.
Soon after I moved in, Kathryn got a big fluffy dog and named him Bud. I really liked that dog. It gave me a reason to go out and take him for a walk. I didn’t have to stay home or feel that I didn’t have anything to do with any leisure time. The problem was it was a farm dog and was not well trained to live in a small space in a city. He often ran away and couldn’t find his way home. Every time he ran away, we eventually found him. He was so dirty and hungry. But then, he was gone again. Finally, he was gone and never came back. We looked and looked, I even took her grandchildren with me to the cemetery next to the house looking and calling for Bud. He was gone and I was very sad. I even dreamed that he had returned.
One weekends, her friend came all the way from Cornell University to see her. He was a visiting scholar for a year and would go back to China soon. He made the trip to see her, and for some site-seeing. I never saw a worse host. She practically left him alone in the house without any help while chasing after Hua. She treated him like he had not come to see her and like they were not even friends. Her friend was very embarrassed and ready to go back right away. So I told him, don’t worry. I don’t mind your staying. You should take the opportunity to see a little of city. I could cook extra food for you so you don’t have to spend extra money to eat outside. So, he agreed. But his car did not cooperate. He went back disappointed.
We all saw how much she tried to impress him and tried to show everyone, especially me, that they had something going and I didn’t really care. One morning though, I think it was on a weekend, three of us were eating our breakfast. She decided to open Hua’s bedroom door and went inside to wake him up for breakfast. Oh, he was upset. He shouted, “get out, get out my bedroom.” She ran into her own room crying. We did not see her the whole day.
I sympathized with her that she tried to make the effort to win his love. I tried to tell her best friend to tell her that she didn’t have to worry about me, I was not interested in her Hua. She shouldn’t go so low to please a man. She had always changed her sleeping gown whenever she was home and she didn’t even close her door or window curtains when she was changing. We did have another man whom she was not interested in living in the house. He was middle aged and married back in China. I didn’t think that it was proper. I was sure that men could enjoy seeing her transparent gown, but I didn’t.
For a period of time, we got strange calls from someone. He would only talk if a girl picked up the phone. Of course every time, she picked it up. She was so scared and hung up the phone right away and it was the stranger again. I told her that she should close the curtain in her room window. She said that she did not think it was the man in the other house. They talked some time by their window because the two windows were on opposite and so close to each other. I was sure that he saw her through that window. Finally, we told the two men in our house. Hua, of course, immediately asked me if there was someone strange in the Chinese restaurant where I worked on Friday nights and that I should stop working there. I was furious, “Strangers? I work in the kitchen with the husband, and his wife waits on the table". I implied that he should check her instead. Then, I got the same call for the first time. I said, “no.” He said, “$250” and adding more each time and I said, “no.” I said, “no, you got the wrong number. No one here in this house is interested. So please don’t call us again". I told him not to waste money on sex, but instead he should invest in love which was priceless. I didn’t know if it was because of what I said or the man was tired of calling but he didn’t call again. Marjorie and Lucille suggested that I should blow a loud whistle into the phone the next time. I just thought that the man was confused. He did not know that money couldn’t buy love. He needed to find real love on his own.
The girl in our house was on my nerves even more when she found out that my ex-boyfriend in Japan returned to China married. She thought I would be a real threat to her now since she knew Hua was trying to impress me behind her back and trying to hinder their relationship. She waited until he came back, and he was back later and later in the middle of the night or early morning. I felt sorry that she had to get up early while working as a research assistant in the lab for her professor while pursuing her degree. I could feel that she was deliberately making noises by slamming the bathroom door or going into the bathroom quite often, or walking around noisily, just to get back at me for whatever Hua was doing to her.
Finally, I had a perfect chance to get even. She always forgot this or that, or lost this or that. So while I was home alone one evening, Hua had gone for a business trip; I am not sure where the other guy was. She went out to visit her friend and forgot her keys. It was not very late, probably 8 or 8:30 PM. She returned knocking on the door downstairs and calling me to open the door. I just pretended that I had fallen asleep. She went back to her girlfriend’s house and spent the night there. The next morning about 7:30 am, she and her girlfriend came together knocking on the door and calling my name. So, I went down and opened the door for them. “I’m sorry, I must have been sound asleep last night and didn’t hear anything.” She and I both knew that I did that on purpose. She cried to Hua when he walked in the house, blamed me for hiding her key and not allowing her into the house while he was gone. I just had it up to my neck.
I did not move out earlier because this house was the closest to my office and the price was the best I could find in the neighborhood. I told Marjorie and Lucille that I would like to move into their friend Kathryn’s house if a room was still available. I did not want to move into her house even through I knew she was Marjorie and Lucille’s lifelong friend since college, just a few houses down the street from the house I lived. Now I did not have any other options. I could be alone there, even though I would have to pay more each month. I would be crazy to stay where I was.
Kathryn was an Afro-American widow. She and her husband were well educated. Her husband had a good job to which he devoted all his life. He died around 60 years old, left Kathryn alone with the house. She rented out a bedroom to student. The house was very quiet. She lived there alone most of the time. Her grandchildren sometimes came to visit her. I treated myself to a 13-inch color TV with a remote control. Often I watched TV until I fell asleep. I found that whenever I was stressed out, it was best for me to take a nap in my quiet room.
Soon after I moved in, Kathryn got a big fluffy dog and named him Bud. I really liked that dog. It gave me a reason to go out and take him for a walk. I didn’t have to stay home or feel that I didn’t have anything to do with any leisure time. The problem was it was a farm dog and was not well trained to live in a small space in a city. He often ran away and couldn’t find his way home. Every time he ran away, we eventually found him. He was so dirty and hungry. But then, he was gone again. Finally, he was gone and never came back. We looked and looked, I even took her grandchildren with me to the cemetery next to the house looking and calling for Bud. He was gone and I was very sad. I even dreamed that he had returned.
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