There are friends whom you don’t remember meeting … somehow, they just slipped into the mainstream of your life. And some friends slip as quietly out of that stream … you don’t remember when they stopped being around, or sending notes, or dropping by, now and then.
They’re just … gone. And now, only a wisp of memory that blows across your mind, once in a while, on a gust of memory’s breeze.
With Mr. Pang, I don’t remember the coming or the going. Just the knowing, for a while, during some of the most dramatic and formative years of my life. We were strangers, we were close, he was gone – living out in that foggy bottom land of “sometime, someday, we may meet again.”
Only, we won’t. Not here, anyway. Comes word from out of the mists that Mr. Pang of Urumqi, China – now Dr. Pang of Boston, Mass. – died today, of a heart attack.
Which means, for the first time in nearly 30 years, I know where my old friend is.
They probably introduced us our first day in Urumqi, in the minority region of far northwest China, on the blazing fringe of the Gobi Desert, that long, long ago summer of ‘86. Ten of us – nine Americans, one Australian – meeting officials of the August First Agricultural College. We’d come to help some university-bound students practice their English for a few weeks.
Mr. Pang was assigned by the local Chinese Communists to be our escort. Watchdog. Keeper. He was supposed to make sure we got to our classes on time, didn’t socialize with the wrong kinds of people, didn’t see things or say things or hear things we weren’t supposed to.
He was a tall man who didn’t smile much. Brisk and crisp in conversation. He clearly enjoyed introducing us to his little girl, Sally, but beyond that, was pretty much all business. Big Brother was watching us, and Big Brothers were watching him, too.
He was the only man I ever saw eat the beak and feet of a chicken, at a picnic the Communist officials treated us to up in the high hills of the province. I have a vivid memory of one of those chicken feet, sticking out of his mouth, and an equally vivid picture of it coming back the other way, as Mr. Pang bent his green face through the bus window, going home.
Our relationship, such as it was, was clarified late in our stay when we were invited to speak one evening at a “Free Talk” – an open forum in which locals came to the college auditorium to ask questions of the visiting foreigners. (Westerners were a rare sight in Urumqi, so soon after the Cultural Revolution. For the locals, we were pretty much their only window on the wider world beyond China.)
The 10 of us stood on a stage, fielding a wide array of unpredictable questions:
“What is the significance of cowboys in America politics?”
“What is your favorite fertilizer?”
“Why did the United States bomb Syria?”
“Do you believe Jesus rose from the dead?”
It was that last one that caused all the trouble. Since those of us answering were Christians, we were thrilled at the opportunity to share something of our faith with these people. Our answers spurred more questions, and soon the queries came faster and faster, about every aspect of the Gospel story. We wound up standing down on the crowded floor, each surrounded by a dozen or more Chinese pummeling us for information about Jesus.
I felt a hand on my shoulder, and looked up into the stern countenance of Mr. Pang.
“You will go back to your rooms now,” he said.
“Nah,” I said, cheerfully waving him off. “This is fun. Happy to talk with them.”
The hand on my shoulder tightened.
“You will go back to your rooms. Now.”
“Oh.” Back to our rooms we went. Next morning, our American host stopped in to remind us that, in China, evangelizing was against the law. And in the eyes of Chinese Communists, answering a roomful of people’s questions about Jesus was pretty much the same as evangelizing.
“If they want to,” he said, “they can arrest you this morning and throw you in prison. And the United States of America is not going to invade China to get you out.”
We did not go to prison. A few days later, we returned safely to the U.S. A few months later, I took a job at Grand Canyon University. And a few months after that, Mr. Pang showed up at Canyon himself – as an exchange professor and student. He needed a roommate.
We lived together for most of two years. I grew accustomed to the omnipresent smells of Chinese cooking and the curt, bickering sounds of Chinese conversation. I learned that Mr. Pang held his share of wisdom. And I found that he could smile.
He called me, “Cuhrrees.” Wanted me to help him learn to drive. Giggled when my fiancee´ beat me at board games. (So did she.) He tried to persuade me that acupuncture would turn my soft, high-pitched voice into something Johnny Cash would be proud of.
One day, I walked in to find him laughing at an old episode of Star Trek. “Americans,” he chuckled. “You think everyone in the universe speaks English.”
As days went by, he began asking me and others a lot of the same questions those people in the audience had asked that night at Free Talk. In time, he gave his life to Christ. He even became a leader in a local Chinese church.
And then: he headed back to China, to be a Christian in a land whose leaders had no use for Christians. I married, and life swept me around a bend in the river. We lost track of each other.
Heard he moved back to America, to stay. That his wife and child became Christians. That he was living in one city, then another. That he’d earned his doctorate.
Kept meaning to find some way to get in touch, but … never quite managed to do that. Time is a slippery thing. And now he’s gone.
The people he lived among are living in concentration camps now. The Chinese Communists have singled out the Uighur people – both Muslim and Christian – for persecution. U.S. industries and athletes are doing a great deal to assist the persecution.
My companions from that long-ago China adventure are all off the map now – the only one I managed to stay close to, Leslie, passed away a few months ago from cancer.
I have what most of us carry from our youthful adventures: a lot of memories, a few pictures, some well-worn stories. And the wondering of if and when we’ll see again the people who, in unexpected ways and offhand moments, contributed so much to who we are today.
I am glad to know, at last, where Mr. Pang is. And to know I will see him again.
Zai jian wo, de peng you.
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