HothAdventuresInChina

My Best Friend 张培俊

Humm… Zhang Peijun, I find it really hard to write this since we have been together 6 days a week for the last 8 months. Zhang was my driver who became my best friend in Shanghai. The first day we met, I remember how nervous he was. His boss told me that he new just a little bit of English, which was so true, because we quickly discovered communicating at times was very challenging but we never gave up. I bought a dictionary, he bought an electronic translator, and we both decided that it was going to work. Then one day he told me that he’d signed up for English school. Wow, I was so impressed, because he wanted to improve his English to improve our communication. He was a fantastic safe driver, who did more than just drive for me. He paid my bills (to this day, I still don’t know how to pay an electric bill), made friends with the security guards in my apartment complex so I never had to pay for parking, he would even call the apartment maintenance management when something was broken “every” week.

When my family arrived I remember him being so excited to meet the rest of my family. Shortly after, we went Chongming Island, then to Ningbo/Ninghai where we had forgotten our passports and he saved the day finding us a “2” star Chinese hotel. Then, on we traveled to Nanjing, and finally Huangshan. Chinese dinner the first night in Huangshan was certainly memorable because my family completely embarrassed me. They decided to complain about the food and since Zhang had done the ordering you can imagine how badly he felt. I was so mad at my 3 “boys”, the next night Zhang and I dropped them off at KFC, then we went and ate together. He ordered Chinese food and we had a very nice relaxing dinner. My family was only in China 5 months so the many hours we spent driving together and seeing different parts of China went so fast. And I can’t forget Odis’s sisters coming to visit and Beverly needing to buy cigarettes. Zhang and Bev buying cigarettes made me laugh for days!

Our first outing to Chongming Island, we're on the ferry and I'm trying probably completely mis-speaking a word in Mandarin something terrible because Zhang is all but laughing at me.

We took Eric to SMP skatepark and we decided to play a little frisbee.

Dinner at a restaurant in Nanjing over National Holiday. Hooters Restaurant - A colleague of mine decided it was a good idea to take our drivers out for American food! I can't believe I brought my 15 year old along. The boys sure had a good time!Suzhou trip with the HP visitors from India and the US.You'll probably kill me Bev for posting this but it's one of my favorite photos. I'll always remember Zhang helping Bev buy cigarettes.Our trusty dictionary. "Nope, this is the word you're looking for Darrell and you say it like this..."Xiti, an ancient village near Huangshan with the boys. I know Andrew and Eric really like Zhang a lot. Snow on palm trees, it was pretty darn cold there!Huangshan - Look mom, I can run and almost fall down! Or I'm swimming??

Huangshan -Santa who?

Then my family left January 24th and we all said our goodbyes, I could tell Zhang was also sad. He really liked the boys and was especially fond of Eric. Eric and Zhang’s daughter also have similar personalities and they would rather play than do their schoolwork. Eric also went to Zhang’s home and met his family.

Once again, my life changed during the last 7 weeks when my family left and I continued to feel loved, this time by a BIG Chinese family. Zhang’s family adopted me; we took two vacations together, had dinners together, spent a lot of time talking. The more we built our friendship, we realized even though we come from very different parts of the world we have so many similarities.
1)Zhang cares about people and loves to help. I like to teach and help people grow.
2)Zhang works really hard for his family, and so do I.
3)We both like sports, although he likes ping pong and I like basketball. He told me Chinese people are too short to play basketball so they don’t like it that much. Humm, what about Yao Ming?
4)We both like watching the news, although we often found ourselves fighting over the TV remote for Chinese or English speaking news. Humm, sounds familiar at my home it Eagle too!
5)In 1991 he was working as a welder the same time I was working at Monroc and periodically did some welding.
6)He likes to understand why things are the way they are. I like to know why and how to fix them.
7)He is great at people networking and in China, it’s so important. I thought I had great networking until I saw him and learned from him.
8)He’s a leader who listens. I was his boss and learned how to listen from him. (Sometimes he would tell me “I decide”, even though I was the boss and he knew something that I didn't know and was in my best interest.)

So over the last 7 weeks Zhang Peijun and I spent many hours together, his English improved so much, my Chinese also improved (although not near as much as his English ;-). We talked about a variety of things, our kids, our spouses, our likes/dislikes, and work, what we want in life. I showed him our home in Idaho on Google maps and we also found his home in Shanghai. He also found New York, Chicago, San Francisco and was just fascinated. In Idaho, he cruised downtown Boise and was amazed there weren’t any cars on the roads. I explained that Sunday is rest day and people don’t really drive and relative to Shanghai, there are very few cars on the roads.

He taught me how to cook Chinese food and I taught him how to cook Italian and Mexican. I hope that I can remember how to cook some Chinese when I get home so my family and I can remember the food. (I also really like it, because it’s healthy with lots of vegetables and I lost some weight while I was there.)

Qin Dao Hu - Boat cruise on the lake. Zhang's wife is saying to him, "You go first dear and try it, then tell me how it is." Dinner at my apartment, Zhang's wife (in green) and sister (purple) having a great time watching him prepare the food. He's telling me, "Turn that camera off while I'm in the kitchen!" Nope sorry, I'm the boss, I decide ;-) Dinner with Zhang's family at my apartment. City Beach - About 1.5 hours from my apartment. I can just hear Zhang telling me, "Get your hair out of my face, I can't see anything!"
One of my favorite photos. We both learned so much from each other and our close friendship I will always remember and someday I will go back to Shanghai to visit 张培俊 and his big family. Maybe in 2009 or 2010 during World Expo. And to you and yoru family Zhang, my door in Idaho is always open and if you come to the US, I’ll be sure to show you America!

我爱你张培俊
Becky