Category Archives: Family and Community

Memories of Dumplings

By Julia Qi, educator, Nevada.

I remember a time when steaming dishes of dumplings were laid out before me on the dining table. I was five years old, and a bowl of Chinese vinegar with two drops of sesame oil sat under my nose, eagerly awaiting the three hot dumplings that my grandma would soon drop in.

She’d always break the dumplings in half for me so my little fingers could navigate my chopsticks, and that day, I was the pride and joy of my family for devouring a total of nine dumplings.

That was the last time I remembered looking at a plate of dumplings without fear—at least until recently.

Somewhere along the way, food transformed into something I avoided. Any plate became a conversion of fat-protein-carbs in my eyes. The rich fat on decadent, red-braised pork belly remained untouched on my plate, and even my mom’s delicious stir-fried dishes were secretly rinsed off in the sink before I’d attempt to pick away at them. Passing by bakeries consumed me with conflict for the rest of the day because they looked so, so delicious. I wanted a taste so bad, but no, I couldn’t.

What my family saw as a “glow-up” before college was, in reality, my refusal to cook with salt or oil. I limited myself to raw foods for weeks and pretended I had simply outgrown my love for my childhood favorite foods. Steering clear of soup dumplings, BBQ skewers, and hearty pots of Chinese stew, I opted instead for bland salads and spinach smoothies.

The restriction ate away at me as I started college. I refused to eat before drinking water to “avoid” the calories. Despite the arrays of dishes in the dining halls, I spent 90% of my time at the salad bar, and the rest of the time lurking in the dessert section mustering the occasional courage to nibble a cookie. The additional walking in New York City resulted in me rapidly losing weight my first semester, which, as I anticipated, was celebrated not only by my peers, but also by my family.

My mother’s beauty was hard to miss. She’s a slender petite woman with voluminous curly hair, big bright eyes, and her classy fashion choices were always a topic of envy. She taught me the meaning of strength, independence, and courage as I saw her create the life she wanted for us in America. When she bought her first house in 2019 after 13 years of moving here, those walls represented something only immigrant parents can really understand. Her words were, “I just wanted to give you a home.” What she meant was, this is something that is finally ours. In a place where we had to start over, we had something that finally belonged to us.

My mom imparted many invaluable lessons growing up, but our culture also taught us that a woman’s beauty is paramount. Despite her exhaustion our first few years in the states from working consecutive night shifts and still managing to get up in time to wake me, cook breakfast, and take me to school, my mom maintained her elegant appearance. She always reminded me that as immigrants, we must pay extra attention to how we looked; we shouldn’t give anyone a reason to look down at us. My naturally tan complexion contradicted the porcelain-white Chinese beauty standard, and the fixation on my appearance naturally grew towards my weight as I got older. While genetically slender, my mom and her three sisters dreadfully feared weight gain. As I rounded out my teenage years, comments about my weight, what I was eating, and what I was wearing gradually took up a dangerous amount of space in my head.

Eating disorders are addictions. You’re stuck in a cycle, and even though you know it’s bad for you, you don’t know how to stop. Years of restriction led to an overwhelming preoccupation with food, which manifested in binging, then overcompensating by purging. The painful details of my four-year struggle with bulimia are oddly blurry, numbed by a filter of shame as I walked around hiding this part of me that I despised but couldn’t let go.

In a culture where famine was still a childhood memory for many, food was not meant to be wasted. Food was nourishment, and the idea of intentionally restricting or purging would have been absurd to those like my grandparents who grew up in the countryside and never had enough to eat for their four little girls. Northeastern Chinese stews were hearty, crafted to keep hunger at bay. Buns and baos were designed to fill you up for hours. My actions were completely at odds with what I was taught, which is likely why I wouldn’t touch my favorite foods for years, at least without bringing it back up.

This past March, I visited my family in China for the first time in six years. There was a stillness unlike earlier springs. The winter chill overstayed its welcome, seemingly in response to my grandpa’s passing just a few weeks prior.

My grandpa always requested peanuts with his dumplings, sometimes a Tsingtao beer, if my grandma allowed it. He liked sauerkraut or chive filling, since meat was hard on his dentures, which made clicking sounds when he chewed. This time around, we bought giant sauerkraut dumplings from the morning market made of purple forbidden rice. My grandma still broke them in half for me, except only one giant dumpling could fit in my bowl. This time, I couldn’t eat nine, but I ate until I was full, and over the memories of my grandpa’s clicking and the warmth of my belly filling up, I found solace.

—Julia Qi, received her undergraduate degree a few years ago, Nevada.

The Song of Saccidānanda

By Kevin Zhang, age 16, Shenzhen, People’s Republic of China.

I sing the song of forever.

I sing the gentle winds
as they brush against the cliff
of endless time.

I sing the tireless birds
as they crowd the windswept plain
of limitless space.

I sing the hushed darkness
as it dreams the Rudra Tandava*
of boundless life.

I sing myself,
I sing the song of Saccidānanda.**

Notes: * Rudra Tandav: A divine dance of Lord Shiva, the Hindu god of destruction and transformation, with vigorus, brisk movements.

** Saccidānanda: In Hindu philosophy, the direct experience and bliss of absolute, unchanging reality.

By Kevin Zhang, age 16, Shenzhen, People’s Republic of China. Kevin is a junior at BASIS International School PLH. He is an Honorary Junior Fellow of the John Locke Institute and serves on the PLATO Student Advisory Council. Kevin enjoys boating, collecting rocks, and learning about other cultures.

“half, whole”

By Alyson Henderson, age 16, Connecticut.

i have always been

two halves stitched together
half this, half that,
never wholly me
always half in, half out
not belonging to either
instead, i am two parts,
conflicting, like puzzle pieces
that don’t match,
forced together anyways
not one whole,
just bad stitching
the parts that don’t fit
hide under the paint,
cracked and chipped
not hiding much at all

they like to ask
if i am this half or that half,
but i say and, not or
and maybe they won’t understand
but i am always this half
and that half,
these halves are just me,
whole

By Alyson Henderson, age 16, high school junior, Connecticut. She adds: “I have been reading and writing for as long as I can remember, and it’s through reading and writing that I learned about other people’s cultures and identities as well as my own. My dad is white and American, and my mom is Korean and immigrated when she was young. For a long time, I’ve been exploring my own identity through writing, particularly my identity as a biracial person. I often feel like I have to choose between being Asian and being white, and I can’t identify as both. However, by ignoring either part of my identity, I am ignoring so much of my life. The way I see it, choosing one half of my identity is being dishonest with myself about who I am. My poem, “half, whole” explores the struggle of never feeling fully accepted as either “half” of myself, and how I have accepted that I don’t have to be put in one box and discard parts of myself for others’ comfort.”

Still A Student?

By Emra Woldearegay, originally from Ethiopia, now teaching in Missouri.

Here I am, still a student.
Oh, why, after so many decades?
Aren’t you tired? They ask
What’s the point, they ask.
You better start earning tons
because time’s running out.
But for whom? I ask.
How could time run out when
I’ve so much to learn
about things & skills that make me more adept.
Why should that matter
When what I love is asking questions,
I am curious, like the cat.
They jump on me, snarling like an angry cat
And declare-gleefully: “Curiosity killed the cat.”
I would rather be like the cat killed for curiosity
after living nine lives, learning, and relearning eight times.
NINE lives!
What a way to go; it is the best way.

By Emra Woldearegay, originally from Ethiopia, did her graduate studies at the University of Oregon. She is now teaching journalism in Missouri.

Waiting for a Madam President of the United States!

By Arun N. Toké, editor

Did you know that each and every one of the 46 Presidents of the United States, has been a male in its almost 250-year history since the Declaration of Independence? Since the founding of the nation on July 4^th, 1776, not even one woman has been elected to the highest office of the land!

Ask your female classmates, neighbors, friends and family members, “Can a woman lead the country?” and listen to what they say. Likely, they will all say, “Women are equally capable as men to lead the nation.”

Across the globe, many dozens of nations—in Europe, Africa, Latin America, and Asia—have elected women as presidents or prime ministers to lead their countries during the last 65 years. Some of these countries have elected women leaders multiple times over the decades. Various countries like the United Kingdom, India, New Zealand, Germany, Norway, Denmark, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Rwanda, Central African Republic, Argentina, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and Indonesia… the list is too long to include them all here! But unfortunately, the United States has not made the list so far!

Just recently, in October 2024, Mexico also joined the ranks of over 25 countries with women heads of their governments when Claudia Sheinbaum was sworn in as the first elected female President of the nation located just south of our border! Why haven’t we elected a woman to lead the United States of America yet?

Will the people of the United States choose to elect our first ever woman president this November? Many capable women leaders in other nations have shown clearly that women can lead as well as men, and sometimes even better.

Perhaps, you have studied the history of our country, and you know that women were not given even the basic rights to vote when the Constitution was first written. It allowed only landowning white males a right to vote. African Americans, and even the Indigenous People (who had lived here for generations) were not considered citizens of the country, and were not able to vote or run for any political office.

It was the 19^th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, adopted in the year 1920, after a decades-long suffrage movement led by women, that gave women the right to vote and thus help elect their representatives.

Interestingly, a number of European countries also enacted laws to give their women citizens a right to vote around the same time. Russia did so in 1917, Germany in 1919, and the United Kingdom began the process by granting women limited rights in 1918, and then full rights in 1928. Did you know that New Zealand became the first country to grant women voting rights in 1893? Nineteen other countries had also granted these rights to women before the United States did so in 1920. However, Switzerland did not grant women voting rights until 1971! In Asia, India granted some of its women the right to vote in 1935, while it was still a British colony. When India became an independent nation in 1947, the country’s constitution, adopted on January 26, 1950, gave its women full voting rights.

While the 13^th, 14^th, and 15^th Amendments of the 1860s were enacted to bring full citizenship rights to non-whites and former slaves—primarily African Americans—it was not until the year 1965 as the Voting Rights Act was signed into law by President Johnson, that Blacks in the South gained meaningful access to the ballot box. Thus also including the African American women (who were left out in the 19th Amendment of the 1920)!

Unfortunately, the country still does not have a true democracy. Because we have an archaic system of “The Electoral College,” which gives disproportional power to small states in electing the President, at times, we have had presidents who did not get the most votes. For example, in the 2016 presidential election, even though Hillary Clinton received 2.9 million more votes than Donald Trump, she did not become the President because she lost the Electoral College. She came very close to becoming the first woman president of the country!

The U.S. Supreme Court Justices are appointed for a lifetime. And, they are not even elected by the people. Until recently, all of these justices were also male and white (Sandra Day O’Conner was the first woman to be appointed to the Supreme Court in 1981). They interpret the laws and decide what is constitutional and what is not. Here is an example worth noting: reproductive health rights for women.

In 2022, the “Roe v. Wade” decision, which had guaranteed national access to abortion for women for about 50 years was struck down by the Supreme Court. As a result, some states now have severely restricted women’s rights and have caused great harm to many women living there. Thanks to progressive leaders, Democratic states still have reasonable family planning options, including an abortion procedure, for families, couples, and women.

In 1917, Montana’s Jeanette Rankin became the first woman to serve as a Congressional Representative in the nation. Since then over 300 women have been elected to serve in the U.S. Congress or the Senate (the upper house). Ms. Kamala Harris became the first woman to serve as the United States Vice President in January 2021 after Sen. Joe Biden and his running mate, Kamala Harris (who had previously been elected as a U.S. Senator, and before that the Attorney General, of California) won the 2020 presidential elections.

In 2024, we have a precious opportunity to turn the page in our nation’s history by electing Ms. Kamala Harris as our next President. Who we elect as the President will shape the future of the nation (and even the whole world because of our tremendous global power). The implications of the choice we make as a nation are huge. We have serious issues facing us: the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, the accelerating climate change crisis, and the nuclear weapons threat…

We need a truly capable leader who has a deeper understanding of the many complicated issues our nation (and our world) faces, and then lead us with fairness, kindness, and compassion to solve these pressing problems. Someone who knows and speaks the truth and works to bring the country together; someone who does not make hasty decisions based on short-term, selfish, or financial gains.

In 2024, our choice is clear, in my humble opinion.

—Arun N. Toké, editor.

Home

By Lina Murat Mariani, age 11, New York.

As I stand here, looking at this blank sheet of paper
Trying to describe how it felt when I looked back on the plane that day
All I remember is forgetting—
Forgetting home.
That plane was Odysseus’ ship
Sailing to a strange land,
Leaving but fading memories
A puppet in time’s grip.
Looking back and seeing all my life
Ashes for someone else’s dream to be born from
My home was but naked walls,
Perfect for someone’s paintings and trophies
All my life was a few boxes
And everyone says I should look forward to my new home
But why, if everything would be pictures of people that could be here? Windows into my melted life?
I had already moved on before,
And all that were just undone stitches now.
Why did my home had to be a comfy sweater,
One that people could just throw away?
Why was home meaningless as this sheet of paper?
This new home was my grave—
And worse, the grave of my life.
I look around, feeling like a trapped bug in the full-wall windowed room.
At least Odysseus had iron and blood to fight for his home.
All I had was my swift pen
My empty words
And this blank, meaningless sheet of paper.

—Lina Murat Mariani, age 11, from New York. Currently, she is in Brazil with her family.

Lina explains her poem, “Usually, poems are not read for the reasons they were written. Sometimes, they’re read because of the poet who writes them, but normally, it’s about more than that. Poems are read because the right poem doesn’t just paint a profound or beautiful picture. They paint you. They paint your whole existence, the doubts that consume you like a wildfire, or the hopes that lift your chin up. It’s that tangled mess of red strings and emotions that makes up your life. The right poem echoes your every thought, your every action, the treasure trove of who you are.

“My reason to write this poem, which I call Home, may be selfish, or childish. It is because three months ago, I watched, helpless and silent, as we got onto that plane to move here, to Brazil. It’s because I have seen everything disappear in the blink of an eye, behind mountains and oceans. It’s because I long for that feeling of being in the U.S., instead of Brazil, with my friends, my teachers, my family, before it was all broken… I write about that strange and wonderful feeling of being home, like a warm blanket that hides fear, sadness, and anything else, because I know I am where I belong, and that can’t change. Until it did. And, more than all, I wrote this poem because I resent that all I can do to go back is write some words on an otherwise blank paper, and those words are just as easily ripped as the paper that binds them. I write because I am bound to this land, as words are to paper, and all I can do is watch as destiny writes my story, my cry swallowed and lost on that horrible day when I saw my entire life being packed up and dragged away.”

Ruth Koenig: A Jolly Good Fellow!

Drawing of Ruth Konig

Ruth Koenig: A Jolly Good Fellow!

Our good friend, Ruth Koenig, age 83, is going strong. She is still active in several environmental conservation activities and social justice issues. Above is a whimsical portrait of her work while she helped the city of Eugene to cleanup nearby wetlands. She encouraged many volunteers to help in these cleanup projects.

Seeing the World on a Bicycle

By Arun Narayan Toké, Eugene, Oregon.

A few weeks ago, I bicycled the east rim of the famous Crater Lake with two good friends of mine. You might ask what’s so special about this bicycle ride?

On two Saturdays in early September, the Crater Lake National Park in Oregon (USA) closes the East Rim Drive to automobile traffic. Only bicycles and hikers are allowed to enjoy this beautiful mountainous landscape. It overlooks the incredibly beautiful, natural 2,000 ft. deep lake that was created about 7,700 years ago, when a volcanic eruption left a huge hole where the Mount Mazama once stood sky high—some 11,000 feet high. Snowmelt and rains over 750 years formed this crystal clear, deep blue lake. After the United States government made this natural landscape and its surroundings into a National Park in 1902, they also built a 33-mile long “Rim Road” at a height of about 7,000 to 8,000 ft. so visitors can appreciate the natural beauty as they drive around the lake to observe the varied vistas of the valleys and the mountains.

Each year, three to five thousand bicycle enthusiasts—young and old—come to ride around the lake on these two Saturdays. Some participants choose to hike or run parts of the scenic road with no shops or commercial activities. Every so often, you come across rest areas with incredible vistas of the lake (see photo above), distant valleys, and many spectacular mountains like the Diamond Peak. The organizers even provide several rest stops offering cold drinking water, snacks, and hot drinks. At one rest stop, someone even served us freshly baked, nutritious cake!

Two years ago, after bicycling a part of the East Rim Road during this event, my friend Daemion and I had hiked a mile down to the lake shore, and took an exhilarating swim in the icy cold waters, and then hiked back to the rim with about 2,000 feet elevation gain. (Daemion is a “pro” at bicycling. A few years earlier, he had bicycled 2,000 kilometers from his hometown on the Southern Oregon Coast to the Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona, and after his Peace Corps volunteering assignment in Sierra Leone, he bicycled over 1,600 kilometers to Ghana before returning back to the U.S.!)

With the popularity of the electric-assist bicycles, senior citizens and others with limited physical abilities are able to participate in this adventure, once reserved for only the “physically-fit” athletes.

This beautiful bicycle ride reminded me of my five month long adventure, several decades ago, when I was young and full of zest for adventure.

* * * * *

As a child, I grew up in Central India…my father had a bicycle repair and rental shop. Naturally, I learned from him how to fix simple repairs like oiling the moving parts and fixing flats in inner tubes. In the U.S., if you take your bicycle with a flat to a bicycle shop, they simply replace the inner tube. But in India, the repair shops actually found the pinhole using a container of water to see where the air was leaking out from the tube, and then vulcanized it. Similarly, when a tire had small hole or break in it due to wear and tear, they’d put a piece of an old tire as a backing to cover the worn out area, rather than replacing the old tire. It was inexpensive and meant for functionality, rather than speed. Only when it was absolutely needed would they put in a new part!

After I moved to Vermont (USA), I acquired a ten-speed bicycle. During my weekends or summer breaks, I didn’t shy away from bicycling 60 miles or so a day, over two or three mountain ridges with steep inclines. And, for the last 30 years in Eugene, my common mode of commute is bicycling. I believe I must have bicycled upwards of 50,000 miles (80,000 Kilometers) over these years.

* * * * *

I have cherished memories of my five-month-long travels by bicycle in Northern Europe. On my return trip to the U.S. in the summer of 1986, I was invited to visit some friends in Germany and in Sweden. After spending a few weeks of summer with my friends in Germany, I went to Stockholm. It was mid-summer and the days were long and warm. I decided spontaneously to buy an old (I’d say, antique), single-speed bicycle for a very reasonable price in the university town of Uppsala and bicycled south to the Stockholm! It was strenuous, of course. But after a couple of days of resting at my friends’ house, I was ready to continue. I had no idea where I’d go, how far I might travel, which way I might take, and for how long!

I set my next destination as Karlstad, the City of Lakes in Southwest-central Sweden. While bicycling in the afternoon, it began to rain. I kept myself dry under a porch roof and after a while when it stopped raining, I continued on. I realized I had not prepared well for the trip—no raincoat, no spare tubes, no bicycle pump, no tools, no tent, no bicycling maps, and no plans. True, I did have a road map of Sweden so I could decide which general direction I might take and what my next immediate destination city might be.

Que sera, sera! Whatever will be, will be! I wanted an attitude of faith and trust. I decided I’d deal with what comes my way, when it does! Since I had not made any big plans, I didn’t feel like I was under any pressure that I had so much more to travel, or that I had so little time left to complete my journey.

When it felt right, I would look for a place to stay—either a youth hostel or, if I was in the middle of nowhere, just sleep under the stars in my sleeping bag. Sometimes, I asked a passerby or a farmer along the rural road if they knew of a place I might stay for the night. Many a times, the farmers offered their barns… but they made sure to ask me if I smoked. When I told them, “No, I do not smoke,” they invited me to use their barn; and usually there was plenty of hay in the barn to make a good padding under my sleeping bag. More likely than not, I was also invited for a morning breakfast of muesli (cereal), yoghurt or kefir (cultured milk), toast, a good cup of coffee, and light conversation. And, then I’d continue on my journey.

At times, I bicycled late into the night… at that high latitude, almost near the Arctic Circle, the sun did not set until almost midnight. As tired as I’d be most days, I slept like a log, and I had no idea what time I woke up. I carried no watch, and in those days, there were no cellphones either. It was a totally carefree way to travel. I had no schedule, no planes or trains to catch, and nobody waiting for me.

My Swedish friends had told me that in Sweden, you could camp out anywhere in the countryside as long as you were not bothering others. If you camped about100 meters away from a home for the night, you’d be fine. I did not see any “No Trespassing” signs anywhere!

Most campgrounds did not charge you to sleep there; but you had to pay for the use of their facilities or restrooms, etc. It being a warm summer season, I was very comfortable sleeping outdoors without a tent; and at times, I found refreshing places to swim. International youth hostels provided a reasonable place to stay and a good morning breakfast. I often bought my supplies in small stores—fruits, vegetables, bread, etc. to keep me nourished. At times, I found patches of wild strawberries and raspberries in the countryside too.

* * * * *

One morning, after a good night’s rest out in the open countryside, I packed my bag and began bicycling. Soon, I rode by a few teenagers sitting on a culvert. They tried to make some conversation in their broken English and invited me to their home. Their mom served me a breakfast of fish curry and rice. They were refugees from Vietnam.

In one small city of may be 20,000 people, when I reached downtown it must have been past 10 p.m., I asked some youth (who looked Indian) hanging out in the town square, if they knew of a youth hostel in the town. They said they didn’t know, but that they were staying in a hotel, and I was welcome to join them. I walked with my bicycle over to their hotel. I found out that they were war refugees from Sri Lanka, and the government had housed them in this hotel. I watched them make hot, spicy curry and rice. Luckily, they had some yoghurt to go with the meal; I don’t think I could have possibly eaten that super hot curry with several tablespoons of red cayenne pepper. We had some good conversations before retiring for the night.

Another evening, it was raining—not very heavy, but a consistent rain. It was too wet to find a dry spot to sleep outside. So I waited out the rain under a roof before continuing on. Finally, when it stopped raining in the wee hours of the morning, I bicycled on towards the town of Holden in Norway until I found a picnic area, and I slept in my sleeping bag on one of the picnic tables; the grass was too wet!

Early that morning, I heard a car pulling into a nearby picnic area. So I figured it was time to roll on. Just as I was about to get out of my sleeping bag, a middle-aged woman from that car came walking to my table and said in Norwegian or Swedish, “Good Morning,” and handed me a hot cup of coffee and some snacks with a smile. And, she went back to her family for their breakfast. What a kind and considerate couple!

* * * * *

I kept going towards Oslo for a while, but decided to head south instead, towards the famous city of Gothenburg. It is the second largest city in Sweden. It’s situated on the Kattegat, an arm of the North Sea. After enjoying swimming at a vast beachside park, I continued south towards Copenhagen in Denmark. I connected with a couple of other cyclists, and we bicycled together for a while. That encouraged me enough to continue on with my bicycle journey. It had become a way of life for me. I pedaled across the southern region of Sweden to Kivik on the Southeastern coast. I was having a light conversation with the owner of a farm and I noticed that they were using a wood pellet stove for heating the farmhouse. During our conversation he realized that not only did I have an engineering background but also that I had written a textbook on Energy and Society, so he invited me to see his wood-chip stove and the heating system. After that he extended an invitation to stay with the family for the weekend. He said they had a birthday party for their daughter the next day and that I might like to experience that.

So, next morning—bright and early—we all walked over to her window to wake her up with a Happy Birthday song in Swedish. And the party was on! I felt like I was a part of their family. I wrote a story of this Swedish Birthday Celebration in English and typed it up on their non-electric typewriter and presented it to the family for their keepsake.

Then I bicycled west towards Malmö and continued over the bridge to Copenhagen, Denmark. While pedaling, my knee was acting up; even a slight uphill was impossible to pedal over. So, when I visited a Danish-Mexican family that I had met during my travels in Sweden, they suggested to rest up for a week with them. After that week of rest, when they suggested that I go north with them to a folk music festival in Aarhus, I was more than happy to accept. This way, they said, I would be able to ride through much of Denmark and get a feel for the country. I bicycled up one of the tallest points, Himmelbjerget (The Sky Mountain) in Denmark (150 meters high!) and then fly down it on my bicycle.

In the rural area of Denmark just north of Holland, while enquiring if there was a youth hostel in the area, an old farmer saw that I was bicycling through Scandinavian countries and invited me to his farmhouse. He also asked an English teacher he knew in the area who had visited the United States to check me out. After talking with me for a while and seeing my valid U.S. passport, he told the farmer that I was to be trusted. And he told me I was welcome to stay with them. The old farmer, close to seventy years, quickly cleaned up a spare bedroom in the house for me. We played a game of chess and ate typical Danish supper with Danish beer. The old man spoke no English and I did not know any Danish; but we had a great time. I was asked to come to a party the next day, but I politely declined.

While bicycling through Denmark, I noticed that I could see the inner tube on my front wheel; the old tire had worn out in a place after traveling more than a 1,000 kilometers. I bought a new tire at a bicycle shop at 5 pm on a Friday evening, just before they closed. They couldn’t put it on until the next working day and I figured I would do it somehow.

As I was bicycling through the city with a tire hanging on the handlebar, a middle-aged man waved me down and asked if he could help me with tools to replace the tire. We walked over to his home a few blocks away and replaced the worn out tire. During our light conversation, when he realized I had been bicycling through several countries, he graciously invited me for supper and an overnight stay. He was a schoolteacher and we shared good conversations on various topics. And, the next morning, I continued on my journey south to Germany, all rested up and refreshed.

* * * * *

Soon, I was bicycling through Flensburg, Germany. I continued on to the large city of Hamburg in Northern Germany, and visited a couple I knew from my trip to Guatemala. They had a new-born child, and I was amazed to see the planning and detailed work they had put in the bedroom for their baby. It was very conducive to a restful sleep. Every night, they read a couple of board books to the baby and turned on soft music to get the baby ready for a good night’s rest. I was included in the whole ritual!

After spending a few days with them sightseeing, I was on my way south. While crossing a bridge over the Elbe River in Hamburg, I saw someone walking about 50 feet ahead. I said to myself, I think I know who she could be. I yelled her name as I bicycled towards her, and sure enough, it was my friend Heike. What a pleasant surprise! We had met on our “Peacewalk Through Central America” a couple of years earlier and walked together over 500 kilometers through Costa Rica and Nicaragua. No wonder, I could tell who was walking ahead!

After a good conversation and quick lunch at an ethnic restaurant, we decided to bicycle on to Frankfurt. Heike needed to go visit her aunt there. She picked up her bicycle from her home, and we were on our way south. After spending a few days with her aunt in Frankfurt, I continued the journey to Heidelburg in Southern Germany. I had left my luggage with my friends there before I had gone to Sweden. After a few days of resting and sharing my experiences with my friends, it was time to begin my return journey.

* * * * *

Much of the time, I was able to bicycle on scenic and safe bike paths along the rivers in urban areas of Germany. In Sweden, Norway and Denmark, the bike paths paralleled the main roads but they were separated by rows of trees or some grassland and therefore, it was less noisy, more pleasant and much safer to bicycle on them. In some larger cities, they even had “Bicycle Only Roads,” with their own traffic lights! Throughout my travels, I felt car drivers were very considerate of bicyclists and pedestrians. They drove carefully so as not to endanger us. Once, I was pleasantly surprised when a big semi (a huge truck) stopped for me to cross the street on my bicycle.

The bicycle lanes and bike baths were free of litter. During my whole trip, not once did I get a flat tire; no nails, no broken glass or sharp objects halted my bicycle journey. My rear tire served me well until almost the end of my 2,500-kilometer journey. Then I discovered a slow air leak in rear tire near Wuppertal, a hilly city south of Dortmund. I rode up and down a steep, long and windy road on my single-speed bicycle. However, while climbing up I was going too slow for the headlamp to shine bright; the generator didn’t work at low speed! Other than that, this 50 plus year-old bicycle gave me no trouble on this long journey that covered parts of Sweden, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Belgium, and Holland (the Netherlands). I visited some famous cities like Stockholm, Copenhagen, Hamburg, Bonn, Cologne, Dortmund, Frankfurt, Heidelburg, and Amsterdam. In a few cities, like Bonn (which used to be the capital city then), I even stayed long enough to know the local culture and attractions. This was the most wonderful, educational experience I could have had. It was beyond my imagination and it did not cost me an arm and a leg.

On my return journey, I covered the Netherlands in just a couple of days and arrived in Haarlem, about 25 kilometers west of Amsterdam. I had visited a Christian community in this coastal city some years earlier. So after a few days, I said goodbye to the Netherlands and left on a ferry to the United Kingdom, leaving my bicycle with the Christian community.

* * * * *

Life has taken a different turn since then. I have been publishing Skipping Stones, a multicultural, global awareness magazine for today’s youth for the last 36 years. My European experience was definitely a motivational factor in founding the magazine.

In Germany, Denmark, Sweden, and the Netherlands, like so many other countries on the continent, almost all of the young Europeans I met were bilingual or trilingual! I wanted to promote this concept of multilingualism in Skipping Stones. In the beginning years, many of our published articles, poems, and stories were in two or three languages, side by side. Having grown up using three languages in India, it was normal for me. But not so for many Americans!

Unless you grew up near the Southern border—like in Arizona, Texas or California—where many people do speak both Spanish and English, it’s not common to meet many bilingual people in the United States. Of course, most new Americans and Latin Americans (including Cuban Americans and Puerto Ricans) are fluent in at least two languages. Because I have spent more than a year in Mexico and Central America, I have acquired some ability to communicate in Spanish, and I know first hand, how comfortable it feels to have the language skills of the region you are visiting. Most Indians can vouch to this fact of social life; for we grew up with learning and speaking three or more languages in India. Mahatma Gandhi could speak 14 languages, I have heard!

Recently, as I was about to start writing this article, I came across a news report of Lael Wilcox, an American woman who bicycled around the world—over 18,000 miles (that’s 29,000 Kilometers) in a record 108 days and 12 hours—averaging some 160 miles a day! While my bicycling adventure was nowhere near that caliber, I have acquired a lifetime of experience bicycling through, and immersing myself in, five countries in about five months. I would recommend it to anyone who can take time in life to embark on such a journey. I have met bicyclists like Willy Weir, who have bicycled in many continents and written a few books about their wonderful experiences. One thing for sure, people all over the world are more than pleased to meet and greet adventurous souls, break bread with them, have chai and chat with them, and make them feel welcomed, wherever they are.

Bicycling is an amazing mode of transportation; I cannot say that enough. In today’s world where plane-hopping and automobile travel has become the norm for so many of us, bicycling offers a welcome relief. We can soak in the beauty of life, away from the hustle and bustle of busy airports or crowded lanes of our highways. As we bicycle, often we’re able to stop frequently to have a look at something that calls for our attention, appreciate the beauty that nature has to offer, or to say hello to people we meet along the way. Our carbon footprint is much smaller with the bicycling way of life and travels, and we get more value out of our time and money. Our journey offers us many surprises along the way while we keep our body healthy and fit; our muscles strong and vibrant while we keep on pedaling.

By Arun Narayan Toké, Executive Edior.

Born To Be A Chef: Eileen Yin-Fei Lo

The Woman Who Taught America How to Cook Real Chinese Food

By Fanny Wong, author, New York.

Standing on the kitchen stool, Yin-Fei could barely see the wok on the stove. Who would expect a five-year-old to cook with a wok and a spatula?

It was Ah Po, Yin-Fei’s grandmother!

“Just the right age to learn cooking,” Ah Po said. “And never have a short temper or use bad words when you are in the kitchen.” She then pointed to a paper image of Jo Kwan, the Kitchen God, and added, “You want Jo Kwan to think well of this family.”

Baba, Yin-Fei’s father, instructed her, “Eat first with your eyes, then with your mind, then with your nose, and finally, with your mouth.”

Luk Gu Jeh, her aunt, was another teacher of hers. “With patience and practice, you can create something that brings happiness and miles of satisfaction,” she told her.

With a family like hers, Yin-Fei was born to be a chef.

Yin-Fei’s skills grew with Ah Po’s instructions.

“Chop the choy sum properly.”

“Stir the fish mixture in one direction to make it stick together.”

“Pour the hot peanut oil and soy sauce on the steamed fish.”

For Yin-Fei, the learning was easy, but finding the joy in cooking was hard.

Too much time cutting and dicing.

Too much time waiting for the oil to be hot enough to stir-fry.

Too much time waiting for the meat to be tender in the braising pot.

But then Ah Po’s birthday changed everything for her.

Yin-Fei was to contribute one dish for Ah Po’s birthday. She picked the White Cut Chicken recipe because in her Chinese culture, a chicken was always cooked for special occasions.

Yin-Fei placed the whole chicken breast side up in seasoned boiling water and covered the pot. When the water returned to a boil, she lowered the heat to simmer, turned the chicken and let it simmer again. She had to time the cooking just right, and allow the chicken to rest in the pot to finish the cooking. Otherwise, the chicken would be overcooked or undercooked.

Yin-Fei lifted the chicken from the pot. She prepared a dipping sauce of soy sauce and ginger. It looked perfect, but did it taste perfect?

Yin-Fei watched Luk Gu Jeh cut the chicken into bite-sized pieces with a cleaver. Ah Po, surrounded by her family at the table full of many delicious dishes, chose to eat the chicken first. She took a bite, closed her eyes, and chewed it slowly.

Yin-Fei held her breath and waited for Ah Po to finish swallowing.

“Hm….” Ah Po opened her eyes that crinkled with a wide smile and commented, “That was the best chicken I ever had.”

Everyone at the table loved the chicken! Not a single piece was left over! An eleven-year-old girl had made her loved ones happy with her cooking skills! From that moment on, making delicious dishes was her gift to others in the family, a way of showing her love and respect.

Now, she was eager to learn more from Ah Po. She learned that what people ate had to be balanced within their bodies.

Foods such as fish and most vegetables brought them coolness.

Foods such as most meats and some fruits brought their bodies heat.

The combination of these two types of food brought balance and good health to the body.

Yin-Fei learned to cook balanced meals for good taste and good health.

But life was not balanced in their village of Sun Tak. To escape the repressive government in China, 12-year-old Yin-Fei fled with her family to Hong Kong. There, she continued to improve her cooking skills by learning from her aunt. She also learned English in night school and picked an English name for herself—Eileen.

When she was 21, she met an American journalist named Fred Ferretti, and they fell in love and soon married. They moved to New York City. And that was when Yin-Fei’s life took another turn!

Her new in-laws brought her to a Chinese restaurant.

“What is this? This omelet is like an overdone pancake covered with a brown sauce,” she remarked.

“This is egg foo yung, our favorite Chinese dish,” her in-laws said.

From that moment, Yin-Fei had a mission! She wanted to teach Americans how to make good-tasting, authentic Chinese food.

First, she gave her friends Chinese cooking lessons at her home.

“You must write a book!” her friends said.

And she did. Eleven books in all! Each book taught readers how to cook traditional Chinese food at home.

She also taught at cooking schools and appeared in cooking demonstrations on television.

And when a renowned chef invited Yin-Fei to create a dim sum menu for his restaurant and teach his cooks, that’s exactly what she did. She took charge of his cooks!

“No, no, no, do it this way, let me show you.”

If she felt a Chinese restaurant was not up to her standards, she was not shy to say to the chef, “Make it this way, don’t Americanize your food!”

Yin-Fei had found a new passion. She wanted to teach others about how to make good Chinese food.

“Always learn, learn, learn, and never take a short-cut in cooking,” Eileen Yin-Fei Lo told her students. “The food you cook shows your love and respect.”

Yin-Fei became a great chef and a teacher who taught Americans how to cook authentic Chinese food. Born and raised near Canton, the capital of Guandong Province, Cantonese cooking was her specialty.

She taught at The New School in New York City and beyond—from Singapore to Helsinki. Cooking shows on television invited her to demonstrate how to make authentic dishes. She won two International Association of Culinary Professional Awards. Many Chinese food writers that came after her still think of her as the foremost Chinese expert chef.

Yin-Fei passed away at age 85 in 2022, leaving a delectable and mouth-watering legacy.

By Fanny Wong, Asian American author, New York. Fanny has written often on multicultural interest topics and been published in Skipping Stones frequently.

The History of Soccer

By Alex O’Hare, age 10, Tennessee.

Even though soccer is played by millions around the globe, we don’t talk about its history very often. So, I am going to introduce you to the history of one of the greatest sports in the world.

Modern soccer was established in England in 1863, when the British founded the Football Association. However, versions of soccer have been played for more than 2,000 years. The ancient Greeks played a ball game call episkyros, which consisted of kicking and throwing a soccer ball on a drawn field. The Romans played a variation of episkyros, called harpastum. Even though this game had rules, they were not very clear. The game of Kemari was introduced in Japan in the 7^th century. All a person had to do was keep a buckskin ball in the air with only using their feet. And, during the French Middle Ages, a game called soule was played. It was a combination of soccer and rugby, and was very a savage sport where almost any hit was allowed. The objective was to put a ball in the opponent’s cage.

In the late 1400s, Italy invented calcio fiorentino. It was only played in between Epiphany and Lent, and only by the rich. Even the Popes played it in Vatican City in the 16^th and 17^th centuries. The objective of the game was to carry a round ball into the opponent’s net. Most of the matches were stopped because of a burst ball or a serious injury. Similar to calcio fiorentino, soccer was played mostly by the rich in the 19^th century, but because of urbanization and industrialization, soccer gained popularity with the workers. One of the reasons that soccer gained popularity was that people had Saturdays off, and they didn’t want to do their traditional hobbies anymore, such as badger-baiting. After gaining popularity in England, immigrants started bringing soccer wherever they moved, for example, the United States and continental Europe.

As soccer has changed throughout the years, so has the ball. In the Medieval era, the ball was usually an inflated animal bladder surrounded by leather so it would keep its shape. In 1855, a man named Charles Goodyear designed the first soccer ball; it was made out of vulcanized rubber. Because of this, it was hard and spherical. Then in 1862, H.J. Lindon made one of the first inflated rubber bladders for balls. In 1872, the English Football Association changed the rules and made it so that the ball was spherical and had a circumference of 27 to 28 inches. In 1937, the weight was changed from 13-15 ounces to 14-16 ounces. In the last 30 years, the major difference that has changed the soccer ball is what it is made out of and the panels that make it up. Nowadays, the soccer ball is made up of synthetic leather and has 20 hexagons and 12 pentagons to make a round shape. Today, however old you are determines the size of the soccer ball you use. There are 4 sizes; 1 (mini), 3, 4, and 5. For example, my team, LSC Villa U12, uses a size 4 ball, but when I started playing soccer, I used a size 3 ball.

In addition to the game and the ball changing over the decades and centuries, so did the rules. There were no strict rules for playing, until in 1848, a meeting was held in Cambridge. Before that, if a school team played at another school, the rules could be different. It is interesting that even though the meetings decided that soccer should be a sport played with the feet, some schools still had rules were you could run with the ball in your hands. Because of these rules, soccer became a more civilized sport. Some of the rules include that if you caught a ball, you were awarded a free kick, and if the ball went over a sideline, the player that got the ball first threw the throw-in. No referees were used until 1871 because it was a so-called gentleman’s sport. The captains of each team were the closest thing that there was to a referee; since the captains sometimes disagreed, referees were added so the game would be fair. Eventually, goalkeeper started to become a distinct position, and in 1909, a rule was made that the goalkeeper had to wear a different colored shirt. Then in 1912, a rule came out that only the goalkeeper could touch the ball inside their 18-yard box. Over the years, there have been lots of new rules added to the game, including extra time, penalties, and offside.

Soccer has changed greatly since its beginnings. A sport that started out with almost no rules is now an Olympic sport. In the beginning, only rich people played it, and now a lot of ordinary people play soccer all over the world. As soccer has evolved, the rules have become stricter and the ball more regulated. Soccer has changed just as the world has changed.

By Alex O’Hare, age 10, Tennessee. He adds: “I am Serbo-American. My mom is from the former Yugoslavia, and my dad was born in Connecticut… I speak, read, and write English and Serbian, both in Cyrillic and Latin alphabets. I have been playing soccer since I was almost three years old, and I hope to become a professional soccer player. If that doesn’t happen, I want to become a research doctor, one who doesn’t work in hospitals but labs. I wrote this essay about soccer because I like playing sports and soccer is my favorite one.”