by Jim Yardley
Eating is an essence of being Chinese. By eating I was praising my hosts. By insisting that I eat, my hosts were extending their hospitality and their friendship. In a country where at least 30 million people died of famine, food was more than mere sustenance. When you arrived at the home of a Chinese villager, the greeting was usually, “Chi le ma?” Have you eaten? Food was an obsession, an offering, a demonstration of renewal, an emblem of wealth. I kept eating dumplings, and the family joined me. Red Fighter slurped down dumplings. Red Guardian appeared from the kitchen with another plate. Ren was pleased.
I was distracted enough by the food that I didn’t immediately detect the smoke. It took me a few minutes before I noticed a faint smell. I assumed it was from outside. The fireworks. But the smell grew stronger and clouds of smoke started filtering into the apartment. I noticed Red Guardian and Red Fighter huddled together in the hallway. I mentioned the smoke to Ren.
“No, no, no problem,” he said, pushing more dumplings at me. “It is nothing.”
I kept eating. Red Guardian and Red Fighter had disappeared from the hallway. I noticed a flash of light in the window and could see flames reflecting in the window of the apartment directly across the alley. I walked to our window, looked down and discovered that our building was on fire, very much on fire. A shed connected to a ground floor apartment was fully ablaze, and the blaze had moved out of the shed into our building. Now the smoke in Ren’s apartment was denser and his father started to cough.
“I think we have a problem,” I told Ren.
Red Fighter and Red Guardian were in the bathroom filling plastic laundry tubs with water. One after the other, the brothers filled a tub and then rushed down the stairwell. Ren was anxious but determined to fulfill his role as gracious host. He picked up a plate of dumplings and my bowl of sauce and led me out of the smoky living room into his bedroom. It was the room farthest from the window and the incoming smoke, and we stepped inside. A life-size wedding photo of Hongbing and his wife was taped above their bed. Hongbing placed the dumplings and sauce on the windowsill and invited me to sit on his bed.
“Eat!” he said. “This is not a problem. I’ll go take a look.”
He closed the door. I found myself wishing that Ren’s parents had also given birth to Red Firefighter. I ate a few dumplings and contemplated my predicament. I was Ren’s guest, and I did not want to embarrass him or for him to lose face. I also did not want to die on the third floor of a burning building. I ate a dumpling and walked into the smoke-filled hallway. Ren was in the kitchen pouring water into a pot. He saw me and tried to shoo me back into his bedroom.
“Enjoy yourself!” he said.
I thanked him but suggested that maybe I should pitch in. He was not convinced. Then I tried another tack. I suggested that as a writer, a journalist, I should witness the fire. Doing so was my professional responsibility. He relented, and we hustled down the steps. Families were still lighting firecrackers in front of the building as we raced around the corner to the rear of the building and the scene of the blaze. Ren tossed his bucket into the flames and I noticed a shower of water from above: Red Fighter and Red Guardian were now dumping their buckets out the window. A window frame on the first floor was melting from the heat.
A police officer arrived, his face lit in the reflection of the flames. I asked if he was busy tonight. He laughed. More neighbors had now arrived with more water and the blaze seemed to be subsiding. Finally, a dozen firefighters arrived from an opposite alley. In the smoke and darkness, they looked like aliens, with the white lights atop their helmets bobbing like fireflies. Their truck was too big to navigate the alley so they were unfurling a very long hose from the truck. It took about ten minutes. Red Fighter and Red Guardian were dumping more buckets out of the window when the firefighters finally turned on their hose. They missed and sprayed us instead.
A few minutes later, the fire was doused. Ren smiled, took me by the elbow, and led me back upstairs. The apartment was still filled with smoke, and Ren’s father was holding one of the water buckets and watching the final credits on the Gala. He said it was a great show.
“Sit down!” Ren said to me, and I obeyed. “You haven’t eaten any dumplings yet!”
Less than two weeks later, another fire occurred, during the Lantern Festival, which marked the end of every Lunar New Year holiday. This one was in Beijing, as fireworks torched and gutted the not-yet-completed Mandarin Oriental Hotel. The fire attracted international attention because the hotel was part of the complex built around the new, futuristic headquarters of CCTV. Among superstitious Chinese, the blaze was not considered a good omen.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
LOL
Bonzi did not come back. Maybe Coco was right about his big bag. Maybe our airport chest bump meant farewell. Maybe Bonzi Wells touched back down in the United States of America, settled into his Midwestern cocoon of Muncie, and said to himself, as he might phrase it: There is no motherfucking way I’m going back to that crazy country to play for that crazy team owned by that crazy motherfucker. It seemed plausible. And, really, who could blame him? He was mismatched with the team he was supposed to elevate into a champion, hated the food, misunderstood the culture, and had neither the interest nor the temperament for the role of basketball ambassador. He was the anti-ambassador, more likely to start a war than prevent one. He had come to China to show he could still play, make a few bucks, and maybe salvage a shoe deal. He had gone two out of three. The shoe deal apparently went nowhere.
Yet Bonzi’s departure meant a very public experiment had ended, badly, which meant someone had to be blamed. The obvious parties blamed each other. Bonzi claimed he had intended to come back but the team had been unreasonable. He was supposed to be in uniform for the Sunday night game after the New Year’s break, but then different issues arose, including a medical appointment in Indiana for his injured finger, a salary spat, and a snowstorm. It was hard to know what to make of these excuses but it was clear Bonzi wanted a few more days in Muncie and a few less in Taiyuan.
Boss Wang did not want to be jilted. He doubted that Bonzi ever intended to return and wasn’t certain he wanted him to return. Still, he instructed Zhang Beihai to bring him back. Garrison played intermediary, calling the United States in search of Bonzi, who almost never picked up and seemed to have deliberately disappeared. When Garrison reached Bonzi’s agent, the message was relayed of Bonzi’s need for a few more days, which only made Boss Wang more suspicious and paranoid, which explained his secret contingency plan.
The secret contingency plan was named Tim Pickett. A muscular shooting guard who starred at Florida State University, Pickett was waiting in the gym when the rest of the team returned to prepare for Sunday’s game. It quickly became clear that this stranger with a nice outside shot represented the Bonzi Wells insurance policy. If Bonzi failed to return, as the front office suspected would happen, Pickett was the new starting shooting guard for the Brave Dragons. If Bonzi did return, Pickett would have the benefit of a few days in Taiyuan. At one point, Pickett was told to go back to America and flew to Beijing. He was waiting in the Beijing airport for his delayed flight to the States, when his telephone rang. He was asked to please come back to Taiyuan. What prompted this change of heart was never made clear, but any uncertainty about the broader situation finally ended when Boss Wang issued an ultimatum: If Bonzi wasn’t back by the Sunday night game against the Jilin Northeast Tigers, he was fired.
He was fired.
The Sunday night game against Jilin was a blowout loss. Pickett was not yet registered with the league, and the Brave Dragons played as if they had lost a limb. Throughout the Bonzi era, the offense had mostly consisted of passing the ball to Bonzi and watching him shoot. Now they were suddenly thrust back into the unknown: Who would shoot? How would they adjust? Could they adjust?
Not yet, at least. In the locker room, Boss Wang screeched for ninety minutes, reasserting his preeminence with Bonzi now gone. Weiss was again demoted to con
sultant, with Liu Tie now putatively in charge, though Boss Wang would be the real coach from here on. He screamed at Olumide and called him one of the five worst centers in the league—even though Olumide led the league in rebounding. “He yelled at him, saying, ‘I’m paying you all this money and you’re doing this and not doing that,’ ” Weiss said. “As hard as Olumide plays, he wants to be appreciated. Then you tell him he is not worth the money he is getting?”
Boss Wang concluded the meeting by ordering each player to sign a ball and carry it everywhere. “He wanted them to be married to the ball and learn how to handle it better,” Weiss said a few days later, frustrated. “It’s always got to be somebody’s fault. It can’t just be they had a bad night. The Chinese players have been watching Bonzi for fourteen games and suddenly they have to go out and make their shots.”
When the story broke of Bonzi’s departure—“Wells Not Returning to Shanxi!” sports periodicals shouted—Chinese basketball commentators reacted with indignation, proclaiming good riddance, but also with introspection. A few people criticized the Brave Dragons for failing to hire enough interpreters to accommodate the team’s large number of foreigners. Bonzi was isolated and lonely, they argued, and had not been able to explore and appreciate China. A poll on the CBA website found that 42 percent of respondents believed Bonzi left because the league was too low-level while another 42 percent said his moral character made his departure inevitable. The basketball editor of Titan Sports, a young journalist named Yang Yi, saw the Bonzi episode as a teaching moment in the development of Chinese basketball. Before Bonzi, the types of foreigners imported into the Chinese league fell into the same mold of high-scoring gunner. Bonzi had adapted to this role, Yang Yi argued, but it had not come naturally because he was accustomed to playing a prescribed role on a good NBA team. His teammates in China were not good enough to play with him. The league was not professional enough to accommodate and control someone of his talent and temperament.
“Bonzi is like a full dish of nutrients,” Yang Yi argued. “The CBA is just not able to digest it right now.” Whether Bonzi was a full dish of nutrients or just indigestible might be the open-ended epitaph of his basketball career. But his absence indisputably meant that the league’s biggest draw was now gone and so was the spotlight that had followed the Brave Dragons. The young female reporters and bloggers disappeared from press row in Taiyuan, and the Brave Dragons largely disappeared from CCTV. Many of the Chinese players were relieved, though not Kobe. Bonzi had believed in him, had bucked him up, and now Bonzi was gone. Bonzi’s departure also meant a premature end to www.MeandBonzi.com, though Garrison managed to post a few cultural insights before ending the blog.
Garrison saw the tale of Bonzi and Boss Wang as an ill-fated union. They respected each other but neither could tolerate how the other infringed upon his personal authority; their conflict was rooted in tensions any Chinese would understand, the clash over power.
“There is a truth created in ancient times: The chancellor who wants to surpass the emperor often ends up losing both fortune and honor,” Garrison wrote, “or even having his entire family exterminated.”
Bonzi’s family was actually in Muncie, which is where I assumed he was, too. I had tried in vain to call him and finally connected by email. His explanation of events would be my last contact with the greatest American to ever play in the Chinese league.
Jim,
Whats up buddy hope all is well I hate I’m not in China eating dragon testicule wit us guys. LOL anyway the reason Im not there is because the team never paid my salary and I asked them to wire to my acct before I came back and they were dragging there feet. Then they told me to come back and play for free Til they could pay me going against my better judgement. I agreed so they asked me to get on a last minute flight. I tried to explain to them that we had a blizzard in Indiana I couldn’t make it to airport cause highways were closed til next day. They said if I don’t make it back by gameday don’t come back at all. If u don’t believe me bout the blizzard check the Indiana weather report for those days. I’m really upset I couldn’t finish the season for coach and O. Well I rambled enough it was nice and meeting and talking wit u Goodluck wit ur book.
Mr. Wells.
I do not know whether Bonzi truly wanted to return, but he was not lying about the weather on the day of his scheduled flight back to China. For the record, the state of Indiana experienced one of the heaviest snowstorms in its history in late January.
Little Sun got word from the general manager before he flew home to Taiwan for the New Year’s break: Do not come back. You are cut.
Little Sun was almost relieved. Watching him during the season had become painful, not so much for his play on the court, which was inconsistent, but because it meant watching the steady disintegration of a nice young man. After his demotion, Liu Tie had softened his tirades, but his disdain for Little Sun had not changed. To him, Little Sun would always be a little Taiwanese guy, too short and too soft. China did not respect or indulge soft.
Little Sun collected his unpaid salary and bonuses and made a final visit to the World Trade to say goodbye. The foreigners had considered him a bridge to the Chinese guys, because of his broken English. He helped Olumide or Bonzi or Donta talk to their Chinese teammates to work out problems on the court. He was the one person who seemed to straddle both worlds, yet, if anything, he had been as perplexed by China as the other foreigners had. He had wanted to prove himself in China. He had wanted to become the first Taiwanese to play under an NBA coach. He had accomplished that, at least. When he landed in Taiwan, he sent an email to Weiss.
Hello coach,
I am in Taiwan now. I am really happy have you coaching the team during past half year.
Especially it is my honor to meet a NBA coach and learn from you, not only the basketball but also the way to think about things.
You are the best coach I ever have!!
I am not sad about leaving the team, but I really miss Garison, you and Tracy. If you have time travelling to Taiwan, Please Do Come To See Me. I will be your tour guide, and also the translator (ha ha).
He sent me an email, too, and later, when I checked up on him, Little Sun was practicing hard in Taiwan, hoping to earn another chance at the CBA. He did not regret his time with the Brave Dragons, especially because of Weiss. He had decided what distinguished Weiss, as much as his tactical knowledge of the game, was his temperament. He was xiuyang, or accomplished. Sun was also still cherishing his finest moment of the season, from the opening game, when he stole the ball from the Chinese Olympian and made a basket. “I steal from a national team player,” he said in his broken English. “He played for China in the Olympics. I steal his ball. Do you remember? I steal his ball and score. And we win the game. I could not sleep. Too excited!”
But Little Sun had been uncomfortable in China. He thought too many Chinese were arrogant, especially toward anyone from Taiwan, and he had been surprised at cultural differences between Chinese and Taiwanese, at what he considered the crudeness of some Chinese. Even so, he wanted to go back. He wanted to prove he could meet the challenge of China and was already scouting for a new team for the following season.
First, though, he had an obligation in Taiwan. From 1949 onward, every eligible Taiwanese male has been required to fulfill mandatory military service. This conscription system was evolving, as Taiwan was changing to an all-volunteer military, but Little Sun was required to enter basic training for at least a few months. He would learn to fire a rifle and also learn more about Taiwanese history. I had remembered how Liu Tie had berated him in practice about being soft and playing “Taiwan independence defense.” When I spoke with Little Sun, I joked that now he really was playing Taiwan independence defense.
Little Sun laughed politely but waved away the thought. No, he said again, I don’t care about politics. Basketball was life.
Tim Pickett would be the last American for the Brave Dragons that season. League rules permitted team
s to change foreigners twice, and Pickett was the second change. Pickett also represented a return to a more familiar type in that he was flawed. Unlike Bonzi, who had played in the NBA and played at a high level, Pickett was another piece that hadn’t quite fit into an NBA team, which meant he was like almost every other American in the Chinese league. Every one of them had talent, or size, but something was always missing. Sometimes the problem was between the ears; sometimes it was on the court, maybe a center like Olumide, who wasn’t quite big enough or offensively polished enough to stay in the NBA. Weiss had once coached Jelani McCoy, the huge center now playing in Zhejiang, and considered him a real talent with a poor work ethic. Combine his talent and size with Olumide’s hard work and you would have had a pretty solid NBA center.
Tim Pickett had never played in the NBA, and he was hungry to get there. The New Orleans Hornets had selected him from Florida State in the second round of the 2004 draft. He had been a tough defender with a deadly 3-point shot who had almost single-handedly engineered one of the great upsets in college basketball’s greatest league, the Atlantic Coast Conference, against the dominant North Carolina Tar Heels. Florida State had been trailing at halftime by 24 points, when Pickett scored 22 of his 30 points in the second half, burying a string of 3-point bombs as Carolina collapsed. Pickett made First Team All-ACC and was seen as someone who could play in what he called “the league.” But he was still an irregular piece; listed at 6′4″, he was actually shorter, making him small for a shooting guard, yet he didn’t have the skills of a point guard. At the Hornets’ training camp, he was drowning and confused, uncertain when to pass or shoot, mystified by the different plays and sets. He scored 19 points in a preseason game against the Bulls and was fouled with time expired and the team trailing by one. He made the first. He missed the second. The Bulls won in overtime, and Pickett was cut the next day.
