Wuhan Memories

“Tell us”, one of the two female students in the MBA program inquired, “how we will find noodles when we are in the US?”

I assured them they would find noodles.

“Eat whatever food presents itself”, I told them, encouraging them to eat American food just as later, I would encourage American students to forego US fast food chains when they visited China. “Immerse yourself in the culture”, I encouraged. These Wuhan adult students wanted to know what life would be like in the US when visited the following month.

Wuhan, China with its eleven million residents on the confluence of the Han River and the Yangtze River, described despite its contributions to the arts and trade, as China’s armpit given its’ insufferable hot summers and miserably cold winters, had been my home for several weeks.

The students’ company, the Wuhan Tobacco Company had sponsored them for an MBA program. I, their professor, for a short time, was intent on helping them learn as much about management and marketing as I could.

Most had few travel experiences in China. Only one had traveled outside the country. His trip had taken him to Italy to purchase the sleek, green equipment the tobacco company used in making the millions of cigarettes it turned out each year. Soon the group would be coming to the San Francisco area as part of a multi-state tour through the USA.

Each day I would lunch with them, all of us sitting around one of the two round tables in a private room at the university’s…