Tracking Bodhidharma by Andy Ferguson Page B

interest in the subject of his work, he dropped everything and ran over to Grand Buddha Temple to deliver his book to me personally. This typical kindness and solicitous response to my interest afforded me the opportunity to ask him some questions. Suffice it to say that the book Professor He (pronounced Huh) wrote is extremely detailed and will be a useful part of my picture of how Zen Buddhism came to China.
    Professor He can’t stay long because of some personal matters, so we thank him for taking time to meet us, and he goes off leaving us signed copies of his book. Then the abbot proposes that Ruxin and I have some lunch while he attends to some other pressing matters. Before we go to the temple restaurant, I follow Ruxin on a tour of the building. He leads me into an impressive library that the temple offers not only to its Buddhist members but also to the general public. Its books cover a wide range of subjects, including Western literature and philosophy, as well as topical subjects like business management and computing. Ruxin explains, “Buddhism always flourishes when China flourishes, and now China is flourishing again, and we are following suit. It’s natural that we offer subjects that are timely, not only related to Buddhism, but to society at large.”
    In ancient times, monks of both East and West were often society’s most literary group, and writing and printing was society’s advanced technology of the day. The trend to stay on the cutting edge of things seems to be continuing here.
    Ruxin takes me to the temple restaurant where we walk between two lines of lay workers and attendants greeting us and other patrons at the door. They all cheerfully clap their hands and welcome us with shouts of “ Huanying! ” (“Welcome!”). The inside of the place is very pleasant, with bamboo and water art and accents. We enter a small private dining room off the main hall, tastefully and subtlety decorated with natural fibers and plant motifs, conveying the vegetarian theme of the restaurant.
    The food offered in the temple restaurant is top tier. I find it especially satisfying after having endured a breakfast of flavorless noodles in boiled water, the only “vegetarian” fare they could scrape together at the Fragrant Beef House across from my hotel. The temple restaurant offers platters of mushroom and vegetable dishes, plus “chicken” drumsticks
that taste like the real thing, all followed by a fine nonalcoholic apple brandy.
    The food here is a great leap forward from the innumerable banquets I experienced as a businessman in China, where I was forced to “bottoms up” the ghastly bai jiu (“clear alcohol”) that is widely and mysteriously celebrated here. I simply couldn’t drink the stuff. Even partaking of a small glass caused anything I ate to remain in my stomach like a rock for twelve hours.
    A couple years after I started learning Chinese, President Nixon went to China. The comedian Bob Hope went along on the trip, and I remember his stand-up comedy routine that was televised from the Great Hall of the People or some such place. Imagine a big hall filled with Communist Party officials listening to Bob Hope tell jokes through an interpreter! The audience reacted with a dreadful silence to his routine, failing to comprehend his subtle, self-effacing wit so beloved by Americans. Bob Hope was dying up there, not just in front of all those Communist Party members, but also in front of an international satellite audience that had no laugh machine to leaven the deadly silence of the hall. At one point of his routine Bob poked fun at China’s national alcohol, called mao tai , that he was forced to drink at the state banquet. He said something like “And your alcohol here! I heard it comes in two grades, regular and ethyl!” The interpreter looked puzzled, then turned to the audience and said, “He’s saying something about