BORACAY, PHILIPPIANS. This island
paradise with its white sandy beaches, clear skies, and warm translucent
turquoise seas is clogged with tourists from around the world, mostly Asians,
followed by Europeans; but hardly any Americans. No problem communicating,
English is the common denominator. A six-year old Chinese girl from Shanghai
told me, as she got out of the water after snorkeling with her dad, “I saw one black fish and one white fish.”
Her father smiled proudly, “She’s taking
English lessons from a private tutor.” He went on to say, “My wife and I use our vacation time to
travel the world. We’ve been to Cuba, South America, New Zealand, Egypt,
Tanzania, and Greece. Next year we’re going to the States.” The encounter
wasn’t unusual as I run into English speaking Chinese wherever I go. According
to a recent survey, China, compared to all other countries, has the largest
number (97 million in 2013) of outbound tourists. I can’t help but wonder how
all these Chinese tourists, exposed to so many different cultures and political
systems, won’t return home to transform China, taking the best and rejecting
the worst of what they encounter. What is our excuse? We Americans speak
English, the franca lingua of foreign travel, and per capita, we are a far
richer country than China. Could the answer be that we are afraid of learning
something about ourselves that we do not want to hear? On the same snorkeling
cruise, a Philippian nurse asked me, “Are
you a missionary?” To her obvious relief, I said, “No.” “Too often,” she said,
“The Americans we encounter are those that think they have something to teach us.”
