Title: Mr. Ding's chicken feet : on a slow boat from Shanghai to Texas /
Authors: Kendall, Gillian.
Publisher: Terrace Books,
Year: 2006
Subjects: Kendall, Gillian Travel.; Americans Travel China Shanghai.; Intercultural communication.; English language Study and teaching Chinese speakers; Ocean travel.; Texas Biography
Abstract: After accepting a job teaching English on a small engineering vessel traveling from Shanghai to Texas, Gillian Kendall embarks on a strange journey with no ports of call but exotic emotional landscapes. She is the only female aboard, surrounded by Chinese men. The cosmopolitan graduate student suddenly has to adjust to an alien world, thick with cigarette smoke, unusual sea creatures, and male sexuality. Kendall invites readers to travel with her across cultural divides as deep and mysterious as the Pacific while she explores her own culture, orientation, and heart. "Like all voyages worth taking, Gillian Kendall's odyssey across the Pacific is also a journey into the human heart. What a skillful navigator she is, never losing sight of her true destination."--Sy Safransky, Editor, The Sun.
Contents: Acknowledgements -- Prologue: Salary-Generous -- An English Rat Chases Her Luggage -- Shanghaied -- The Tan Suo Zhe -- One Arm's Distance -- Ma, Not Ma -- Two Miles to the Bottom -- Enough Beer To Float the Titanic -- Dolphins Are Not Fish -- How To Remember -- Unfit Company -- Bridge of the Americas -- The Face of a Friend.