A Very Important Job

Today's post is written by my husband as a guest blogger!  He has told this story many times at gatherings of friends and family, and I never get tired of hearing it.



I Am Liu.  I Have a Very Important Job!

In mid-March, 1984, while working for a well known oil company headquartered in Plano, Texas, I was directed to go to China to work for a few months at the Chinese Geophysical Institute (GRI) in a village called (pronounced phonetically), Joe-Shin.  As I cannot recall the accurate spelling of the city’s name, Joe-Shin will have to suffice for now.  Located about 50 kilometers from Beijing,  GRI was a rather grim looking conglomeration of low two story buildings housing their geophysical data processing center.  It was there at GRI where I met Mr. Liu.

I was given a small office at GRI.   It was small and sparsely furnished,  with a desk, table, chair, steam radiator, teapot, chipped teacup, and waste basket.  Unlike the rest of the building, it was quite clean and tidy, with no dust nor trash anywhere.  The rest of the building was dirty and dusty.   Trash and other debris were just swept into corners.  On the first morning after my arrival, there was a light tap on the office door.  When I opened the door, there was a tall Chinese gentleman.  He was dressed in clean but well-worn blue Mao type jacket and pants.  He came in with a wide smile that I grew to expect daily.  He had a broom and dustpan in his hands, and as he stepped in, he saluted and introduced himself in clear, but accented English, “Hello, my name is Liu.  I have a very important job.  I am your janitor!”

With that introduction, he began to clean a room that was already spotless, probably from his having cleaned it in days before I arrived at GRI.   He showed up each day promptly at 8:30 AM.  The conversation always began with a small tap on the door, then on entering he would say, “Hello, I am Liu.  I have a very important job.  I am your janitor!”  The second day he came to clean the room, he began with, “Hello, I am Liu.  I have a very important job!  I am your janitor.  You are Mr. Parker.  You work for Arco.  You live in Texas!”  Our conversations after his greeting often lasted an hour or more as he slowly cleaned an already tidy room.  He told me of his desire to learn more English, where he lived, that he was not married, although he admired a young lady he knew, but didn't have the nerve to approach for fear of being rejected.

Every day, he would ask questions about me, what I did, where I worked, about my wife and my children, what my home was like, many questions about the United States,  etc.  Then, each day, he would incorporate what he had learned the day before into his greeting.   So, by the time I left Joe-Shin, he had quite a long spiel to say when he came into my office.  We learned much about each other as he worked.  He was a very humble and honest man, poor, but with great pride in his job.  He lived close to GRI, somewhere in the nearby village.  He never complained about anything although from my view, there was a lot to gripe about.  It was cold and dusty.  There were dead animals in the filthy roadside ditches filled with stagnant water.  In the open air meat market, other animals hung from rafters.  Transportation was primarily by bicycle, small horse drawn carts, and home made tractors.ñ

I had almost as many questions about him and his country as he had for me.  For instance, one day I saw an open-bedded truck with three men and two guards standing in the back.   The men had their eyes covered with blindfolds and their hands were tied behind their backs.   There were placards with Chinese writing tied around their necks.  As the truck drove slowly through the streets of Joe-Shin with horns honking loudly, the men were shouted at and ridiculed by the crowds lining the streets.  

After seeing this spectacle, I asked Mr. Liu what it was all about.  He told me the men had committed a crime (described by the placards) for which they were to be punished by public embarrassment and humiliation.   At the conclusion of their ride through Joe-Shin, they would be taken to the rice fields outside the village to be executed by a gunshot to the head.  In addition to that punishment, their families would have to pay the government for the bullets that killed them.  This is tough punishment, indeed.  As “family” is so important in China, the acts of these men and their punishment must have been devastating to their loved ones.  It is no wonder, at least at that time, that the crime rate in China seemed to be very low.

On another occasion, when I arrived at the office,   I found it to be very cold inside.  The room’s small steam radiator, never very efficient was not working at all and the room temperature probably matched that outside, about 40 degrees Fahrenheit.  The only other available heat was from the little electric heater used to boil water for daily teas.  When Mr. Liu arrived, I asked him if the radiator was broken.  His smiling reply was,   “Oh, no, Mr. Parker, today winter over by government order, no more heat!”  I wore much more clothing to go to work the next day.

By the time I left China a few months later,  Mr. Liu had a very long speech for me when he came in, including most everything we had ever talked about.  On my last day there, he came in without his usual broad grin, but he seemed very sad.  He went through his daily greeting, “Hello, I am Mr. Liu.  I have a very important job.  I am your janitor . . . . !”  Then following that, he related in better English than when I first arrived,  but maybe with a little of my East Texas twang, all the things we had talked about during my stay.  When he finished his long morning speech, he concluded with,  “…..but, I am very sad today”.  When I asked why he was sad, he said it was because I was leaving and he had no gift for me.  I assured him that was okay, but he said brightly, “ Aah!  I have no gift for you, but I can sing for you!”  He then commenced to sing, “Good morning to you, good morning to you, good morning, good morning,  good morning to you.”  (He had learned this song and much of his English from listening to Good Morning America.)

What a gift!  I will never forget that fine and simple man or his singing of that song.  As we both sang it one more time with tears in our eyes, we said goodbye, and I had to leave.

I often wonder how Mr. Liu is.  Did he ever summon the courage to talk to the lady who he admired so much?  Did he continue to learn English by listening to Good Morning America?  I still miss our conversations now 30 plus years past.  If I could talk to him again, I would wager that he would tell me, with a big smile, of course, “Hello, I am Liu.  I have another very important job!”

Wouldn’t it be great if we could all have Mr. Liu's attitude about our lives and our work?

Joe Parker
March 12, 2015