China Bound

Clearly, my first discussion would have to be with Aunt Marcy. As my mother’s guardian angel—though often portrayed as her warden—her elder sister would be asked to shoulder even more responsibility in my absence.

The call had come out of the blue.

“Mr. McGillicuddy would like to see you,” was the polite request from our company chairman’s own guardian angel and warden. An appointment was duly set up. Things were suddenly to change for me in the bank after that summons.

A week before the phone call, a delegation had arrived in New York City from the Bank of China, with Manufacturers Hanover Trust Company playing host at the Waldorf Suite. Paul, a pal of mine who worked on the China desk (though there was no China to cover in the early eighties) was scheduled to hold forth on letters of credit in Mandarin, but at the last moment, he walked away from the assignment, consumed by nerves and a most inappropriate crisis of confidence. Though working on Southeast Asian matters myself, I was drafted on the day before the event to step in, and the speech was dropped off at my apartment later that evening. I spent the whole night poring over dreaded simplified characters alluding to letters of credit, a far cry from either The Analects of Confucius or the local history of Yunnan in the Ming Dynasty, the texts with which I was most familiar from my education at Princeton in the East Asian Studies Department.

All I knew about the Waldorf Towers was that General Douglas MacArthur had lived there. Now, there I was, being ushered into the Manny Hanny suite, the sitting room set up with rows of chairs, occupied by attentive Chinese guests. The men were in blue suits, ditto for the ladies, and all were cradling identical plastic clutch bags bearing the logo of the Civil Aviation Authority of China (CAAC), China’s national airline, in their laps. I was introduced by an unknown colleague in English, which was then interpreted by their Chinese minder. After all, these were early days, with the Cultural Revolution’s pall still hanging low.

The details of my own performance are a blur. What I do recall is that by the end of the talk, my jacket was off and I was mopping my brow. Although he suspected all along that I was not, in fact, imparting the intricacies of letters of credit, the Chinese interpreter was gracious enough, as well as protocol savvy, not to interrupt and not to make it obvious that I was not being