Dr. Jan W. Walls, Director of the David See-Chai Lam Centre for International Communication, holding the award received from S. Wah Leung Foundation.
When I finished my grad work at Indiana U. in 1970 (after teaching and studying in Japan for two years, 67-69) I had three good offers to teach Chinese: San Francisco State, Arizona State, and the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. The best offer was from UBC, so Yvonne (my wife, whom you met at my Mom's house in '66, Fu) and I came to Vancouver in the summer of 70. Daughter Eileen was born in '71 -- meaning that we had three (count 'em) different nationalities in a family of three (U.S., Taiwan, and Canadian by birth). We decided to accept Canadian citizenship just to simplify life for Eileen, who we thought might have enough identity problems just being half Chinese and half honky. I never renounced my U.S. citizenship, of course, and am considered a person with "dual citizenship". Yvonne and I fantasize now and then about retiring to someplace in the states with more sunshine than we get in Vancouver, but I can't retire until 2005 so we still have a bit of time to consider that one. We (Yvonne and I both teach the same stuff) taught at UBC from 1970 to 78, then got invited to move to Victoria, the capitol of British Columbia on Vancouver Island, to teach Chinese and develop a new Department of Pacific and Asian Studies. We were there for 7 years until 1985, minus the two spent in the Canadian Embassy in Beijing, 81 to 83. Then in 85 the Canadian Parliament decided to create an "Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada" in Vancouver, for which I was invited to become the senior vice president, to create their Education and Cultural Affairs programs. It took me just two years to spend all of their money, and I've been here at Simon Fraser University since 87. SFU invited me to create and direct the David Lam (a multimillionaire Hong Kong Canadian immigrant) saw what we were doing, he gave a million dollars to SFU, and we named it after him in gratitude for his support. Daughter Eileen graduated form the Creative Writing Department at UBC a couple of years ago, then went to UCLA for some post-grad work in screen-writing, because she wants to write screenplays. So she now lives in L.A. and is writing screenplays to build up a "portfolio" which she can give over to an agent one of these days, and maybe start earning a decent living. We've been helping her so far, but we think she's got a chance of "making it", and we've got nothing better to do with our limited retirement funds, so we're investing them in her (does that confirm any of your suspicions about my sanity?). Gotta get to work. Have to deliver a three-hour seminar this morning (in Chinese) to a bunch of entrepreneur-investors from Taiwan. I do hope we can get together one of these days, maybe on neutral turf halfway between the Atlantic and Pacific, say, Indiana? Have a good day....
Jan Walls (Wan Jian)
3556 West 23rd Ave, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada V6S 1K5
Home: 604-731-7855; office: 604-291-5021; fax 604-291-5112; e-mail: jwalls@sfu.ca
Additional info supplied by Jan Walls:
Greatest achievement in life: first swabby to be awarded "Soldier of the Month" at the (then) U.S. Army Language School, Monterey.
Second greatest achievement in life: retained a shred of dignity and self-respect after rooming with Bill Dodge in #246.
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