When a Chinese friend and visiting scholar invited Jene Bellows to visit him in his homeland, she had no idea how that experience would reshape her life. Now, 20 years after her first visit, Jene and her singer-musician husband, Bob, find themselves maintaining two homes, one in a southern coastal town in China , the other in the West Broward city of Plantation .
Increasingly, says the couple, both in their 70's, they're spending more time there than here. "I'm more at home there," says Jene, senior advisor and consultant to an English language school in Zhuhai , China .
"Basically, it comes down to their way of handling life," she says, trying to define what it is that draws her. "The Chinese laugh a lot. Things are difficult, but they're not moaning and groaning all the time."
She recalls a distant conversation she had with a Chinese man when she was waiting to cross the border from Macau into China . "One of the things I love about the Chinese people," she told him, "is you're always happy and laughing and smiling."
The man listened patiently then replied, smiling, "That's because life is so difficult."
That brave trait is not the only one admired in the Chinese character. Unlike in America , where older citizens tend to be seen as irrelevant, "in China ," Jene says, "when you have gray hair, you have respect."
To dispel any misunderstanding, she quickly adds, "Of course, I am happy to be an American. America is my homeland." Stateside she has a loving, beautiful family --- a daughter, four grandchildren (including one who just graduated from medical school) and one great grandchild. They are the source of great pride and joy.
But, in China , through her current service at the English language school, through her intercultural lectures at universities and other venues in China and elsewhere in the world over these past 20 years, she feels she has been making a contribution. "I feel I can be of service by bringing people together." Recognition that there is a ne ed to build bridges of understanding between the Chinese - so long isolat ed from the rest of the world - and the Western peoples, "has been my motivation. This is necessary if we are to ever have world peace."
"Real happiness," she says, "comes from serving others."
It was in 1981 that a Chinese visiting scholar at Northwestern University invit ed Jene to visit his home in Mainland China . She and Bob were living in a suburb of Chicago at the time, having mov ed there from South Florida seven years before. A singer and pianist, Bob was performing in clubs and hotels across the country. Jene, a former model from New York , who ran a successful modeling agency and school in Florida , was an administrator and manager at the corporate headquarters of an international m ed ical supply company in the area. Because of these commitments, it would be three years before she act ed on her friend's offer and went to China for the first time. When she did, she says, "all the stereotypical ideas I had about China were thrown away."
On that visit, her friend appeal ed to her to do a favor for China , and "open the hearts of Americans" to the Chinese students studying in the Unit ed States . They were lonely, he said, missing their homes and families and were eager to be friends with Americans. She refers to this simple request as the gift that chang ed her life.
The day after returning home from China , Jene drove to a beautiful garden surrounding a lovely temple on the shores of Lake Michigan . Her intention was to sit awhile and rest, to "meditate about how I could meet Chinese students."
As she got out of her car, she notic ed two men standing at the entrance to the building. "I knew they were from Mainland China by the way they were dress ed ," she says. She ran up to them smiling and blurt ed out, "Are you from China ? So am I! I just got back yesterday!"
"These two young Chinese men, students at Northwestern University , became my dear friends, my first Chinese teachers. Soon our home was filled with Chinese students - we were learning from each other, she says.
Jene had taken more than 700 pictures (slides) on her China trip, pictures of mountains and rivers, but mostly of the people. She assembled them into an audio-visual show, which she began presenting at many universities over the next few years. She returned to China every year to learn more about China, and each time she returned there she took more pictures, and revised the show to illustrate the changes that were taking place in that country. The title of the audiovisual program was "The Changing Faces of China". Eventually, she would take the program to Canada , Europe, Puerto Rico, South America and Africa .
(Jene, it should be noted, avoids any discussion of the government or the politics of China or of any country, in her presentations. She prefers to focus on the people connections and the culture of the country.)
In the beginning, the audiences for her slide show in the United States were almost exclusively Chinese. University students for the most part, they expressed gratitude for the interest shown in them and their culture. "You are the only American who understands us," she heard more than once from the Chinese students.
Two years after her first visit, wanting to return to China , Jene organiz ed a "China Study Tour", taking students and teachers with her to introduce them to "her" country. To open their eyes to the beauty of the Chinese people, and to acquaint them with the Chinese ancient saying, "Tian Xia Yi Jia, ???? " (under heaven, all one family). This meant, she said, all of us, all over the world, are one family. And we ne ed to get to know one another, to appreciate the diversity of the human race. This is the foundation for bringing peace to the world.
"My whole thing has been always just to learn about the people," Jene says. "And to spread good will and understanding, one person at a time."
In '87, Jene lived in Taiwan for seven months. The following year she spent time in Hong Kong , Singapore , and Malaysia . Her goal was to learn about the Chinese people in other countries. Were they different from the Mainland Chinese?
She return ed to China after the events that took place in June of 1989 in Beijing . "It was a very tense time in China . Where before people were open, staring at me, trying to talk with me, they now look ed through me as though I wasn't even there!" There was a new cautiousness and tension in the air that she hadn't felt before.
Back in the States, continuing with her slide and lecture programs at the universities, Jene found her audiences had shifted heavily toward Americans. Americans were becoming a larger part of the audience! Whereas before only a few Americans attended the lectures, and the halls were filled with mainly Chinese people, "for the first time Americans were coming to learn about China ; they were looking at the Chinese people directly, not as tourists, or as business opportunities," she says, "but as people, and their hearts were touched."
Meanwhile, Bob was performing on cruise ships. There were periods when the couple was separat ed for many months. How to get Bob interest ed in China ? She knew she would have to do some selling to get him, a World War II veteran, anywhere near Asia .
"I was in Hong Kong in 1945 during the war," he said. "I never wanted to go back over there because of those wartime memories," he said.
Even so, eventually Jene was able to persuade Bob to journey to Taiwan by helping him to get a booking to perform there and later in Hong Kong . It was a "New Day", he kept saying. The old bad memories took their place in the back of his mind.
From then on, they began traveling together. Bob join ed Jene in '95 when she serv ed as a representative of a non-governmental organization (NGO) to the Unit ed Nation's sponsor ed Women's Conference in Beijing .
That same year she and Bob continu ed their travels from China through Outer Mongolia and Siberia . It was time for them to explore new territory together to learn how to work as a team. Jene spoke at many universities about the role of women, the family and the Women's Conference in Beijing, while Bob perform ed in over 30 charity concerts during the more than two months of their travel in those regions. "I was raising money for orphanages in Siberia ", he says. Later, Bob was ask ed to return to Mongolia where he was ask ed to teach "improvisational jazz" to music students at the conservatory in Ulaanbaatar . Mongolia became Bob's country, and Jene's home was China .
In '98, Jene encourag ed her good friend Hong Xiu Ping (one of the students she had met while giving her slide talks in the universities) to follow through on an idea he had to start an English club in Zhuhai for adults wanting to learn to use English. It was a struggle for him. At the beginning Ping sold water and flowers to keep the fl ed gling club afloat!
However, it was clear he was on to something. From that humble beginning grew the Gateway Language Village (GLV), a Total Immersion English residential school now employing more than 30 full-time English teachers!
Proficiency in English vastly improves one's opportunities in China , so everyone wants to learn English, Jene says. The students, age 18 and older, enroll for anywhere from two weeks to four months or even longer.
"The school is unique, not only in China but anywhere! It is the total immersion English environment, not just the classes, that makes it great. The evening programs are all in English". The conversations and discussions l ed by native English speakers, the intercultural living experience, shar ed activities whether in social activities or sports, that makes the experience complete for the students, she says. "Every one lives in apartments locat ed near the school." The spirit of the school is bas ed on the idea of a village, a family. And it works. Students don't want to leave. Teachers leave to try new jobs, but many ask to return. And they are welcome. Some come back just to visit, as one returns to visit one's family, she says.
Three years ago, while Bob had an extended booking at a hotel in Macau, Jene went across the border into China for a few days to visit Ping and his family in Zhuhai. She returned to tell her husband. "Bob, I have something to tell you. I bought an apartment in Zhuhai today!"
"Oh," he said. Then jokingly he added, "Can I live there too?" There were tears in his eyes.
The original idea, he says, was to live in the States and "hang out in China . Jene was getting tir ed with the heavy travel in China every year, city to city, staying in dormitories of universities, or homes of friends. She felt she ne ed ed a home base in China . Without it, she might have to give up going there. Eighteen years was a life of learning and sharing China with the West; unthinkable to have to give it up because of advancing age! Ping said, "why don't you buy an apartment here in Zhuhai, live near us!"
"Now Zhuhai is our home," says Jene.
And Bob says, "It's a convenient base from which I can launch my tours to Hong Kong , Taiwan or Japan ."
"It's a new day," says Bob, remind ed of his initial reluctance to visit that part of the world. Today, he says, he feels as comfortable and as much at home there as does his wife. "We all have to learn from each other," he says, adding that he now knows how to greet people in three other languages - in addition to English, "Chinese, Japanese and French."
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In the next few weeks the Bellows once again will be heading back to the Far East . Jene will continue her work with the school. Bob has bookings in Japan . He's also working on new CD's, one will include a couple of Chinese folk songs, and another, two Japanese songs. A Japanese singer will do the original and Bob will follow with an English version. Language has never proven a barrier when it comes to performing. His jazz and his Maurice Chevalier and Sinatra repertoire connect wherever he performs, whether stateside or abroad.
So how long will the couple continue to split their lives between the East and the West? Says Jene, "As long as we are physically able."
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