About six months after I arrived I was presented with an opportunity that required some big decisions. An Italian guy who used to work for the shoe companies had opened a little street front establishment with a bar and about six tables. People would stop by for a beer and when enough people were hungry he'd cook up a big bowl of pasta and serve it family style. He wasn't really making any money, he may even have been losing a little, but he had larger plans.

I would have been just another customer of the new much larger restaurant that was in the works if it wasn't for Luigi's birthday. I had become friends with Luigi while playing chess with him before his little tavern opened around 6pm. I'd always thought I knew how to play chess, but Luigi showed me I just knew how to move the pieces. He was passionate about chess--he often played through games by grand masters written down in books to learn from them. He taught me basic chess theory, and, though it would take a couple years before I even had a chance of beating him, I soon could truthfully say I played the game of chess.

When I learned of his upcoming birthday, I offered to cook him dinner. He seemed to think that was a fine idea, though I'm sure he didn't expect much from an American traveler. But I had become passionate about food when I got out of college. I spent hours watching cooking shows and experimenting in the kitchen. I started with The Frugal Gourmet and moved up to The Great Chefs series on Discovery Channel. I became quite good and even cooked in one restaurant for a little while. That evening I cooked up a nice meal with a Thai shrimp and mango coconut soup and a grilled medallions of pork tenderloin with orange cilantro sauce, not your typical Italian fare, but good food. Luigi was curious and I told him about my television education and restaurant experience. He must have been thinking about asking to join the venture during dinner as I talked. After dinner he brought out some scotch and outlined the plan. He and his Taiwanese partner had already picked out a place and the restaurant would be opening in four weeks. He said ten percent would cost $10,000, but more importantly I'd have to commit to working.

I had not even met the Taiwanese guy who was to be the majority owner when I decided to take the plunge. I did not have the money so I placed a few excited international phone calls to explain the plan to my parents, my uncle and a few friends. I realized that I was presenting them with a rather risky and unorthodox proposal, so I offered them a fairly high interest rate on the loans--%17 on a one year note. Even so, this was just friends and family coming through; I don't think anyone truly expected to see their money back.

A few days later, bank wires completed, money in hand, I joined the partnership. The Chinese still prefer cash and they handle it well. Clerks behind the tellers fan and whip notes around with precision. They are stewards of a steady assembly line. The bills are spun out of counters, wrapped and bundled. The bags tossed into a pile contributing to among the highest hard currency reserves in the world on a small island with only 23 million people. I walked out of the bank with about 250 $1000 Taiwan dollar notes--currently the largest note with a value of about $30. The only other time I ever had a stack of cash like that was in Vietnam and that's because the largest note in the Vietnamese unit of currency the Dong is worth about a dollar. On that trip I was traveling with two other people. One of them was the designated dong-carrier. We cashed in three to four hundred U.S. dollars in Saigon and walked out of the bank with a backpack full of money.

I handed my new partner, Russ, a few rubber banded stacks of cash, and he set about counting. Like most Chinese who deal with foreigners frequently, he had taken an English name and stuck to it rigorously. His real name was Luo Hwai Ren and his nickname was Syau Luo, which just means Little Luo, but now he was Russell and only his parents and a couple old friends used his Chinese names--even his wife called him Russell. I found the process of choosing a new name as a teenager very interesting. In the beginning many of these kids wore there names much like an style of clothing. Many freely changed names changing one from another much as they moved from one fashion statement to another. I never did get completely used to this name skating. One might see a girl named Apple, and when you greet her, she might cheerfully inform you that, "No, no, she's Sarah, now." What do you say, "Oh that's a nice name," or "Great choice," or "I'm happy for you," or do you ask, "What was wrong with Apple?" There's really no answer, you just try to remember to use the new name and after a while the name becomes an identity. Eventually, as they matured they usually choose a fairly sober name and stick with it; but, when I was teaching my attendance sheet often looked more like a vocabulary list than a group of names. My favorite was Box. Maybe it was Box himself, he was a little feisty kid who made it no secret he was not interested in being in class. His name, though, was always my favorite.