Bowling in China?

My colleagues in the English Department – how shall I say this – are more famous for their intellectual than their athletic prowess. Hmmm… that will get me into trouble. I’ll revise: some of my colleagues are terrific practitioners of yoga and even teach it. Some walk a lot and go to the fitness center religiously. But none of us were on athletic scholarships in college. We were studying and writing for the college newspaper and those of us who are old enough were perhaps dropping in on a demonstration or two and maybe playing a little tennis or touch football for exercise. But recently a surprising competition has been suggested by the Speech Department: a Bowling Throwdown Challenge. Somehow this has captured the imagination of the Department and it turns out almost everyone has a bowling history. More about that in another post – those troublemakers in Speech Com don’t know what they will be up against.

There is bowling in China, although I don't know if it predated the late 70s (somehow I have a vision of Nixon describing bowling to Mao: wouldn’t that have been more chummy than Ping Pong?) At our dorm in Beiwai there is a lot to choose from: Latin Dancing and yoga and a workout room. I am ashamed to say I have spent a lot more time looking for good cheap restaurants, which are plentiful, than exercising. Although I do crawl through a hole in the fence to get to some of the restaurants, which should count for something.

I am also a lousy bowler but bowled in TWO leagues in my early days in Naperville when I was - believe it or not - in my mid-thirties. Both were subdivision bowling leagues - one all women - we would drop off the kids at elementary school, race to Gala Lanes (now the Brunswick Zone on Ogden), drop off the pre-schoolers at the daycare at the bowling alley (Yes! Bowling daycare!) nicely dressed and shod in our very own bowling shoes - mine were powder blue and I had my own 10-pound blue ball - and be drinking our Diet Cokes and eating fries by 9 a.m., wearing sparkly sweaters and sporting big 80s hair. Sometimes we even had potluck lunches. Gary and I were in a Brook Crossings subdivision couples league for a short time at Parkside Lanes in the evening and I wore only outfits, including a denim jacket, that I could put in the wash because our clothes would be reeking and smoky by midnight.

Say what you will about Nixon: he went to China and things have never been the same.