(Katie and Emily on the Great Wall of China)
When I wrote the entry below during the first week of September 1995, I had been in Florida a little over five months working for the City of Boynton City as a city planner. I would not be making my first trip to China until April/May 1997 to adopt our daughter Katie. 
It was a short trip only going to Hong Kong, Guangzhou, Maoming to get Katie, returning to Guangzhou for Katie’s VISA, stopping in Hawaii for a few days then back home to Florida and USA. My first trip to Qufu was in October 1999 on our way to Urumqi to get our second daughter Emily.
Shortly after we arrived in Florida, I began thinking about contacting someone in China who might be able to help design and construct a US/China Friendship Park in Boynton Beach. I sent emails to several cities in China, and I got a response from a gentleman whose name was KongTao who worked for a company in Qufu who had constructed Chinese designed parks in several countries around the world. He invited me to come to Qufu. Coming to Qufu would serve to change everything about who I was and who I was to become.
The four of us my mother, wife Marie, daughter Katie and I arrived in Qufu in October 1999 on our way to adopt our second daughter in Urumqi. We stayed at the Queli Hotel that is adjacent to the Confucius Temple and Mansion. This would be the first of over forty trip I made to Qufu and China. I later figured I spent the equivalent of well over six or seven years in Qufu during the time. At one point I would have a joint interest in a shopping center and apartment in Qufu for a short time before teaching in Qufu at the Confucius school and University. But that’s all for a later addition to the story. 
Shortly after this first trip, we would decide to begin a sister city relationship between Boynton Beach and Qufu in 2000. Over the next few years, the two cities would exchange delegations and do the Young Artist Program with myself as the key contact between the two.
It would be a little over ten years later after several trips to Qufu I would be teaching at Jining University and the Confucius Schol adjacent to the Queli Hotel we stayed in on that first visit with thoughts of endeavor and destiny preceding every step.
My travels with Lieh Tzu / Interpolations along the Way
Chapter Eight – Explaining Conjunctions
156. Finding Truth in the Most Unlikely Places
Far out in the countryside, among thatched roofs and mud huts, where people only lived to put enough food on the table to see them through until tomorrow, there lived two sets of neighbors. 
The first was an old man whose bones were so brittle and frail he barely could leave his stoop that looked out over his neighbors withered wu‑ting tree. Many a wintry night passed with the old man nearly freezing to death from the chill that never left him.
The man had chopped down his tree over the objections of his wife, who had told him that the tree had been the only distinguishing feature to this humble and forbidding place, had suspected the old man all along, having watched him sit all day on his stoop eyeing their withered wu‑ting tree. She suggested that there was nothing that could be done now but to use it for firewood. They however delayed for a while the decision to share it with the old man.
Down the road lived another neighbor who was absentminded and tended to sit things down and forget them. He lost his ax and suspected his neighbor’s son had stolen it. He watched the boy carefully and was convinced that by his expression, his talk, his behavior, his manner, everything about him betrayed the fact that he had stolen the ax.
His neighbor, the owner of the withered wu‑ting tree watched the old man suspiciously every day as he eyed the tree. One day, the old man hobbled over to say that the withered wu‑ting tree was unlucky and should be cut down. No sooner had he cut the tree down that the old man came hobbling over to beg for it for firewood to keep him warm on the cold nights sure to come the following winter. Even though, he was cold now.
A few days later, the man was digging in his garden and found the ax. Later that day, he saw his neighbor’s son again and nothing in his behavior or manner suggested he would steal the ax. Was it right for the old and brittle man to ask his neighbor to cut down the withered wu‑ting tree, or the man who misplaced his ax to accuse his neighbor’s son? In each case, where could truth lie? 9/4/95
Number one hundred fifty-six of one hundred fifty-eight entries.
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