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particularly readings of Mark Twain’s
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
that he
listened to on a shortwave radio. Later it was the arrival of foreign tourists in
China that provided Jack with his opening to the outside world. In late 1978,
when Jack was fourteen, China launched the new “open door” policy, initiated
by Deng Xiaoping, in pursuit of foreign trade and investment. After a decade of
turmoil the country was on the verge of bankruptcy, and desperately needed hard
currency.
In 1978, only 728 foreign tourists visited Hangzhou. But the following year
more than forty thousand came to the city. Jack relished any opportunity to
practice his English. He started waking up before dawn and riding his bicycle for
forty minutes to the Hangzhou Hotel to greet foreign tourists. As he recalled,
“Every morning from five o’clock I would read English in front of the hotel. A
lot of foreign visitors came from the USA, from Europe. I’d give them a free
tour of West Lake, and they taught me English. For nine years! And I practiced
my English every morning, no matter if it snowed or rained.”
An American tourist whose father and husband were named Jack suggested
the name and Ma Yun became known in English henceforth as Jack. He is
dismissive of the quality of his English: “I just make myself understood. The
grammar is terrible.” But Jack never dismisses how much learning the language
has helped him in life: “English helps me a lot. It makes me understand the
world better, helps me to meet the best CEOs and leaders in the world, and
makes me understand the distance between China and the world.”
Among the many tourists who came to Hangzhou in 1980 was an
Australian family, the Morleys. Ken Morley, a recently retired electrical
engineer, had signed up for a tour of China offered by the local branch of the
Australia China Friendship Society. He took along his wife, Judy, and their three
children, David, Stephen, and Susan, for whom it would be their first overseas
trip. For Jack, their visit would change his life.
Today, David runs a yoga studio in Australia, where I managed to track him
down. He kindly shared his memories and the photos of his family’s visit to
China and their enduring friendship with Jack.
On July 1, 1980, the Morleys’ Australian tour group arrived by plane in
Hangzhou from Beijing and was transferred by bus to the Shangri-La Hotel on
West Lake, the same hotel (then the Hangzhou Hotel) where President Nixon
and his entourage had stayed eight years earlier. David recalls being shown the
suite where the First Couple had stayed, allocated to their tour leader, complete
with “plush, red velvet toilet seats, which we three children were fascinated by.”
The next day the Australian group’s itinerary included a boat trip on West
Lake, followed by a visit to the nearby tea plantations and on to the Liuhe (Six
Harmonies) Pagoda before returning to the hotel for dinner at 6:30
P.M
. Taking
advantage of the “free evening,” David and a young woman called Keva whom
he had befriended on the trip snuck across the road from the hotel to the park
opposite, overlooking West Lake. There they proceeded to play with matches,
practicing the art of “match flicking” that she had taught him. This involved
standing a match upside-down with its head on the striking surface and flicking
it with your fingers and watching it spiral off to, David recalls, “hopefully an
uneventful extinguishment.” Fortunately that day, the park didn’t catch fire. But
David and Keva’s antics
did
catch the attention of a fifteen-year-old boy—Jack
Ma.
David recalls, “It was on that free evening, flicking matches in the park,
that I was approached by a young man wanting to try his newly acquired English
skills on me. He introduced himself; we swapped pleasantries and agreed to
meet in the park again.”
On July 4, their last day in Hangzhou, David introduced Jack to his sister,
Susan, and invited him and some other local children to play Frisbee with them
in the park. David described the scene to me: Marking out a playing area with
shoes and other items “we were soon surrounded by hundreds of Chinese
spectators.” Jack’s father, Ma Laifa, took photos of the game.
David’s father, Ken Morley, once described his first impressions of Jack as
a “barrow boy,” or a street hawker. “He really wanted to practice his English,
and he was very friendly. Our kids were very impressed.”
David described how the family stayed in touch: “What followed that
meeting was a pen pal relationship that I kept up for a few years until my father
started to take an interest in helping this young man.” Jack would correspond
regularly with Ken, referring to him as “Dad,” who asked him to “double space
his letters so that any corrections could be sent back in the spaces.” David
explained, “The original with corrections was returned for learning purposes
with the reply letter. I believe this greatly helped and encouraged Jack to
continue with his English studies.”
Jack Ma, age fifteen, with his new Australian friend David Morley by West Lake. David is wearing his
Australia China Friendship Society ID card.
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