No Problem, Mr. Walt

Not far from the Hengshan Hotel where I always stayed when I was in Shanghai was Nanjing Road (Nanking in English). This well-known shopping district was within walking distance, and when I'd hit it I would turn right and head toward the famous Bund that ran along the Huangpu River. The Bund is a long boulevard lined with shops and stores of every variety. On one trip I landed in a small antique store up a side street that specialized in old Taoist charms and bought the bronz

The deity I saw most in China was Kuan Yin, the Goddess of Mercy. She is possibly one of the most revered supernatural beings of the dieties in China, and has many recognized functions and devoted believers. I learned she is mainly associated with compassion, love, and mercy, and is thought to protect women and children, so is therefore also thought of as a fertility goddess. I’ll bet through the centuries literlly millions of “Kuan Yin, please bring us a boy” prayers have be

In my first blog post I mention the journals I took with me on my trips to China to record much of what I saw and experienced during the construction of the Mei Wen Ti and that select entries from those journals wound up in "No Problem, Mr. Walt." Well, what I didn’t realize at the time I embarked on building my dream was how all-consuming building a boat on the other side of the world, where most people I dealt with spoke no English; how many of my ideas were very foreign to

When I wrote the specifications for the Mei Wen Ti, I didn’t ask the shipyard to include any carving or artwork on the hull much less a colorful, smiling face of a tiger. But when I went back to inspect the Mei Wen Ti for the last time before it's journey to the west, there he was smiling boldly from the bow. So why did the shipyard have an artist paint a tiger on the bow? Here’s my take: The tiger supplants the lion as King of the Beasts in cultures of eastern Asia, and repr

Hello, you have found your way to the blog of author Walt Hackman. After I had made the decision to travel to China to investigate building a Chinese boat (junk) the thought crossed my mind that it might make a good story. So I made some journals and on my many trips to China I filled up three unlined journals. Part of their contents wound up in my book No Problem, Mr. Walt. This blog will be a mixture of things I saw, people I met, food I ate, food I learned how to cook, pla