In my 6-11-18 letter to CEO Mr. Wilson (Collected under MyData), I introduced myself, stating, “I had been a Nationwide agent for more than 20 years. I retired from Nationwide in 2011 and moved to Beijing, China — I had set up a residence there since 2002 — where I published several books on Chinese culture, among which I wrote a novel on Confucius, which I am translating right now into English. (Enclosed.) In 2014 I moved back to US under the advice of my doctor due to the air quality of Beijing. Being getting used to the hustle-bustle lifestyle of China, I found it very lonesome living in the US again. I looked for something to do. I counted myself very lucky to find employment with Allstate, which created a very inclusive business community and would take in a then 69 years old man like me. Spending two to three hours a day chatting with customers fired away any feeling of lonesomeness I might have and have balanced remarkable well of the solitary task of translating.”
(If typing my Chinese name “邵耀成” in Google search, one will find the following:
I was born in Shanghai, China and raised in Hong Kong until age 18. I went to England for my first degree and received my graduate degrees from UC Berkeley and Stanford.
I consider myself a Hong Kong-nese, until I became a US citizen. In 2003(?), I was a guess of Governor Mark Warner to attend a ceremony of joining in sisterhood the Virginia state capital Richmond and the coastal city Ninbo. This was the first time I visited Ninbo, the ancestral hometown of my parents. I have several stories of Ninbo I want to tell in my blog.
(Ninbo’s GDP in 2020 is US$191.68 billion, 13.5% of NYC’s GDP of US$1,420.14, No. 1 in the world.)
One of them is a stone tablet made in the name of the mayor of Ninbo in 1848–53 and conveyed by the visiting Presbyterian ministers of Ninbo to the Washington Monument to celebrate the centennial anniversary of George Washington. What is marvelous is the content of the tablet, which came from an Imperial minister, in whose book a passage on George Washington profusely praised him for stepping down after the second term, liking him to the idealized sage-king in Chinese antiquity, who did not hold life-long power. The tablet is displayed on the 10th floor of the Monument and the existence of it was brought up by President Clinton on 6/29/1998 in his speech at the University of Beijing.
A central government minister and a local mayor in 1848 Imperial China had already come to admire and understand the democratic quality of George Washington’s great act of refusing becoming King George. The city of Ninbo is remarkably quite unusual.
In my second visit to Ninbo, I was received by the liaison officials of the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office of Ninbo. When they learnt my parents had properties there, they suggested that I could make a claim of them, if I wanted to.
(Left is property on my mother’s side, right my father side.)
I said I would not, because my mother said that those properties should have been given to our relatives who had stayed in China. My understanding is that, when Communist China first took power in 1949, they confiscated everyone’s land as the Party’s land. In 1982, ten years after the normalization with US, they realized the concept of property right was the bedrock of a free market. They started dozing out a fixed sum compensations to former landowners. In 1992, they realized, to be measured up to the US standard, that they should pay market value of the properties they had seized or are going to appropriate. A clarification is needed. All the land of the country is still owned by the Party/Government, but they recognize the right of the leasehold ownership of a property and will pay a market price for the leasehold ownership. Now, is this leasehold ownership of a property quite like an Allstate agent’s economic interest of the book of business, which the company owns? Allstate, like the 1982 Communist Government, will pay a below-market price for the economic interest of agent’s book, but, unlike the 1992 Communist Government, will not pay the market price for the economic interest of agent’s book.