CROSS-CULTURAL CONNECTION
Road for couple leads from Beijing to the Valley

PAULINE YEARWOOD
Senior Staff Writer

But if you think they're a typical Gen X couple, think again.

The Cherneys' full life in the Valley is the culmination of an odyssey extending from Beijing, China, where they met, to Tempe, where they have lived for a year now. The couple has triumphed over, not only cancer but - worse yet, Michael Cherney quips - the bureaucratic red tape of their two countries, to marry and to live in the United States.

For native New Yorker Michael Cherney, the odyssey began in 1991. A new graduate of State University of New York at Binghamton in Binghamton, N.Y., he had traveled to China to study Chinese language and culture at the Beijing Language Institute.

Before starting classes, he visited Kaifeng, a city of 300,000 on China's East Coast that was once the center of a thriving Chinese Jewish community.

Cherney had heard the tale of a group of Jews who left Israel before the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 C.E., settling first in India, then in China, where, he says, they were accepted fully into Chinese society. Many lived in Kaifeng, then the capital of China, where in the 12th century they built a Great Synagogue.

That synagogue was destroyed by a flood in 1851, but Cherney learned that the present government plans to build a memorial synagogue on the same site on a street named "Study-the-Scripture Lane."

Only a few descendants of the original Jewish settlers remain, and Cherney was determined to find them.

After asking dozens of Kaifeng residents if they knew any "Youtai" (from "Yehudi"), Cherney and a Chinese friend succeeded in locating 77-year-old Shih Shao Yu and his grandchildren. Shih Shao Yu told Cherney that his was the only Jewish family not fully assimilated into Chinese culture: Although he did not remember any Jewish rituals, he stoutly defended his faith in one God and showed Cherney how he and a grandniece prayed each week from a Chinese Torah.

Returning to Beijing, Cherney found an active Jewish community comprised primarily of Israelis and other non-Chinese connected with businesses in the country. Before China and Israel established diplomatic relations in 1992, the community held holiday services in the courtyard of the home of one of these families.

When Israel established an embassy in Beijing in 1992, so many more worshippers crowded High Holiday services they had to be moved to the ballroom of a hotel, Cherney says.

On a student tour to a remote section of the Great Wall, Cherney met Huang Dong, a young woman then studying English at Beijing's Second Foreign Language Institute. The two became friends, and soon their relationship blossomed into romance. In 1993, after traveling to her home town in a remote village in Zhejiang Province so Cherney could meet her family, they became engaged.

Shortly afterwards, Cherney says, he began experiencing intense abdominal pain. He credits Dong and a friend from the Dutch Embassy with saving his life by conveying him to Beijing Hospital, following a harrowing middle of-the-night search for a cash deposit, without which he could not be admitted.

X-rays revealed a tumor, which was found to be malignant. Cherney was advised to return home for chemotherapy at an American treatment facility.

His anger was intense, he says - "at the cancer, at having to leave Dong, having to give up school, losing a new internship at the U.S. Embassy and returning to dependence on my family."

Once the couple decided that Dong would begin an application for a fianc‚e visa so she could join him, says Cherney, "We began a race between my recovery and her arrival in New York."

Michael and Dong were determined to view both chemotherapy and the complicated process of filing an immigration application as challenges to be faced with humor. It worked. Dong arrived in New York in late 1993, and she and Michael, his cancer in remission, were married shortly afterward.

Now, Michael says, he sees those difficult times as "detours on the continuing road to a happy ending."

In 1994 he was pronounced fully recovered.

They moved to Phoenix a year ago and set up Pan Terra Consulting Co., a firm that works in all areas of U.S.-Chinese relations. They travel throughout the Southwest, accompanying and interpreting for delegations from China. They also act as interpreters for visiting delegations from Phoenix's Chinese sister city, Cheng Du.

Michael Cherney is a member of the planning committee for an ambitious nine-day China-U.S. Conference on Education, to be held in Beijing next July. More than 1,000 American educators will attend, he says.

Dong also works as a Chinese tutor, court interpreter, and writer and editor for three local Chinese newspapers, all while studying English and liberal arts at Arizona State University.

The Cherneys say they've discovered a perfect way for each to practice the other's language: They speak Chinese Monday, Wednesday and Friday and English the other days.

Michael does most of the cooking - Chinese dishes, which he learned to prepare from Dong's father.

Dong is studying Judaism with Rabbi Bonnie Koppell of Temple Beth Sholom. The couple observe Shabbat and Jewish holidays and are active in the congregation, and hope to travel to Israel soon.

Conversion to Judaism is in her future, Dong says. Growing up in Communist China, "I was brought up to be an atheist, to believe in Marxism," she says. "I was taught that there is no God." The study of religion therefore is unfamiliar to her.

She adds that with the breakup of the Soviet Union and increased Western influences in China, "Religion is coming back. People are going back to their local religion, to Buddhism, and there is an underground Christianity movement.

"People in China used to have complete faith in the Communist Party," she adds. "Now, the society is changing. People value material things more. More art and movies are allowed.

"But spiritually, people are searching. There's a great interest in religion right now."

Michael and Dong say their search for meaning and happiness in life has successfully culminated here in the Valley of the Sun.