LEI: I have a confession.
BUCK: Don’t worry, Lei, your secret is safe with me.
LEI: Remember how you were going to introduce me to your friends on my mother-daughter trip to Niagara Falls? I’m concerned I’m going to sound really dumb.
BUCK: Oh, that’s ridiculous. My friends have been reading all about you. They think you’re brilliant.
LEI: But, Buck, I don’t know anything about football.
BUCK: (Stone silence)
LEI: Did you hear me?
BUCK: You’re kidding.
LEI: No, all I’ve got is this little cheat sheet of expressions and a book. I’m trying to study, but it’s impossible.
BUCK: Here, let me see that cheat sheet. (Scratches out lines about 13 seconds, losing four Super Bowls in a row). What’s that book you’re reading?
LEI: The NFL’s collective bargaining agreement. I’ve never seen a legal document 456 pages long. Maybe Ruby and I should postpone our trip — you know, until the season is over.
BUCK: That won’t work.
LEI: Why?
BUCK: My friends are Buffalo Bills fans. They talk about football all year long. There’s the season, Fantasy Football, the playoffs, the Super Bowl, free agency, the draft, OTAs, training camp, preseason, and before long, it’s the season again.
LEI: So what should we do?
BUCK: I have an idea. Just wait here a minute. Relax, OK?
LEI: OK.
BUCK: All right, here we go. I’m going to teach you everything you need to know about football.
LEI: Buck, that’s a table.
BUCK: Right.
LEI: So is that where we put the beer?
BUCK: No, it’s something we jump through.
LEI: Jump through? “We” are going to need beer, Buck.
BUCK: Here, let me help you up on my truck.
LEI: The only thing that will prove is gravity is real — or one of our Chinese expressions: “That explains why there’s not too many people in the West.”
BUCK: Welcome to the Bills Mafia, Lei Jiao!
LEI: Oh, Buck, anything that ends with “mafia” can’t be good.
BUCK: No, no. The Bills Mafia are known for their generosity.
LEI: So was Al Capone. Do the Bills have any Chinese players?
BUCK: We used to have Ed Wang, an offensive lineman. He was the first player with full Chinese ancestry to be drafted in NFL history. But that was 11 years ago. Asian and Asian American players represent less than 2% of NFL rosters today.
LEI: Anyone famous?
BUCK: Well, there’s Tua Tagovailoa (Samoan) in Miami and Kyler Murray (Korean mother) in Arizona. Fortunately for us, Tedy Bruschi (Filipino mother), a real Bill killer in New England, left for ESPN years ago.
LEI: Either Chinese people are too smart to play this game, or maybe our athletes are studying too hard. Do you know what the “N” on Nebraska’s football helmets stands for?
BUCK: No, what?
LEI: Nowledge.
BUCK: I guess your cheat sheet was published in Oklahoma.
LEI: I saw your Northwestern Wildcats upset Nebraska to open the college football season last month in Dublin, Ireland.
BUCK: Yup. When I was a professor at Northwestern, the football team was so bad, students would chant at games: “That’s all right, that’s OK, you will work for us someday.”
LEI: Ha! Now that’s elite trash talk. Can we just stick with vocabulary before we start jumping through anything?
BUCK: Sure, Lei. There’s nothing more thrilling than seeing the crowd explode when the field general throws the bomb.
LEI: Oh gee, Buck. Is it because you enjoyed peace for too long on that vast lonely land that you long for such battles?
BUCK: It’s fun, Lei.
LEI: Fun? American football is just too violent for me. Remember, China’s national sport is ping-pong. We rule in the World Table Tennis Championships — that’s our Super Bowl.
BUCK: Come on, Lei, what you saw was probably “tackling.”
LEI: Is that when they jump on each others’ bodies?
BUCK: Yup. Do you know anything about “rushing”?
LEI: Are you kidding? I live with 1.4 billion other people. Everybody’s rushing, or we couldn’t get anywhere on time.
BUCK: No, Lei, rushing means carrying the football for yards. To give you street cred with the Bills Mafia, try out this line: “Hey, buddy, who you think is gonna win the rushing title this year — Josh Allen?”
LEI: Who’s Josh Allen?
BUCK: He’s our 26-year-old quarterback. He’s going to be the league’s MVP.
LEI: Most Violent Person? He’s got nothing on Ying Zheng, aka Qin (dynasty name) Shi (first) Huang (emperor).
BUCK: Who’s that?
LEI: A conqueror who achieved the impossible feat of unifying the Warring States and forming a dynasty that brought us the Great Wall and a mausoleum with a giant terracotta army.
BUCK: Oh, so he was your MVP, circa 221 BCE, eh?
LEI: Right, Buck, but that was blood-spilling, head-chopping, real war. He coined an ancient Chinese expression about leadership.
BUCK: What’s that?
LEI: “If you have two quarterbacks, you don’t have a quarterback.”
BUCK: Ha!
LEI: So this Josh guy has a gigantic fan base, I assume? That happens for us in China, too, but mostly with movie stars.
BUCK: Oh, so not many professional athletes?
LEI: China started having professional leagues only since 1994, two years before Josh Allen was born. Our Badminton Super League is hot. Our national men’s soccer team is so bad fans ridicule them as “stinky feet.” If we have big sports heroes, they were Olympic gold medalists.
BUCK: It’s big business here, Lei. Josh Allen’s No. 17 jersey is the top-selling one in the country.
LEI: Hmm, 1 + 7 = 8 — that’s a lucky number.
BUCK: Would you like to play catch? I’ll get a football and throw it to you. It will help you get a feel for the game.
LEI: Great idea. I’ll warm up. (Starts running in place)
BUCK: Here we go, Lei. This is called “passing.” The quarterback, me, throws a pass to you, the wide receiver.
LEI: Oh gee, Buck. Have I put on that much weight?
BUCK: No, Lei, “wide” refers to your position on the playing field. Go over there, run a V-out (drawing in the air), and I’ll hit you in the coffin corner of the end zone. Let’s see a little toe-drag swag, my friend.
LEI: I’ll do my best. OK, make a pass at me.
BUCK: Lei, please don’t say that to one of my buddies. Just run now.
LEI: (Shows remarkable speed, but turns the wrong way). Aw, Buck, that was wide right.
BUCK: Definitely don’t ever say that to my friends.
LEI: Buck, all this jargon is just too complicated. I have another confession.
BUCK: What’s that?
LEI: I’d rather impress your friends by just jumping through that table.
BUCK: Go Bills!
LEI: It looks safer than going over Niagara Falls in a barrel.
About the authors: Buck Ryan, a University of Kentucky journalism professor, and Lei Jiao, an English lecturer at Wuhan University of Technology, Hubei Province, China, collaborate on articles to advance cross-cultural understanding.