A team of 16 young Chinese acrobats arrived at Dallas-Fort Worth
International Airport on one-way tickets this week, expecting to
cartwheel their way across the country on a 10-month US tour.
Instead, they were stranded at a homeless shelter in Dallas
until Wednesday, two days after their Wisconsin-based circus
promoter failed to meet them at the airport.
"From what I know, it seems to be poor planning more than
anything else," said Bill Thompson, the executive director of the
Union Gospel Mission homeless shelter.
"Somebody didn't take care of business, the homework."
Thompson said he picked up the group on Monday after getting a
phone call from a mysterious circus promoter who referred to
himself only as Gary and declined to give a last name. The man, who
lives in Wisconsin with his mother, told Thompson he had run out of
money and needed someone to pick up the acrobats, who range in age
from 13 to 20.
"He sounded desperate, no doubt," Thompson said.
Thompson and other shelter workers arrived at the airport in
three vans and broke through the language barrier by saying "the
one word we could all agree on: acrobat."
After dropping luggage and circus props off at separate shelters
for men and women, Thompson took the Shanghai-based Guanhua
Acrobatic team to a McDonald's restaurant.
"They all ordered the No. 9: grilled chicken," Thompson
said.
Then the acrobats settled in for two nights at Union Gospel
Mission, which claims to be Dallas' oldest homeless shelter and
once housed refugees scattered by Hurricane Katrina.
The troupe put on an impromptu show for reporters on Wednesday,
tossing straw hats like boomerangs and performing backflips,
cartwheels and building human pyramids with ease.
They also seemed remarkably sanguine about their situation,
saying it was status quo for circus performers.
But a former chaplain at the homeless shelter was puzzled that
the accommodations were the best Dallas could offer. She wondered
about the reaction if "a group of American kids go to Beijing,
China" and met a similar fate.
"To me the whole arrangement is weird," Candy Yeung told The
Dallas Morning News, which first reported the story on Wednesday.
"How could it happen to this group of kids?'"
The circus promoter refused to give his last name during a
telephone interview.
He called the mistake "a little scheduling snafu", saying
trailers he purchased for the group never arrived in Texas because
of recent snowstorms in the Midwest.
(China Daily February 15, 2008)