Excerpt from American Bee: Speller profile, Jamie Ding

Jamie, from Detroit, is one of five spellers this book follows as they compete in the National Bee.

AMERICAN BEE
The National Spelling Bee and the Culture of Word Nerds

The Lives of Five Top Spellers as They Compete for Glory and Fame

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Excerpt: Jamie Ding

On the surface, it looked as if Yuchuan Ding had achieved the good life. By his mid- thirties he was a highly successful cosmetic surgeon in China. His superb reputation meant he had a thriving practice. He and his wife, Ning Yan, who taught physics, lived a privileged lifestyle in a nice neighborhood in Beijing. Yuchuan, in fact, had known privilege all his life. Since both his parents were Communist party members who held government posts, his family was affluent. As a boy, his family’s chauffeur had driven them wherever they wanted to go.

But being a surgeon caused Yuchuan great anxiety. He worried constantly—he could hardly sleep nights, wondering, “What if I don’t provide perfect treatment?” The thought that he might possibly provide less than ideal care made him feel, “very bad and guilty,” he recalls. He had no reason to worry—he had never had a problem with a patient—but still, “I was too nervous.” The specter of a failure with a patient led to years of angst. Finally, toward the late 1980s, he could no longer stand it. He decided to change careers. He was, in effect, simply too anxious to go on.

But that nervous self-doubt was nowhere to be found in the spring of 1989, as Yuchuan saw the Chinese student uprising begin. That year, crowds of students gathered in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square to protest government repression. The square was close to Yuchuan’s house, and in a gesture of solidarity—he hated the government as much as they did, despite his upbringing—he stood shoulder to shoulder with them. The government, attempting to quash the rebellion, sent a mass of soldiers to take control of the square.

The students refused to give way. It was push and pull, as the two sides stared eyeball to eyeball and the soldiers manhandled the students. Over the course of days the conflict escalated. Yuchuan, risking his career as well as his safety, stayed with the students. The same man who wanted to give up a medical practice out of worry for cosmetic surgery patients was, when his very life looked imperiled, apparently fearless.

After about a week, with emotions frayed on both sides—and with the government dangerously embarrassed by its loss of control—the standoff became a tinderbox, heading rapidly toward combustion. Yuchuan remembers that last day. His wife, Ning Yan, in a moment of panic, all but dragged him away from the student gathering. Not a moment too soon. “Ten minutes later, the soldiers opened fire,” he recalls. Approximately 700 people died, perhaps far more.

After that, Yuchuan and Ning Yan knew it was time to leave China. They moved to Australia, where Yuchuan began working on a doctorate in neuroscience; he left his career as a surgeon to become a researcher, so he’d have no more worries about patients. When Yuchuan visited the United States for a research conference, he was deeply impressed by the quality of American scientific research. So in 1994, two years after the birth of their son Jamie, they moved to Tennessee, where Yuchuan completed his doctorate at Vanderbilt University, and Ning Yan worked in day care. Their son Jamie was soon joined by a sister, Jessie. (Both children’s names are English versions of Chinese names.)

In 1998, the family moved to suburban Grosse Pointe, right outside Detroit. Yuchuan now works as a researcher in stroke therapy at Wayne State University, and Ning Yan works as a high school math teacher in Detroit’s inner city.

Yuchuan and Ning Yan agree wholeheartedly: They miss China—deeply. But there’s no going back. They want to raise their children in America. This is their new home.


It’s early Tuesday evening, shortly before dinner in the Ding home, and the house is abuzz with activity.

Ten-year-old Jessie is fitting in some last-minute piano practice, her fingers gliding over the keyboard as she renders light classics. She’s slender with long dark hair, and within the Ding clan she’s considered to be the family princess. Her room is painted pink, she’s performing in the school play, and, in a family that views hard work as a primary virtue, she’s thought to be less interested in constant industry—though her excellent grades and piano skills proves she’s no slacker.

Ning Yan is at the wok; it sizzles as she stir-fries a mixture of shrimp and cauliflower and greens. She’s talking about the difficulties of teaching math in an inner-city classroom; Detroit’s urban area is truly distressed. “It’s hard,” she says. “The students don’t know how to study.” She manages to smile even when talking about this uphill battle. That’s not surprising, because Ning Yan is the family’s official beam of light. If her husband, Yuchuan, however sweet and kind, is a brooder, with his worries that drove him from medical practice, Ning Yan is sunshine and warmth, gifted in the art of praising and encouraging. The laughter in the Ding home tends to originate with Ning Yan.

Yuchuan is busy setting the table for dinner, opening the jumbo bottle of red wine that the family serves from during dinner. He is, as always, on the quiet side—but unfailingly considerate. It’s important, for example, that guests be well taken care of. “Red wine is good for you,” he explains, filling my glass to the very brim.

Twelve-year-old Jamie—the family’s star speller, who placed 27th out of 265 in the 2004 Nationals—shows me his prize possession, a handheld Sony PlayStation Portable. He’s a round-faced boy with round glasses, about average height, usually talkative, confident, seemingly always relaxed—life is nonchalant for Jamie—with a sense of humor that tends toward the goofy. He plays a clip from the Spiderman 2 movie (his small unit holds the whole movie) and shows me some fiendishly complex video games. When the Portable was first released, Jamie wanted one so badly that Yuchuan got up early to stand in line at the store to make sure he snagged one. However, claims his mother, Jamie places a limit on his video game playing. “He has good self-control,” Ning Yan says. “He knows to not play too much.”

Dinner with the Ding family is a mixture of Mandarin Chinese and English...

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