Why 'big nose' US boy still calls China home

Three tiles embedded in the ground near the doorway to David Plymire's home in the United States bear Chinese characters. They read, fu (good fortune), heping (peace) and xi (joy).

Plymire is an American, but in a small town in northwestern China, there is a children's rhyme about him.

For generations, children in Huangyuan, Qinghai province, on the eastern edge of the Tibetan Plateau, have recited a comical story about the "big nose" American boy. Until recently, few people knew that the child it describes was a real person, who is now 95 and living thousands of kilometers away across the Pacific.

"An American with a big nose who loves Chinese niangpizi (cold spicy noodles)," Plymire said, reciting the children's poem in a recent interview with China Daily.

"Then the big nose goes to the river to wash the pepper out of his nose, and he falls in the river and drowns."

Plymire chuckled at the image.

On the northern outskirts of Springfield, Missouri, the birthplace of America's famous Route 66, Plymire lives in a retirement community. He speaks fluent Mandarin as well as the local dialect of Huangyuan, where he spent 17 years of his early life.

He has returned to China more than 20 times, raising money for medical equipment and helping improve healthcare in the town he still calls home. The childhood rhyme, now circulating online, has introduced his story to a new generation of Chinese, many young enough to be his great-grandchildren.