(v) It’s official, I am now completely finished with my contractual teaching responsibilities in China. It’s actually a little unfortunate, as for the past two days I have had a fever & sore throat and was unable to teach my classes. My LAST classes. It really does make me sad. Those classes had some of my favorite students. But, this morning, during their morning readings, I was able to go and tell them all good-bye and give them my email address. Hopefully some of them will actually send me something.

Now, all that’s left to do is pack up our remaining things (those things we didn’t include in the packages we have shipped back to the states) and prepare for our departure from Hong Kong tomorrow. One reason I was super-paranoid about being sick is that there is a temperature screening you must walk through in immigration before they will let you into Hong Kong. If you have a fever, they stop you. And I figured it would be just my luck that on the day I’m supposed to leave the country for good, I would get held up in immigration because of a fever. But that seems to be resolved now. The clinic here prescribed Cipro for my throat infection, so I should be safe against any bugs I have now, and any biological weapons we may come across in the next few weeks.

Read the rest of this entry »

(D) We asked the owner of our favorite local restaurant to show us how to make some of our favorite dishes since we won’t be able to eat at his restaurant anymore. He was happy to share his recipes and wanted us to share them with our American friends. Veronica, sadly, had a fever so David was taking notes and pictures for her.

The first dish is David’s favorite.

Dry-fried Sword Bean (干煸四季豆) Read the rest of this entry »

(v) Yesterday, we headed to Hong Kong to ship packages of our stuff which we do not wish to carry with us on our travels. That was an experience in itself, but we were successful and are much relieved that we can cross that item off of our to-do list. And afterwards, we wanted to hit as many museums as we could in Hong Kong, to fully utilize our Hong Kong museum pass that we got earlier this year. When looking at the pieces in the Hong Kong Museum of Art, I managed to gather some thoughts about the variety of things I’ve learned this year about this host country.

Read the rest of this entry »

One of Veronica’s students was confident enough in her English speaking to ask her to meet together last week. They chatted over lunch at McDonald’s, and during the conversation she told Veronica that often on the weekends she goes hiking with her father. She invited us to join them this Sunday. They picked us up in their Pajero and we drove to a nearby mountain park called Wutongshan. Her father said the only English phrase he knows “Nice to meet you” when we met. He never learned English in school and not even Mandarin. He is from Guangzhou, and only speaks Cantonese fluently. I enjoyed practicing my Mandarin with him. His Mandarin was much better than mine, but he humbly said he thought I was better. Through our conversation I learned that he and his daughter go to hike this mountain every few weekends. His wife and her sister, husband, daughter, and a daughter’s friend met up with us at the park entrance. Her cousin is in primary school and likes English, but was too shy to say anything but yes or no to any questions we asked her and was afraid to initiate any conversation, even when her parents commanded her to. She had a little battery-powered hand-held fan that she was using and her parents told her to let us use it, but she was afraid to speak. It was around her neck, but apparently she had taken it off and was thinking about how to give it to us when we were crossing a cable bridge. Walking behind us, she dropped her little fan though the openings in the bridge planks into the creek below. As a foreigner, I feel comfortable asking anyone for help, so I yelled to a man bathing himself in the creek and asked if he could help us to retrieve what we dropped. He plucked it and the batteries out of the water and threw it back to us.

Read the rest of this entry »

(D) Blockbuster movies reveal a lot about our culture’s interests and dreams. I am going to try to compare and contrast some characteristics of movie heroes in order to shed light on some cultural differences. I love watching action movies like Die Hard, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, and Mission Impossible; the characters are informed and knowledgeable of the latest technologies, and quick-thinking. They can fight, but would rather use a gun. They are independent and seem to be emotionless in the heat of the action. While watching Chinese movies like Hero, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and Kung Fu Hustle, I began to realize the Chinese action hero is quite different. They use their body skillfully in tune with natural forces to fight, they can delight in delicate flowers as they sip tea, and they are contemplative and peaceful. Showing dignity and respect are more important than the fight itself; respect is shown to opponents, as if they are brothers who went on two separate paths and now have returned to fight each other for control of their land. But fighting is counted as an art form, so to just shoot your opponent would be disgraceful, why not sip some tea together first and discuss the school of fighting that you each came from? The Chinese heroes also have a special respect for their teachers, often dying themselves in retaliation or defense of their teacher’s honor. Read the rest of this entry »

(v) Okay, I am intrigued by the whole stock market thing here, and I have been in conversations where this topic has brought up, so I thought I’d share a couple new things that I’ve found out. In speaking with friends who are investing in the market (locals, of course), I asked, “How do you choose what to invest in? Are there financial reports that you look at or something?” The answer was a definitive “No - everybody knows that the financial reports can’t be trusted.” Silly me. So, how do they choose? Well, it usually comes down to having a friend or a friend of a friend who works at a company and tells them that their company is a good/bad company to invest in right now for such and such reason. Really? That’s interesting. It sounds like . . . oh, I don’t know - insider trading, maybe? Hmm . . . let me think on that one.

Read the rest of this entry »

(v) Well, that’s a silly question, because really, who’s not investing in China? But so you’re aware, the Chinese are definitely among those people all over the world who are betting their hard-earned dollars that China is going to explode economically (as if it hasn’t already). I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but the Chinese stock market has skyrocketed. Last year, the Shanghai exchange was up around 130%, and already this year it’s up by around 50%. And the people investing aren’t just the high rollers here in China, it’s actually mainly the farmers and peasants and “common” people in China. In 2006 alone, 97 million personal investment accounts were opened here in China, so that means 97 million people who have put their very hard-earned savings into this relatively new investment vehicle. And people in China, unlike people in the States, are well-known for their ability to save. I think they save somewhere around 40% of their income, so this amounts to a LOT of cash. That’s not to mention the people who have mortgaged their apartments or borrowed money to put in the market. No wonder the value has skyrocketed!!

Read the rest of this entry »

(D)-I think we finally found what we hoped to see in China: the stereotypical Chinese architecture of tiled roofs with finger-like tips towering high into the sky, tranquil ponds full of goldfish, stone bridges, and meticulously maintained gardens of blooming trees. We had a busy vacation last week, but we saw so much!

We first flew into Shanghai, but didn’t stay long, leaving the next morning for Hangzhou, famous for its scenic West Lake. The lake is about a mile across and surrounded by stone paved walkways leading you through one huge garden linking pagotas, temples, bridges, and boat docks. Despite the crowds, it was a peaceful place where people walk slowly around admiring its beauty and passing the time with their family. The next day we boarded a bus for Tunxi, our base-camp for climbing up Huangshan (Yellow Mountain). We didn’t need any gear to climb to the top, it was paved with marble steps, a staircase that took us about 3 hours to ascend. But it was worth it for the unimaginable views! The peaks here have inspired so much of Chinese art and are on the covers of many China coffee table photography books.

Read the rest of this entry »

(v) Getting to teach both Juniors and Seniors allows me to play with a few different types of lessons. In general, Seniors prefer lecture-style, because that offers them the chance to catch up on sleep in class. But the Juniors like to be a little more interactive. So yesterday, for one of the more advanced classes, the lesson was on storytelling. So after a Mad Lib primer, their assignment was to write a story as a row. I typed the first line to the story on a piece of paper, and then handed it to the first person in the row. They write the next line, fold the paper down so the next person can’t see what I wrote, and then pass it back. The idea is that you only see what the person in front of you wrote, so we can see how the story progresses. Here are a few of the stories I got out of this activity (not edited for grammar).

Read the rest of this entry »

(v) Last weekend, we had the opportunity to visit the family home of one of the teachers at our school. She currently lives with her parents, as a couple of years ago the school asked those employees that had family in the Shenzhen area to move back home because the school was short of housing facilities. So, we got to see where she and her family have lived for the past nine years, and make dumplings and have some traditional Cantonese dishes. Yum!

Read the rest of this entry »