Start at the post below this!!

I saved a post I started a month ago, but I couldn't figure out how to edit it (I also had to sign in in Russian today-- censorship blockers have their glitches) so this is the continuation of the below. Sorry again for the lame postage. I've been busy! I'm thinking about continuing this after I get back and we'll all just pretend I'm still in China. But with, you know, better toilets.

Hmmph. I also just realized that my picture doohickey isn't working. OK, well, quick summary of the rest of Wulongtan. If the censors let me post pics again at sometime in the future, I will post a montage. maybe with accompanying perky music.

So we, along with 8000 of our closest Chinese friends, climbed up the many steps to the almost top. Along the way, we crossed a suspension bridge that everyone thought would be hysterical to jump up and down on. This involved a lot of lurching and a 4 foot tall Chinese grandmother grabbing my chest in an attempt to stay upright. We also stopped to eat our KFC at a little pavilion where a man sold tea and sodas. There was a dog there, and they were going to throw him the bones--when I said Chicken bones were bad for dogs and explained why, they listened seriously and said, "well those are American dogs. Chinese dogs are tougher."

BTW, a few people had asked me about the KFC quality here. In general, it pretty much tastes like KFC (i.e., it's no Bojangles) and I haven't seen any biscuits, but they have AWESOME fried Chicken wings. Also, they offer a side of the most disgusting corn, pepper and carrot chunks bathed in mayonaise. I know this b/c when Tony was here we ate at KFC (and McD's and Burger King)and got the delicious corn-aise. Also, completely not what we thought we ordered. Somehow we ended up with one chicken sandwich, one corn-aise, one chicken leg and a bright orange drink. Since we were pointing at pictures, I'm not sure how that happened. Also, speaking of mayo, the Chinese are oddly fond of it. They'll make salads with just mayo on them (the Chinese don't really get the concept of salad--eating raw veggies is kind of gross to them) and I would swear that sometimes the cafeteria serves seafood with a heaping side of mayo)

We were going to go all the way to the top and see the "ancient temple," but somehow we got turned around and started down the pah. But Jane and I really wanted to go to the top, so we left Nina and Professor Wang (he's an older guy who they are friends with. He's really interesting: he was a championship runner and ballet dancer during the cultural revolution and has taught english and gym for many years. Oh, he also now has a labrador puppy (dor-dor) who is the cutest thing ever)and booked back up the path we had just gone down and up, up, up to the ancient temple. Which was a big pillar made of concrete. Yeah. Apparently it had been restored about 7 years ago. It was still pretty neat, though. There was a big candle holder set up in front of it for prayers/messages to the gods and the usual cushions set up in front for kowtowing. There was also a great view of the surrounding mountains, all terraced for farming, and down into the valley of the river. Pictures would be exciting here, wouldn't they?

My birthday was last last Monday, and frankly it was completely pre-empted by the early arrival of Anna Rose West, my best friend’s daughter, who came at 33 weeks. I was hoping that April could hold out till my birthday, but selfishly, she decided her life threatening preeclampsia entitled her to ignoring such niceties. Let me tell you, do not plan on being half way across the world when people you love dearly are in danger. Not only do you have to deal with time differences (and may I just say, thank goodness for how cheap skype has made calling to international land lines), but something can delay email arrivals—apparently the words placenta and umbilical cord set off all sorts of alarms in emails, which would be delayed up to 12 hours. Both baby and mom are doing wonderfully, though. Anna is 3 pounds today!!:

My birthday was a little pushed away by all of this and let me tell you, I’m a person who makes a big deal out birthdays—other people, and mine. I had, 2 weeks before, announced to my class that my bday was coming up, so my sweet babies got me a cake!!

This also involved them getting into an epic frosting fight. That’s why, if you look carefully in this picture, half of the kids have white smears all over them.




Chinese birthday cake, by the way, is a take on western traditions. The cake is a nice light sponge cake with preserved fruit between the layers, and a thick layer of whipped cream. The top is covered with various fruits. In china, tomatoes are firmly classified as a fruit (let me tell you tomato-strawberry-pineapple juice? Not good) so it was my first birthday cake with tomatoes on top.



Afterwards, I’d arranged to go out with Nina, Jane and Maggie to hotpot. For the uninitiated, hotpot is like a fondue, though no cheese of course. Instead you get boiling broth, either spicy or plain. We get a dish shaped like a yin-yang sign with spicy on one side, not spicy on the other. It’s called two ducks pot because ducks mate for life and stay together. The first time Jane, Nina and I went we ordered so much food that the waitress yelled at us—and the Chinese can seriously eat. The Chinese for big appetite is “dai wei”—big belly—and when I told Jane who weighs about 18 pounds and can eat me under the table that by American standards I had a big appetite, she looked at me in shock and said, “Americans must not eat anything.” This time we toned down our ordering—“just” lamb (oh, and also 3 orders of lamb skewers to start), fish sausage, Chinese “bacon” which pretty much tastes like bologna, seaweed, spinach, a zucchini like melon, tofu skin, rice noodles… -- here we are after dinner.

Nina and Jane had also ordered me a cake—what a thing of beauty!

The horse (yes, that is a horse), by the way, is for my Chinese zodiac sign. This is not common for bday cakes, but last week we were hanging out watching Jane Eyre (apparently loving it as a trans-cultural nerd girl trait) and eating an epic lunch prepared by Jane and Nina (one more food listing! Spare ribs, turnip and beef broth soup (we sucked the marrow out of the bones), stir fried broccoli and carrot, bok choy and mushrooms, shaved cucumbers with ginger and garlic, salad, and two shaotsai or small dishes—pickled veggies and seaweed bought premade) and I was showing them pics including my bday party last year and the moose cake Tony designed for me, so I think they thought animals were de rigueur on western bday cakes. I also got a lovely birthday crown.

It actually says “Happy Bistday.” The card my kiddies got me is another great piece of chinglish btw—it says happy bday and has a poem in Chinese, but up in the left hand corner, it also, perplexingly, says “best wishes on your retirement.”



So it was a good birthday. The next day I went out with some Americans here and had a hamburger…a good one…yum. I also had my triumph of directing the taxi home completely in Chinese. I mastered the name of the school last week, but no taxi knows how to get to our residence, so you always have to direct them from the gates of the school. I practiced ‘turn left” ‘turn right” “go straight” the entire mile walk home the day before with Jane and Nina, and, lo and behold, it worked!!



This weekend, Jane, Nina, and I, along with a friend of theirs, Professor Wang, went to Wulongtan, or 5 dragon pools. The legend is a sort of Leda and the sawn, with dragons, and the dragon impregnated mother and her 4 children (can’t understand why they wouldn’t believe her story about fire-breating conception after the third time!) were shunned and all turned into dragons, each of whom got their own pool. Anyways, it’s about 30 km away from Ningbo, but we took the bus, which involved taking one bus downtown, stopping at KFC to get food for the picnic (here’s Nina looking excited about the future lunch!)

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Walking around till we found the other bus which proceeded to barrel through villages and around windy mountain roads with the usual Chinese high speed and disregard for other cars and niceties like watching the road. I wish I had a picture of the driver casually turning his head to chat with a passenger as we took a hairpin turn. In a bus, people. But we got out to this:

Shaoxing Sight-Seeing (A Continuation of the Previous Post)

However, we went to none of these places. Instead we went to Orchid Pavilion, or Lan Ting. It was the home of one of the most famous calligraphers in China: legend has it that he assembled many of his poet friends around a stream where they played a drinking game—he floated cups of wine (Shaoxing is also famous for its rice wine) on a stream and when a cup floated to someone he had to drink and compose a poem, which this guy then calligraphied into a famous book.

The grounds were beautiful—they were on the slope of the mountain and we actually had beautiful blue skies, which have appeared now that “fall” (ie, only getting to 80 or so most days) is here, and the cream and brown buildings and green trees and bamboo really stood out against it. In addition to the famous stream, we saw the calligrapher’s house, which had a neat central pool with a little bridge to a pagoda, a pond that I’m pretty sure was black with goose poop but, according to legend, had been blackened by the ink of the calligrapher, a river with a flat zig zagging bridge and, of course, lots of calligraphy, including a giant slab that is famous because it has (allegedly) writing from different kings on each side (I didn’t quite catch the story, but it was in very early China and about warring territories). Here is an assortment from Lan Ting:

this was a shop just outside of Lan Ting-  I love the line up of Marx, Lenin, Commie who I have blanked on, Papa Joe and Mao at the top.

Back to Blogging!

I am finally recovering from the swine flu of colds, which has held me hostage for the last two weeks. I didn’t spike a fever and did produce lots of phlegm, so it was just a cold, but I think the air pollution here had already done a number on my lungs, so I sounded like a consumptive in her last gasps. Actually, I even went and looked up the symptoms for whooping cough, though I’d been vaccinated for it. So that’s why there has been no bloggage—I hope I haven’t lost all my readers with my long silence!

The cold did give me a chance to hear lots of Chinese theories about health. The Chinese take herbal medicines and the properties of food very seriously. I swear that every food has some particular property—you’ll be innocently eating your chestnuts and someone’s like, “oh that’s excellent for a woman’s right toenail.” I think the Chinese could even come up with the health benefits of rancid fat—tonight at dinner, my friend Nancy was talking about wine and she said, well, it’s not very good for you, but a little is good fro you because it helps the circulation of blood.”



So here’s what I’ve learned about colds. Despite the name, colds result from an excess of fire in the body—I have been suffering from Shang Hoa-la, or fiery organ discomfort. So I should stay away from hot foods, of course, and seafood (well, I have a split jury on that one—Lotus, who was our liaison during the conference told me I should stay away from seafood, but my friend Maggie, who knows Lotus from school and says I shouldn’t trust her because she is an awful cook who always makes things too healthy swears that seafood is just what I need.) Cold drinks are the devil—people really looked at me as if I were mainlining heroin—and juice is not good, though fruit is OK. Pears are the big winners because they are supposed to be good for lungs. My friend Jane made me stewed pears (which must be made with crystallized, not granulated sugar) and quizzed me every day on if I was eating pears. She and Nina also took me to the campus doctor who prescribed a Chinese herbal medicine. It didn’t seem to do much good—nor did the Robitussin, Sudafed, or Benadryl—but it did taste quite pleasant and I got about a gallon, for 40 yuan, or $6 (which included a consultation with the doctor). Jane and Nina were scandalized by the price.



By the way, I realize I keep typing “my friend…” which is redundant and makes me sound like a four year old telling about her day at school, but I’m just trying to indicate that these are newish people is my life who I have been hanging out with. By the way, all of the above are Chinese, but I call them by their English names.



D.C. (during cold) I went to the “First Sino-USA Forum on English, Web and Education.” It was being held by a school that UIndy is establishing a relationship with, so we were honored guests. Let me just say this. At American conferences, you get a muffin. At The Sino-USA Forum, you get this:

yes, that's a pearl necklace. And they're real. I'm a jewish woman--I know how to check!
 
The flowers by the way, were presented to us by students at the school. The Chinese participants got to take the bus in to where the opening ceremonies were actually being held, but we “American experts” had to stop at the gate and get assigned a student who gave us a boquet and then followed us around for the rest of the weekend. Several years ago, I had a student, in her resume for W231, write that she went to some student conference where she “discovered white privilege.” I can only think she attended a conference thrown in China. (To be fair, the president of the school that organized this is known for really liking to put on a show—I don’t think this conference was typically Chinese. We have one coming up at NIT, so I’ll report back). I actually gave a keynote there—my qualifications for being invited were, I believe, the level of melanin in my skin—and as a result, got upgraded to dignitary for the closing ceremonies, when I had to sit on the stage with the vice Mayor of Shaoxing, the president of the University and assorted professors, and nod inanely at speeches in Chinese.




It was nice to meet other teachers though, both Chinese and English speaking (Yuexi, the university that hosted the conference is a foreign language college and has a lot of Australians and Brits teaching there) and hear some of the work others were doing. The banquets each night were also the bomb. I’ve described one banquet, and frankly there is so much food at any formal meal that the mind boggles. Here’s a picture I took from the banquet on night 2:




 
I may be somewhat blurring the meals, but that night, as always, there were cold plates on the lazy susan when we arrived: always sliced roast duck (with its little head staring at you), seaweed, tofu, cucumber slices, dried fish, and chicken’s feet, and often pickled radish (Chinese radishes are huge), maybe pickled eggs...that’s just the starters. This restaurant also had a big basket with roasted corn and sweet potatoes in the middle. Then the hot dishes start—whole fish, stewed with veggies and chicken’s feet; crabs stir fried with ginger and scallions; whole shrimp; a whole fried fish with a sweet and sour sauce; turtle stew (it’s so funny—I learned the word for turtle—uhgway—when I went to a temple and saw a bunch sunning themselves, cemented it in my mind because I spent a class teaching about the turtle in a chapter of The Grapes of Wrath and then cemented it by eating turtle, which is tasty and surprisingly beefy); chunks of beef stir fried with ginger; several soups, chicken, and one night with fish bellies (yum); stir fried vegetables, heavy on a sort of sweet tuber; lobster; chinese greens; an absolutely incredible custard made with some sort of shellfish; tiny little bivalves with soy and ginger….I know I’m missing a few dishes. You know the meal is finally ending when they bring fruit—which you should be way too full to eat. Oh, in Shaoxing, they also always ended the meal with a noodle soup, which I have no idea how anyone managed to find room for, though I guess by Chinese standards we hadn’t had a meal yet since we hadn’t had a starch. We also had a Shaoxing specialty each night—wu gan cai, or black preserved vegetables. It looked like a fungus of some sort to me, though I was later told it was bits of bamboo. The bits were indeed black, salty, a bit sweet and chewy—they were served with steamed wheat buns, and you ate them sort of like a sandwich.




After dinner that night we went on a cruise. Shaoxing, a 4000 year old city, is filled with canals and bridges, and is the Venice of China. Except that Suzhou is also the Venice of China, so there you have it. And considering that these cities way outdate Venice, shouldn’t Venice be the Shaoxing of Italy? Just saying…Anyway, we got into a long, flat bottomed boat and wended our way down the canals. Apparently the vice-mayor had specially ordered the lights to be turned on—all the bridges have different colored lights strung along them and trained under them—so it was quite the sight. As a side note, I love how the Chinese light up buildings at night—big buildings all have light effects like the ones from Shanghai, and lots of smaller places are lined with strings of light. Here are some pictures from our cruise—the first one is actually just outside of the restaurant where we ate—it was in a park with lots of streams and bridges, and buildings edged with lights

On Sunday they took us sight-seeing. Shaoxing is famous for Lu Xun, China's greatest twentieth century writer. This is a statue of him from Ming Ren Wang Chun, or Famous People square.

 

Shaoxing is also the birth place of Zhou Enlai, who played a major role in the founding of New China (he was prime minister for a long time) and who many Chinese really admire as the real intellectual and philosopher of the movement. This is from the wall at Ming Rem.... 

Further  back in time, Shaoxing was the homeplace of Dae Yu, the third king or so of Ancient China.Dae is notable for his spirit of self sacrifice: he didn't see his family for over three years when he worked to save shaoxing from flooding (he apparently moved huge amounts of land from the mountain). Here he is on the wall and as a huge statue at the top of the local mountain:

I

Ok, this window is getting grumpy, so I'm going to end it and continue my sight seeing in another post.

Dumpling Party!

I apologize for the laxness of my blog posting. I’ve actually been pretty busy, which is good, because it means I have things to write about, but bad because I have no time within which to write them. All of which sort of assumes that people are sitting around with bated breath awaiting my blog posts, which is super narcissistic.




So last week was both the lead up to the 60th anniversary of the founding of New China (ie, China becoming communist) and the Mid-Autumn festival. Usually Mid Autumn is justa 2-3 day holiday, but we also got 2 days for National Day, so we had Thursday-Thursday off. On the big Chinese Holidays—New Years, Spring Festival and, to a lesser extent, mid-Autumn—everyone in China travels. Apparently the wait at airports and train stations can be over a day. So I did not take any big trips, but explored Ningbo and got to get to know people better.



Sunday night, before classes let out, my students invited Mike Milam, the other English teacher, and I to a dumpling making party. I’m sorry, but how cute are these kids? Can you imagine American College juniors a) spending a night making dumplings and b) inviting their professors to join them? I talked to my assistant later and she said one of the kids had asked her if it would be appropriate to ask me to make dumplings with them . The party was in one of the cafeterias, and the staff had prepared big vats of dumpling filling and stacks of round dumpling skins. When we got there the kids were all hard at it.

in this picture I've joined them. Now, none of them actually knew how to make dumplings. Firstly, dumplings are actually more of a Northern thing, as in any wheat based food item. The South, where I am is rice based. There is plain rice, of course, and bunches of variations of rice noodles. The fried noodle vendors have maybe 10 different kinds of rice noodles ranged in front of them from thread thin strands, to the big dense ovals I mentioned before—I just love these. In fact, I used them to make chicken and dumplings tonight and I think, they may even have been better than Mama Dipp’s dumplings. I’m looking around the room waiting for God to strike me down, now, but I think I’m in luck because China is a religion free country.




The other reason no one really knew what they were doing is this is indeed, women’s work. On holidays, Leo, who’s the departmental vice something, told me, women will sit around, chatting and making tons of dumplings. These kids had obviously not yet been initiated—I got the impression that this may be a dying activity—but they were having a good time trying out different shapes and putting peanuts into random ones—it’s good luck to get a dumpling with a peanut. My favorite was Eric, who’s sort of the class clown, who was flitting from table to table, occasionally attempting a dumpling. He’d then throw it down proudly on the tray, announcing “wonton” or “eggroll” or whatever shape he thought he’d approximated. One of the cafeteria workers came and showed us how to actually make them. Winnie, one of the students, very studiously worked at it and then showed me how. Here I am with my first successful attempt:

Now I’m doing a thumbs up because I’m proud, but here’s something you should know about Chinese kids in picture: they all throw a peace sign. No idea why. Some of the kids wanted to take pictures with me, so here we are:

and here I am with the whole class, again with the peace signs. I'm just surprised there were no rabbit ears.



Apparently this trait is engrained very young: here’s a picture I took at a wedding a few days later (that story is to come). The man in the pic, btw, is Ron, the accounting professor from UIndy:

So that was my Sunday night. Once we had assembled enough dumplings, the cafeteria women whisked them off and returned them boiled in broth; we ate lots of dumplings, we went home (This arty shot, by the by, was taken by one of my students, John, who loves photoography and wants to work for "The Chinese National Geographic." He can stalk dumplings with the best of them.)

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Oh, wait, we also ate mooncakes. Mooncakes are the traditional mid-autumn “treat” The scare quotes are quite intentional and this is not just a Western thing—most Chinese aren’t crazy about them anymore, though I hear haagen daz makes a fine ice-cream one and the Satrbucks was selling its own, Starbuckified, version. Anyway, the traditional mooncake is a very dense, multigrain cake with a sweet or savory filling. I can handle the ones with just fruit fillings—think like a fig Newton, but many have delicious things like preserved egg yolks tucked in as well. Yum. However, they are the traditional gift of mid-Autumn and the boxes they come in are beautiful—you also get a nice gift bag in red with lots of golden decoration. I got a box at the foreign teacher’s lunch that I wrote about and my students bought me a box as well, so I am stocked for life. I also think that mooncakes, much like fruitcake, last forever, so I can regift them at some point.




After that we did head home, and I got a chance to know Leo a little better. We were talking about the Chinese’s attitude toward foreign language study as opposed to American—it does make you feel embarrassed that pretty much everyone in China can speak some English—not just the university kids, who are required to take a few years, but even the street vendors know enough to haggle in English. And, when you think about it, in a sense, all Chinese have two languages from birth: there’s Mandarin, the official language and also the dialect, or fangyan. While the written language is the same all over China, the spoken dialects are so different that people from different areas will not understand each other—that’s why all Chinese movies and most TV shows have subtitles in Chinese. Leo was talking about how his wife’s family was from a different province and spoke a totally different dialect and he called himself the family dog—the only words he understood from his wife’s mother were “come,” “sit,” and “eat.” To some extent I think the dialects are dying out as people travel more and there’s a greater need for a standardized language, but Leo is careful to speak his family’s fangyan to his son at home so he does not just learn his maternal line’s, so they may hold on for a while yet.



By the way, it is very common for the in laws to live with a family and care for the children. While the Chinese talk less about feminism, the majority of women do work outside of the home from necessity and the kid are raised by the extended family. Because of the one child rule (though a large amount of families have found a way around that, esp in people my age, when the policy was just going into effect) grandkids are a hot commodity. I think it gives the daughter in laws a lot of power—if you’re not nice to her, you’ll never see your only grandchild, which is nice considering how badly daughter in laws were traditionally treated in China.



Another interesting fact about child-bearing in China (I’ve gotten these last few paragraphs of info from my Chinese friends Wang and Yang, or Nina and Jane—we’ve taken to going out, ordering way too much food, and chatting about Chinese and American life): women are supposed to do nothing after giving birth. They stay in the hospital for 7 days and during that time are not even supposed to wash themselves or brush their hair, just eat lots of chicken and milk. The point is to build up strength and encourage lactation, party by returning to a primal state. Even after returning home, the mother is supposed to lay in bed for 3 more weeks: guess it’s good that all those doting grandparents are available!

Shanghai Sight-Seeing

Besides scams and selling, what does Shanghai offer? Well, Shanghai is a lot like…Shanghai. I can’t really compare it to any city I’ve been in, though it reminds me a lot of pictures of Hong Kong I’ve seen. There’s a bit of a feel of London—the wide, tree-lined streets and the bright lights at night kind of remind me of Piccadilly Circus—

(this, by the way is Nanjing street, the main shopping drag--I think this night pic is coolest, but imagine about twice as many people during the day and about a third of them selling something--purses, postcards, little pigs made of some sort of goo that splats when you throw it and then reconstitutes into a pig. The Chinese LOVE these for some reason--I saw about 10 people stopping to watch them today in Ningbo)

and along the Bund, which is the old trade part of Shanghai built up by foreigners, there’s a definite feel of Chicago: the building were built in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, so there are lots of heavy stone and cement neo-classical and baroque style buildings

By the way, I splurged a little and stayed in a hotel on the Bund built during the same time period. It’s got a pretty cool history—the first electric lightbulb in China and Einstein stayed there amongst other things—and while the room was nothing particularly special, the whole hotel had a sort of gloomy, fin-de-siecle, decayed glory, Shining like vibe. Here’s a link if you want more info: http://www.pujianghotel.com/

The Shanghainese will tell you that Shanghai is “Little New York.” Actually Shanghai’s population is about the same as New York STATE’s—the city has about half as many people. But New York’s skyline has been basically formed for the last few decades and Shanghai’s is constantly changing. All of Pudong, or the part east of the Haungpu river, has been built in the last decade or so, so the buildings are all ultra-modern and innovative.

The next morning I went down to the old city, which has lots of classic Chinese architecture—tiled, curved roofs, cramped streets—but the same jumble of people, and commerce.

The big attraction there is YuYuan, a garden constructed during the 1600s. It’s relatively small—about 6 acres—but with the walls around it and trees lining the area, the noise of the city is blocked out, and you only occasionally catch a glimpse of a skyscraper peeking over the edges of the dragon wall. Also, with all the twists and turns, you can spend hours wandering around. There are multiple pavilions, pagodas, and pools (the Chinese are so alliterative!), a giant rockery made of hundreds of tiny rocks carefully pasted together to give the perspective of a big cliff, and lots of carefully constructed walkways and archways that make it feel like the garden stretches further than it really does.

By the way, I learned many of these important facts by stalking the tour guides everyone else had hired. I would innocently stand around, pretending to take pictures, and listen in to what they said, and then wander off to another group. Just a little money saving tip.

One of the things I liked most was the amazing detail—elaborate woodwork in the pavilions, engravings on the walls and stone walkways, wooden carvings set into the walls, and lots of tiny statues and figurines set into the roof. I think this is part of what I like most about Chinese design and architecture—the way it forces you to keep looking and reassessing.




As a little side note, the Dongli village’s women’s chorus was playing in the garden. They were set up on a stage where opera used to be performed—it was framed by a peaked roof, covered in gilded details and hanging lanterns—and wearing traditional qigongs and playing traditional instruments. I sat there transfixed for a few minutes, until they started playing jingle bells.



The ride home from Shanghai was a lot less stressful than there and I got to enjoy the scenery. The area between Ningbo and Shanghai is mainly farmland: lots of raised fields with straight lines between them, farmers squatting in them, straw hats covering their faces and holding hand carved tools, water buffalo grazing in the fields, surrounded by ducks. Occasionally there would be a storage shed of some sort thatched with grass: the older ones had little trees sprouting from them.

Thus ended my trip to Shanghai: next installment, a dumpling party with my students.

Pictures! Beautifully photo-shopped by Tony.

This is some sort of crane that is all over China (Dad, I'm sure you can properly identify it). One day, I was walking along the canal that runs through the middle of the campus, which is lined with stones and filled with water lilies and one of these cranes came flapping out, it's neck fully extended and its legs trailing behind. It was one of my "I'm in China" moments.

This is the cathedral downtown. It gives me a wow, I'm in Europe kind of moment:

Below is Moon Lake

and here are people washing their clothes in it...

and a keyhole opening framing a smaller pond and rockery

a bridge zig-zagging across a lily pad infested pond...

And, finally, some spectacular wedding outfits and poses: