From Grits to Chopsticks

Now that we’ve been living in the States for a while, it seemed timely to look back through this year’s photo archive and post a few random photos.  I’ll start with some transportation pictures, like this very small car:a stroller-bike:an overloaded e-bike:

and something new in our part of China – a group of rental RV’s:

Some things that we miss include walking down old flowery streets:

kite flyers:

interesting statuary:

Chinglish advertisements:

our favorite milk tea:

different options at Pizza Hut:

and colorful local food, like this spicy rabbit stew:

Some other differences that we’ve talked about before include constant construction:resulting in all of these new high-rises:a window shop where the owner cuts metal on the sidewalk all day without safety glasses:

a very hot apartment with no A/C:

knock-off products:small gardens wherever spare ground permits:sometimes accompanied by a “garden cottage”:and chickens roaming alongside the highway:

Yes, looking back reminds us of the uniqueness of our life in China.  It also reminds us of how much we miss spending time with our students:

Now that we’re back in the USA, we often miss authentic Chinese food from Yunnan province.  During our final month in China, we enjoyed some unique things.

A group of students invited us to dinner at a new, very delicious hot pot restaurant.  After we sat down, the manager spoke to the leader of the student group, who then interpreted for us: “Would you like to visit the chicken?”  We agreed to do so, assuming that we were being given the opportunity to select our dinner.  But actually, we were being given the opportunity to visit the “kitchen” (a slight mistranslation):

That was probably the cleanest kitchen in our city, unlike the one at our usual street-side restaurant:

Its rating is a clue to the cleanliness of the kitchen:

But the food is tasty, especially the lotus root and stir fried okra:

We also enjoyed the fried pork on toothpicks.  During our final two weeks in China, our friends ordered other parts of the pig for us, including sliced pig stomach (which has the texture of rubber bands):

pig intestines (a bit slimy, but okay if you eat it with the tofu):

and pig brains (fortunately, boiled thoroughly in a spicy soup):

Well, we miss most of the authentic Chinese food…

In 2009, we visited China and took this photo in front of the Business School:

On a sunny day last month, we took another photo in the same spot:

Over the past ten years, we have spent time with hundreds of students and developed many new friendships.  We moved back to the States this week, but hope to return to China again in the future to see our dear friends…

In my Financial English class, I set up the room for an economics experiment, not realizing that it would also lead to a social experiment.  Typically, our classrooms are arranged with a group of desks in the center section, flanked by narrower side sections.  But this time, I split the chairs down the middle to create a large center “trading floor.”  To my surprise, this prompted the students to self-segregate by gender with 29 boys on the left and 27 girls on the right – zero mixing!

I did the same experiment with my Business Negotiation class.  It is a smaller group, so they ended up taking a different approach:

In America, I suspect that students would have evenly spread out to maximize their personal space.  But in the Chinese “group culture,” the students all squeezed onto one side to stay together:

In addition to the usual classes, we have the opportunity to spend time with students at the school-sponsored English corner.  Sometimes outdoors:

and sometimes, indoors:

Teaching English in China can provide opportunities for creative expression (click Sweet Home KM to watch):

In addition to being a “group culture,” we are thankful that China is a culture that respects elders, allowing us the opportunity to spend time with interested young people!

Since we just celebrated Mother’s Day, it seems appropriate to share some beautiful flowers.  The climate in our city is semi-tropical, so we regularly enjoy a wide variety of vibrant colors.  Bougainvilleas abound:

These purple trees line a major street we walk down every week:pink trees enhance the foreground of our apartment building:

and the city recently planted rose bushes along some downtown avenues:

In our apartment courtyard, this large, alien-looking flower sprouted:

and we saw this purple cluster in the park on Sunday afternoon:

It is interesting to see local people working among the flowers:

and foreigners sitting among them:

But of all the flowers we saw on Mother’s Day, one outshone them all.  Because this year, on Mother’s Day, our beautiful new granddaughter was born:

We are so very thankful to welcome her into the world!  Such a special blessing on a special day!

As we’ve said in some of our past blogs, people here often use railroad tracks as sidewalks and gathering places.  We also walk on the tracks, but the short steps from cross-tie to cross-tie can get rather laborious.  One of our most often used sections of track recently underwent a welcomed upgrade, from this:

to this:

They even built a concrete creek lined with hundreds of cypress trees:

This is a very active stretch of railroad track. Every few hours, we get to hear the horn blow and watch the traffic stop from our apartment window (click Train Intersection to watch and listen):

Walking along the tracks provides some interesting views of the city.  In the older sections, people still have small gardens:

but new construction is quickly encroaching upon the old buildings:

It’s probably good to see an old chemical factory being torn down:

but sad to see that an old, peaceful lotus pond has been filled in and replaced with apartments:

When you come to China, be sure to take some time to walk along the tracks!

A few weeks ago, we climbed up our nearby mountain:From the top, you can get a good view of the growing city:You can also see how dry everything is near the tombs on the mountain – the rainy season is still a month away:With that in mind, it wasn’t a big surprise that the mountain caught fire last Thursday and Friday:We heard that the fire raced from the base of the mountain to the very top in just 5 minutes (700 ft vertical):It has been very windy, so the flames quickly spread (click Fire on the Mountain to see video):Teams of firefighters worked from the top of the mountain to fight the dangerous blaze:
and the local news broadcast showed trucks spraying water at the base:Things are quiet for now, but the next day, I saw someone near the mountain burning paper money for her dead relatives…

In a previous post, we shared some photos of the walk along the river that runs through our city.  We are still amazed that we can walk such a long distance through a major city, enjoying parkland almost the entire way.

Of the numerous bridges that cross the river, some are old and ornate:

while some are high and surrounded by new construction:

Along the riverside, there’s always something happening.  If you want a cheap haircut, this is the place:

There are locations for people to play Mahjong:

Kids try to scoop up minnows while men swim against the flow (click Swimmer to see):

People bring their birds to sing together:

and people bring their instruments to play and sing (click River Singers to watch):

Recently, we saw people burning paper money (for dead relatives) on a windy day.  We wondered if they ever catch the adjacent leaves on fire:

As we walked in a different section yesterday, our suspicion was confirmed:

Last year, the river became stagnant and toxic, killing most of the fish.  The flow is cleaner and better now, attracting fishermen:

I suspect, however, that most of the fish, frogs, and snakes are in the markets along the riverside:

Our daily life is extremely busy, so we try to spend Sunday afternoon walking, talking, and decompressing.  Walking along the river provides a wonderful balance of interesting things to see and a quiet time of rest together.

There’s always something interesting to see from our apartment window.  One of the things we see has to do with “trash management.”  On the nearby corner are two dumpsters for common use:

As we’ve mentioned in the past, some people spend most of the day at the dumpster scavenging for recyclables and other things of value:

But during the night, the real action begins.  The capacity of the dumpsters is quickly exceeded by the trash from nearby restaurants and shops, so they just dump their trash on the street.  The scavengers tear through each bag, further spreading the pile onto the roadway:

Every morning, there is a huge pile of garbage awaiting pickup:

To cope with this, the garbage trucks are designed with a large scoop.  They lower the scoop, back into the trash mountain, and start shoveling (click Trash Scooper to see video).  Notice that, even while the trash truck is loading up, there is still a person scavenging (on the right):

A local person told us that it is bad luck to throw away trash during the 10 days following Chinese New Year.  I can’t imagine how big the pile was on day 11…

In previous posts, I’ve talked about the bus ride from our local campus to the new campus an hour away.  As the bus departs from my nearby (in-town) campus, it’s interesting to see how quickly we travel from the city and into the countryside.  I usually leave our apartment about 6:30AM and walk to the bus while it is still dark:Our apartment complex is in the background, and you can tell that only a few residents are awake at this time.  The bus departs the campus and quickly leaves the high-rise buildings and haze in the background:At the edge of town, the sun starts to rise and the buildings get smaller:The population drops as we get into the mountains and countryside:By the time we get to the remote campus, the sun has risen and we’re ready to start the day:I teach a large Financial English class (62 students):and a smaller group of International Trade students (32 students):It is springtime in China, and the trees on the campus are in full bloom:Even after teaching in China for nine years, I still wake up some mornings and am surprised to be here!