Tomorrow I’m taking off for a five-day history class trip to Hangzhou and Nanjing. My students seem reasonably enthusiastic about the overnight train trip (some of them have already had train adventures traveling over the break) but then most have never had to sleep in the middle bunk with five Chinese businessmen getting drunk and playing cards by flashlight until three in the morning.
(On the other hand, I’ve seen more than a few haggard and weary Chinese business-types eagerly switch out of a berth containing five energetic liuxuesheng playing Uno…although the students are not usually doing so after hours and not (so far as I know) drunk.
We don’t really get to spend that much time in Hangzhou. It’s an “arrive on Thursday morning/leave on Friday afternoon” situation, but this is the shorter of two Mobile Classrooms (as we call these trips.) The longer ones will happen in April when one group will study the affects of China’s economic development on habitat preservation, air/water quality, and bio-diversity in Yunnan and a second group will travel to Zhongdian (Shangri-La) and then into the mountains of Southwest Sichuan for a two-week class on Tibetan culture. Those are the epic hauls, this
Happy New Year
It’s nearing sunset on the last day of this, the year of the Golden Tiger. The first tentative booms and celebratory ka-kracks are sounding over the grey tiles of Minwang Hutong, occasional bursts of nervous energy, harbingers of what’s to come, like the claws of a wannabe werewolf clacking on the bars of his cage before letting out for a full-on full-moon rumble.
It’s my first Spring Festival in Beijing after many years of celebrating in Tianjin. This year we asked Tianjin to come to our house and I think we’re better for it. All of the things I like about the Spring Festival — dumplings, immediate family, bad television — are gathered in one place, leaving such things as crowded rail stations and traversing streets of drunken artillery for less fortunate souls.
In any case, wishing all of you the happiest of New Years and best wishes for the Year of the Golden Rabbit, may this year be full of joy, health, and good fortune.