Chairman Mao gave me a call on Saturday morning to let me know there was a bus load of Vietnamese students waiting outside my gate. I hopped in and we all headed to the zoo, up in the mountains northeast of Kunming. As you remember, this is not Mao Zedong, the founder of this great nation, but Prof. Dr. Tran Van Mao, the director of the Center for the Environment and Sustainable Forestry Development at Vietnam Forestry University. His business card reads, "Outstanding Scientist of the 21st Century."

Chinese zoos are not like American zoos. And this happened to be a wild animal park. If you want to have your picture taken holding a monkey, you can do that. If you want to take a bamboo fishing rod and lower a hunk of meat down to a tiger, you can do that. If you want to climb on a (tamed) tiger and take a picture, you can do that. Etc. The animals' living conditions weren't as bad as I initially feared and there were some interesting species: Himalayan griffins, red pandas (they look like raccoons), white tigers. Oftentimes in China, I feel like I'm an animal in a zoo and people are watching me. This wild animal park was a pleasant diversion from all that--people had *real* animals to look at rather than random foreigners.

As far as I could tell, kids were turned loose in this huge park (it took us all day to go through). Next to the leaping tigers and somersaulting bears, I saw some 12 year old boys chugging a beer, but none of the adults around seemed to mind. Times like these remind me I'm not in the US. We often ran into a group of 12 year old girls. It was fun trying to communicate with them because none of us foreigners spoke much Chinese (the Vietnamese are here on a language program and are also beginners, most of them at about the same proficiency of Putonghua as I am).

I think we stopped at least eight times for a snack/meal break. When I had earlier stepped onto the bus, I noticed bags and bags of bananas, apples, oranges, potato chips (Oishi brand--cucumber, wasabi, and spicy flavors), bottled water, peanuts, sunflower seeds, etc. I thought this was for lunch, but instead we were constantly stopping to eat. I suppose the Vietnamese are just as crazy about food as the Chinese. These breaks lasted at least 20 minutes, so you can imagine the amount of food eaten by about 25 youngsters.

When it came time to leave the park, the large group had split into two. I was part of the first group, and waited about an hour for the second group to come. In the meantime, I bought a boiled ear of corn and enjoyed some corn on the cob like I was home in Iowa. One distressed-looking Chinese woman came up to me. "Excuse me, do you speak English?" Of course. "Well, I'm trying to get back to the Sakura Hotel and I'm afraid I missed the last taxi. I'm from Hong Kong and don't speak Mandarin too well. Can you help me?"

A Chinese woman asked me to help her with Chinese. For all of you who think that "Chinese" is just one language, here is your counterexample. In Hong Kong, they speak Cantonese which is completely different from Mandarin (which is spoken in Kunming, although Kunming has its own dialect, still more or less Mandarin). The similarity between the languages is something like Spanish and French. The written language is basically the same, but Hong Kong uses traditional Chinese characters while Mainland China uses simplified Chinese characters. So even a short note may be very difficult to understand, and many people here are only semi-literate.

I mustered up my best Chinese and asked one man how she could take the bus back. "Mei you," he shot back..."don't have" or "no" or "I don't know what to say to this foreigner." She tried her best in Mandarin. Her tones sounded very natural but her language flow was stop & start just like mine. Eventually, we got her a taxi and she was very grateful. She said if I am ever in Hong Kong and need a help, I can call her. All in all, very strange.

We posed for some pictures with the 12 year-old girls. They were delighted to jump on my back (two at a time) and make funny faces around the foreigner. I'm not sure who the culprit was, but someone yanked out one of my hairs for a souvenir!

Later that night, a few close friends and I went out for dinner at a fancy Thai/Burmese restaurant set up in an old house. We got to sit out in the courtyard. Very nice. But our lingering there inadvertently caused some hurt feelings.

I told my students and some other people I would be having a party at the Lao Chang Ji Jiu Ba (The Old Record Player Bar), which serves as my local. I told them it would begin at 9:30. Due to some traffic jams and other nonsense, we didn't end up getting back to Bailong Village until 10. I thought, no problem. No one comes to a party at the beginning, right? Like with my French friends...if a party is supposed to start at 9:30, no one will show up until after 11. But in Chinese culture, if a party begins at 9:30, people start showing up at 9. Some people were worried that I had forgotten about them and wasn't going to show.

But the mood quickly changed. As soon as I entered the door (actually as I was coming down the street), I was showered with balloons, gifts, a bouquet of 2 dozen red roses, an enormous cake, and tons of cheers. I was overwhelmed. I've never had a birthday like this. I started to become a little emotional, tears welling up in my eyes, my voice cracking a little, until....POP! POP! POP!

One of my mischievous students named Koby (presumably after Kobe Bryant) held a candle to the balloons nearest my face and I was met with an explosion and an immediate smell burnt rubber and scorched hair. I had pieces of melted balloon all over my head, my eyebrows were singed, my sideburns toasted. Happily, Koby got it too. He disappeared after that, and reappeared about 40 minutes later with his head shaved.

We carved up the cake and the festivities truly began. In China, a cake is a big, big deal. I cannot overstate it. It is not only admired and eaten, but also smeared all over the birthday boy's face (students' too, can't forget that). At midnight, a completely unassociated patron came down from upstairs and started breakdancing.

All in all, it was a great celebration. I had my hair plucked out, lit on fire, and cake thrown in my face.

I took it easy the next day. Some students showed up at my apartment and took me out for lunch at a nearby restaurant. For supper, one woman who teaches philosophy at a nearby university took Lester and me out to eat at a very fine Chinese restaurant. This time it was bamboo root, goat cheese and tomatoes, some vegetables I've never seen before in my life, and braised tofu. She took us for desert to the Prague Cafe on Wenlin St. and treated us to cheesecake, something I thought I would never see in China. It was delicious.

This woman's English name is Emily and she is from Lijiang, a UNESCO World Heritage town in Yunnan. She is ethnic Naxi and can read and write the Dongba script, which is the only remaining hieroglyphics system in the world. She's been to Hawaii and Europe to give lectures on it. So a very entertaining lady. I think Lester has a crush on her. She invited us to Lijiang (the old part of the town) to her house and promised to treat us to authentic Lijiangese cuisine. I will take her up on that.

Many holidays in China are based on the lunar calendar. People have two birthdays in China--solar & lunar, and the big day is on the lunar (I found out that my other birthday was back in September, too late). I am beginning to appreciate the lunar calendar. At first, I thought it was some arbitrary and unpredictable, outdated system for keeping time. But I'm realizing that this calendar is much more in touch with the change of seasons, the weather, the rhythms of every day life. Perhaps the good ole solar calendar is best for iron-clad accuracy and leap years and such, but isn't it strange that the first day of winter is December 22 this year? Hasn't it been winter for a few weeks before that? To the Chinese, Winter Solstice (Dec. 22) is "Midwinter," which makes more sense to me.

On Tuesday, November 7, it was noticeably cooler, as if there was a distinct change in seasons. One of my students told me, "Today is the first day of winter, so we must go out to eat something hot and then we can stay warm all winter long." Two other students found another way to keep me warm: they gave me a small bottle of Erguotou Jiu ("twice distilled spirits"/二锅头酒), which is 56% V/V firewater from Beijing. I'm a little nervous to open that, so it remains on my kitchen counter...

So we went out to eat with four Chinese and a Vietnamese. After the lengthy meal (no, I didn't eat dog) and plenty of toasts, including being encouraged to shout "Vietnam Mun Nam" which apparently means "Vietnam is Number One," we went next door to my friend's pub. They had a small campfire burning on the sidewalk. It was actually very cozy and reminded me of home. Until someone showed up with a serving of fried grasshoppers (I had to try that...they remove the legs and it's not too bad, a little oily). The owner of the bar, who speaks very good English, broke out his erhu (二胡/two-stringed Chinese fiddle) and started playing folk tunes. His friend builds traditional Chinese instruments, and he plans on introducing us when the opportunity arises. I've been very keen in learning a Chinese instrument even before I arrived here in the Middle Kingdom. Here is a video of Wang Guowei playing the erhu.

My film club continues well attended, and volleyball has ended tonight with a sound drubbing by the administrative dept. The coach of the Foreign Language Dept. is a Ms. Jiang, a former sergeant in the Chinese Army. I was a benchwarmer, but still part of the team. ....! Hao qiu! I am seeking redemption once basketball starts. Last year, the Foreign Languages Men's team was last place. That will not happen again this year, I assure you. Most people here stand about eight inches shorter than me.

Last weekend, I ate. And ate. First, I got invited to go out to eat with one of my students for her birthday. We went to a Chongqing hotpot restaurant. As soon as I walked into the haze, my eyes started burning and I had to sneeze. Food from Chongqing and Sichuan (Szechuan) in general is HOT. People were coughing and noses were running. It was a fine meal. Not sure about the duck intestines. In hotpot, anything goes. And afterwards, about 15 of us hit the KTV (karaoke) palace for a grand ole time singing Hotel California and drinking Coors Light in a private room.

On Saturday, I visited Heilongtan (Black Dragon Pool/黑龙潭) and took in the beautiful park, the enormous gold temple carp (koi), the paddle boats that look like goofy cars on the water, the ancient Buddhist temple, and fragrant incense. There was a pagoda from the Han Dynasty, a Ming Dynasty inscription, a tree from the Sung Dynasty, you name it. History was rich there, a thousand years back in one place. Even got in free, because my friend's sister works for the Parks Bureau.

That afternoon, we went to a teahouse Golden Horse Gate, drank some fine Yunnan tea, and met some cousins of my friend's. These people whom I have never met before took us out to a very fancy restaurant serving mushroom hotpot. This time the crazy ingredient was sheep stomach. I was glad to meet a Thai woman who speaks very good English, an adorable three year-old girl and her new Barbie, a man called "The Graduate," and another man curiously named "Saddam Confucius." The host provided a large plastic Coca Cola bottle filled with bootleg baijiu from Xishangbanna.

On Sunday evening, my student Koby showed up with two other students and invited me to eat at a Hunan restaurant. I have a lot of stories about Koby. I believe his heart is entirely made of basketball. He speaks a thick Hunan dialect which makes it hard for his countrymen to understand him. He likes to flirt with girls, although he doesn't seem as successful as he wishes. He also adores Michael Jordan. (And it goes without saying, Yao Ming.) Koby's a great guy.

The Hunan food was delicious, and very different from the Yunnan food I've been eating. I've heard that each province in China is like its own country, and I'm beginning to believe it. We had braised bean curd, carp soup, some mysterious thing that my students claimed was tofu but tasted like sausage, and huge river snails. On the way back, I expressed a curiosity in some long sticks a man was selling off the back of his bicycle. What was it? I ended up shoving two five-foot sticks of sugarcane into the back of a taxi. That's the snack for my 8:00 a.m. writing class tomorrow.

To eat sugarcane, you need a machete; that's how cool of a snack it is.

Later on, I got a massage on the street, right in front of the Guangdong Development Bank's front door. There are usually three or four older blind people giving 45 minute massages for 10 kuai (about $1.25). They laugh at my poor attempts at speaking Kunming dialect. The massages are different from the US, and seemed to be based on some Taoist principles. This time the massage was mostly directed at my head, including a painful thirty seconds when I thought the old man was going to crush my skull. But, as always, I came away feeling like a million bucks and slept like a baby.