We got the call at 2 p.m., 30 minutes early. The moving people were here. I had spent the entire morning hastily throwing all my Chinese belongings into boxes and bags for the move. We had an abundance of students there to help, three people from the Foreign Affairs Department, the cleaning lady Mrs. Jiang, and a four-man moving crew. They all dashed into my apartment and threw it into the moving truck, while my boss Mr. Li was saying, "Go, go, go!" Soon two taxis skidded up to the apartment, and Lester, Marietta, and I crammed into the back and that was it. Good-bye, old apartment. I won't miss you, mosquitoes.

The night before, I had gone out to Wei's Pizza. They had just opened in a bigger, better site near the Kunming downtown pedestrian mall. This place is owned by a Dutchman named Alex and his Chinese wife Wei. It has a big brick oven and cooks up good pizzas and other Italian food, along with a little Chinese (of course), Indian, and Mexican. It's a great atmosphere and an extensive foreign-language lending library. I ended up playing pool and chatting with some expat Dutchmen (there is a sizable Dutch community here), including one guy's interesting stories about bicycling from The Netherlands to Turkey, flying to Beijing, and cycling down to Kunming.

We had about three hours to get settled into our new apartments, which are housed in the brand-new International Center for Exchange and Cooperation. There is a chandelier in the lobby, a front desk, and two security guards staffing the place at all hours. The elevators were in operation, so the move went very, very quickly. I am in Apt. 918, which I'm told is a fortunate number in Chinese, as it sounds like "jiu yao fa," which has something or other to do with prosperity. Also a student told me that moving to a new place at the end of the year is a prosperous thing to do. So I look forward to 2007.

At 6:30, we three foreign teachers were escorted into waiting black cars and driven to a nearby fancy restaurant. Mr. Yang, the vice president of the school, drove us (the Foreign Affairs Dept. & foreign teachers). This was our Chinese Christmas dinner. The restaurant was about to hold two simultaneous wedding feasts on the third floor, so we got to see the beautiful brides standing out front and kids chasing each other with silly string. The banquet was the best I've had so far in China. We had some Yunnan red wine, duck soup, grilled squid, plenty of tasty vegetable dishes, mushroom soup, sea bass, grilled eel, steamed wholewheat bread dipped in honey, watermelon...there must have been about 20 dishes. After that, it was time for bed.

The next day was Christmas Eve. My students held a Christmas party in one of the classrooms, and even acquired a PA, organized games, had two huge bags of oranges, singing, dancing, and a girl showed up with the guzheng, a Chinese zither, which she played very beautifully and gracefully. My Chinese teacher Ben gave me a framed paper cutting of a Beijing Opera character, which I really enjoy. I played some guitar, but then I had to make it to Marietta's for her Christmas Eve potluck (one of her students asked me if I would be going to the "Lucky Pot"), where we chatted until late in the night and drank a little Jamaican rum.

The next day was Christmas and I was at work at 8 a.m. (it's not a public holiday in China, although it's widely celebrated). I taught two classes, went to my Chinese class, gave 35 oral exams (it's finals right now) in the afternoon and dashed off with Lester and Marietta to a Christmas dinner. It was held in a former factory now art gallery called the Loft. There is a Scandinavian restaurant inside called Nordica, and that's who put on the smorgasbord. We had something equivalent to a church dinner, talked with some of the many Swedes (this couple had taken the Trans-Siberian railroad from Moscow to Beijing), and saw many nice Chinese families. I tried a few glasses of gloog, mulled Swedish wine. The organizers also put on a show of Christmas music and acting. After this long day, I was exhausted once again.

We got back to our hotel/apartment and the girls at the front desk stopped us from going upstairs. From behind the front desk came oranges, Japanese sweets, chocolate, a huge cake (made in our school's canteen), a box of beers. We all congregated around the table in the lobby and celebrated Christmas with the security guards and hotel staff. I was obliged to grab my guitar and sang some Christmas songs with Marietta.

I counted something like five Christmas parties that I went to.

The rest of the week was spent giving oral exams and written exams. I have 150 written exams to grade...some are obviously plagiarized. There's all these composition model books that are in the library and I have a feeling that some of them ended up in students' laps during the exam. After one test, I found one book that was left behind, a page dog-eared to something similar to one of the topics the students could write about (I didn't tell them what they would be writing about beforehand, but these composition books are organized by topic). I haven't graded these papers yet, so it's possible that it's not as bad as I fear. I did keep a close eye on them during testing, but some of 'em are just so crafty! I am looking forward to reading the exams, though, as some students have consistently written great pieces--some that would even put native English speakers to shame.

The oral exams went pretty well. I had the students bring something to read to me, and then draw a random topic from a hat and talk about it. I was surprised by some of the results. Some students who had never spoken in class had very, very good English! Also, I was often surprised and amused by the selections brought in to read. One student, whose English ability is undoubtedly at the top, read the directions from the back of her lotion bottle. Another one read from the script of the horror movie "Saw." Most surprisingly, a student came in with a book of Allen Ginsberg's "Howl" and other poems and read "A Supermarket in California." He had bought the book (it's in English with Chinese translation) in a local bookstore. I asked him if Ginsberg was banned in China--"Howl" can be pretty shocking. He said, "Not any more!"

On Dec 26, there was an earthquake at the bottom of the ocean off the southern coast of Taiwan. I don't believe anyone was hurt, but some underseas cables connecting Asia and North America were ruptured. Consequently, Internet access has been horrible the past week. I am able to access Chinese sites, so I can read the news on China Daily and Xinhua and occasionally Japanese news, but it is usually impossible to reach any American websites.

I worked seven days straight. New Year's Day is a public holiday in China, and Jan 2 and Jan 3 are school holidays, so we had to make those up on Saturday and Sunday. I gave my written exams those two days so now I'm done teaching for two months...I hope to be done with all the grades by Saturday.

Sunday night, I was to have a New Year's Eve party at my apartment. I invited many people. But at 5:30, I was asked to go with the Foreign Language Dept. for a banquet. We would leave at 6. I thought it would be no problem making it back in time for my party. So I went. We went to a nearby fancy restaurant (different from the Christmas party) and sat in the center of a large room. Glass beads were strung from the ceiling completely surrounding us. We were brought out dish after tasty dish. At my table was the Communist Party Secretary of my university, his deputies, the directors of the Foreign Language Department, we foreign teachers, and a couple Chinese professors of English. My neighbor at the table went around and toasted each person with a shot of baijiu (Chinese whiskey), the waitress following him around with the bottle and refilling his glass. Everyone kept toasting the party secretary. Even his driver came in for a toast. Lester, Marietta, and I were toasted numerous times, maybe three times by the party secretary alone. Needless to say, things got pretty rowdy by the end of the banquet, but it was all in good fun. I told my hosts that I needed to go home, and, no, sorry I couldn't go with the party secretary to the next place and drink more. So he had his driver give me a ride back to my apartment.

When we arrived at my apartment, the driver got a call on his cellphone. He told me (from what I could understand of his Chinese) that plans had changed and I must accompany him to the World Expo Garden Hotel. The party secretary had specifically requested that I go there. So I got back into the car and went to the super-fancy hotel, where we sang karaoke on the big screen and danced on the dancefloor until midnight. So this is how I rang in 2007 in China.

Yesterday, I went downtown with Lester and two students. Everyone in China was in downtown Kunming yesterday. We tried to hop on bus 71, but it was full. We waited another 10 minutes for the next bus, but that one was packed too. After 15 more minutes, a third bus came by, fuller than ever. Then we spent 10 minutes trying to flag down a taxi. Finally we made it. Traffic was horrendous. Everyone was out shopping. It was like the day after Thanksgiving in the US. At times the sidewalks were so crowded, they spilled out into the bike lanes, and eventually into the streets. My students kept taking me to fancy department stores to look at clothes I could I went to sleep last night exhausted.

Today two of my students invited me to KFC. Going to KFC or McDonald's is a big deal in China. It's essentially the same as the US, a couple items are different on the menu (it's hard to tell though, as the menu is in Chinese), but it's pretty much like being in the US. I hadn't been to KFC in years, in fact I don't even remember the last time (considering I'm a vegetarian). I suppose that's why people like it. To me, it just seems like a perfect representation of the mediocrity in American society that Ginsberg was "Howl"ing about. It seems to go against the grain of Chinese culture--here eating is a great, perhaps the greatest, social event. Most people object to the idea of "fast food." A good meal will take hours, and be well worth it. But this allure and mystique of America is a strong draw. I guess it's my job here to try to show them the other great things that the US has to offer, other than car culture, crass consumerism and big box retail, lowest-common denominator pop music, blah blah blah.

On New Year's Eve, I bought a scroll of calligraphy done by a giggling master here from Yunnan. He even wrote my name and country down the side (in Chinese, of course). It says something about Yunnan, and Yunnan being a center of Chinese traditional arts. He was also giving a demonstration with the maobi (calligraphy brush), and I tried my hand. One's handwriting in China is traditionally a sign of character. I wonder how my character looks.