The required paperwork for someone entering the JET Program includes a physical exam by a licensed, practicing doctor and an FBI Identification Record, which proves I have have no criminal record. I also have to fill out an IRS form 8802 to claim US residency so I don't have to pay Japanese income tax. There is a foreign earned income exclusion on overseas income of less than $80,000, so I won't have to pay US federal income tax either. The strange thing with the IRS form is that I have to pay $35 for a one page letter from the US Dept. of Treasury that states I am a US resident for tax purposes. So I have to pay money for a tax form in order to not pay taxes.

A student helped me complete the physical exam at the nearby People's 533rd Army Hospital. I paid 25 yuan (about $3.23) for a physical, urinalysis, and chest X-ray. The doctor escorted me through the hospital, first giving me a tiny shot glass of a plastic cup and telling me to go to the hospital bathroom (which looks like any other public bathroom here). I had never been in a Chinese hospital. From first glance, there was not much privacy. In one room, people were sitting around with IV's stuck in their arms (which is a common treatment for colds/flu, but I think it's a little drastic). In the next room, a nurse took my blood pressure while doctors tended to a screaming infant. I had to take my tiny cup upstairs to the lab, ducking under the neon signboard. One old man in a Mao hat gave me a thumbs up. After we dropped off the cup, I went to the vision room. There they checked my sight. Instead of the Roman alphabet, the sign had the letter "E" rotated at different angles--I had to point whether it was facing up, down, left, or right. They checked me for color blindness. I read the numbers back in Chinese.

In the next room, they looked up my nose. That wasn't on the form. We passed an "AIDS room" which I assumed was for HIV testing. Some old needles were in the garbage can, but I did see a syringe on the floor. Most of the basic areas (blood pressure room, weight/height room) in the hospital resembled an American hospital from the 50s, plain white walls, older medical equipment, nurses in white hats. However, there were some places, like the X-ray room which looked as modern as any American hospital. The hospital was clean, just not flashy like Western hospitals (although there is a new hospital in Kunming run by Canadian doctors that costs just as much as American hospitals). The entire test took about an hour. I am grateful my student could walk me through and translate, as the doctor did not speak English.

I must send in my fingerprints for the FBI record. I tried doing this at the downtown police station, but I was told that they don't provide this service, so I must go downtown to the Immigration Control Center (出入管理中心). I met one nice woman there who spoke English, but informed me that the Chinese police only do fingerprinting records electronically these days, and they have no way of printing the form out. She suggested I try my neighborhood police station. So I tried that, and they sent me to the Panlong-qu district station. No one wants to put ink on my fingers and press it down on the form (which I have duly printed out on cardstock paper--I even provided the ink). I am beginning to think that it is a matter of face. Only criminals get fingerprinted in China, and for the police to fingerprint me would be a loss of face for me. That's the only thing I can think of. I emailed the Japanese consulate about this, hoping they will allow me to get fingerprinted once I return home to the US. And no, I don't have a criminal record!

Tomorrow is first day of Wu-Yi Holiday, which celebrates International Labor Day (May 1). We have the whole week off--it's one of China's three Golden Week holidays. I decided to go to Myanmar (Burma). I've been thinking about this for a long time, and now is my opportunity. Pyidaungzu Myanma Naingngandaw (The Union of Myanmar) has a consulate in Kunming, and I went down there to get my visa. It is in an old building and the elevator is often out of service. I had to walk up to the fifth floor (not so bad as there is often no fourth floor in China, similar to there occasionally being no 13th floor in the US). The consulate office was bare except for some old furniture, completely different from Vietnam's plush Kunming consulate. I didn't see any computers behind the counter, although there may have been one in the back room. Some young Myanma people were working and spoke fine English. Two Chinese people were dropping off a huge stack of Chinese passports.

I sat down at a ramshackle table covered in glue. I had to fill out three forms and provide three photos. The forms asked for my name, occupation, father's full name, etc. The woman kept using White-Out on my entries and I had to keep doing it over. First, for the occupation, I had to list where I worked. So I wrote it in Chinese (I thought it would be more comprehensible than writing Xinanlinxueyuan). She said, "No Chinese." So I wrote "Southwest Forestry University" and the address of the school. She said, "No address" and used white-out on the address. I marked that I was arriving by land, and she changed that to arriving by air. I signed my name beside the word "Signature." She used white-out there too and told me I need to sign *under* the signature line. She white-outted my Chinese address and told me to write my American address. By the time I got everything done, my application looked like it had been brushed over a couple times with white paint. She asked me when I wanted my visa, today or tomorrow, although I could see that in the meantime it had already been put into my passport. I said tomorrow as it the price was cheaper (I want as little as possible of my money going to the government of Myanmar). The people there were friendly though. Throughout the ordeal, the young woman was chatting in Burmese on her cellphone about TrustMart (local supermarket) and presumably other non-governmental business

Tomorrow I will teach two classes then take the night bus to Ruili, the "Vegas of China," the border town with Myanmar. My friends Lester and Will are going to Ruili, but will not cross into Myanmar. My friend Ðinh was going to go with me, but canceled at the last minute to go back to Vietnam for the break. From the border, I must hire a guide and acquire necessary permits to allow me to travel to Hsipaw in Shan State. From there, I hope to continue to Mandalay, although I don't have enough time to make it to Bagan (something amazing, like Angkor Wat in Cambodia, it's a pity I can't make it there). I heard that you can't reenter China through Ruili, so I will probably have to fly back to Kunming from Mandalay or Chiang Mai, Thailand.

Some people object to visiting Myanmar because of the repressive government. I understand this. However, I feel it's important to have grassroots contact with the Myanma people. Aung Sang Suu Kyi (the Nobel Laureate for Peace), although generally against traveling to Burma at the moment, said in 1995 that "Tourists can open up the world to the people of Burma just as the people of Burma can open up the eyes of tourists to the situation in their own country if they're interested in looking." A few people objected to my coming to China because of its human rights record. However, I feel my being here has made much more of a positive impact than negative. A few Chinese object to my going to Japan. However, I'm going to Burma (and Japan, and China, and the US). I have always been interested in Burma, and now's my chance to go.

I just need to make sure to tell everyone about what I saw.

So this story will continue. Last week I found out that I have been accepted into the Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) Program. Next month, I will find out exactly where in Japan I will be placed. I arrive in Tokyo on August 5. I plan on arriving in Iowa around July 12.

Last weekend I went to Heijing, an ancient village in the Chuxiong Mountains, about a six hour train ride from Kunming. There is one train a day there, and I think that's the only way to get there. When we arrived at the station, we were met by a multitude of horse carts which took us about a mile to the city gates. We crossed Five Horses Bridge and entered the village proper. Heijing is known as a "salt city." The salt mines have been used for hundreds of years. Even Marco Polo supposedly commented on them. There is one main street--no cars in the whole place lined with lanterns and wooden buildings. The town is not quite that touristy, nothing like Dali, although tourism is the mainstay of the economy. At night the town comes alive with folk dancing and traditional music. People break out their traditional costumes (it's an Yi village) and sanxianqings and erhus and play and sing and dance in a circle all night long. Old people and young come out. In the surrounding mountains we met a 100 year-old woman. Apparently the mountains are full of old people--the locals said it was due to the clean air and water. All in all, a beautiful place.

The train ride there was a challenge--it's a local train, stopping about every 10 minutes from here all the way to Panzihua, Sichuan. People are getting on and off all the time, loaded down with bailing wire, boxes of live chickens, people smoking cigarettes, screaming babies, large baskets of vegetables carried on farmers' backs, straw hats.

A couple of weeks ago, Lester invited me with his friend Palindrome to visit Bamboo Temple, on the northwest side of Kunming. We took a minibus up, up, up into the surrounding mountains and explored the site. There is a room full of exquisitely life-sized clay luohan (arhats or noble ones), carved by the master Li Guangxiu between 1883 and 1890. There are surfing Buddhas (standing on blue dogs, turtles, giant crabs), one with very long eyebrows, one with a thin arm stretched all the way into the ceiling! I saw something like this in a cave in Baoshan, but the level of detail capturing the varieties of human expression.

The day after that, I biked to Tanhua Temple, whose pagoda is within view of my apartment. The grounds are very peaceful--people playing majiang & cards, sleeping in hammocks--so I sat down at a picnic table and started correcting student essays. Soon I noticed people hovering over me and looking over my shoulder, trying to read the students' text. There is no privacy in China! I quickly finished my work and climbed up to the top of the pagoda, which I hadn't done since my first week here. I was much more familiar with the city and could recognize many sites. I even could see my apartment from the tower. Looking downtown, I saw the familiar Industrial and Commercial Bank of China's spiral-top skyscraper along with all the other massive buildings that make up a booming city of 3.5 million.

I have witnessed so much change here in less than eight months. Buildings going up and down. My favorite hot pot place is now a pile of rubble, along with the rest of the city block. The landscape is constantly changing as familiar landmarks go down, replaced by new multi-story apartment complexes and office buildings. We are in the middle of the largest human migration in history--the flight of the rural Chinese to urban areas. There must be housing and facilities for all these people, so progress continues at an astounding rate. I have gotten used to living in a construction site. Even the shortcut I used to take home is now a foundation for a new building.

I saw a jazz concert a few days ago. It was put on at Nordica, a Swedish-run cultural center/cafe/art gallery/(and what I strongly suspect to be an underground church). The musicians were all Chinese, teachers at Yunnan Normal University (Teacher's College). I was greatly impressed with the skill and intensity of the piano-bass-drum trio. They even brought on a professional singer (Chinese) who brought the house down. It was an amazing event, and my first time to see jazz in a long time.

A couple of weeks ago, I was getting short on money (due to my Guam interview). Suddenly, the office manager, Wendy, of the Foreign Languages Department called me. "I haven't seen you for a long time," she said. Then she gave me 570 yuan for giving a guest lecture and judging some speech contests last semester. I immediately went to Mandarin Books (by far the best English language bookstore in Kunming) and bought Atop an Underwood, the early writings by Jack Kerouac. Then I went to Prague Café and had a pizza and some beer.

I am very sad to be leaving Kunming in July. I was seriously thinking of staying at least another year, but I worked so hard to get into this JET Program, and it's a big deal--less than 25% of applicants make it in. Also, Yuka said she'd go with me wherever I end up in Japan, and I can't pass that up. I miss her too much. But I will make the most of my time here in China, and will sure to be back as soon as possible, you can count on that.

There is something about Asia that I've really grown to love, something that keeps drawing me back, and it's not just the food. It's the people, of course, but I can't seem to put it down precisely. I just know the draw is there, and if anything, is growing day by day. In four months, I will be in Japan, trying to speak Japanese once again, eating okonomiyaki, hopefully sending emails back about the strange and exciting and wonderful experience of there, too. But also with a tear in my eye for China, for it will be sad to leave and you know I love it dearly, a love like that of a native son's.