I took a late morning flight out of Kunming to Shenzhen, one of China's richest cities (on the border with Hong Kong). I was fortunate that they let me take Yuka's suitcase as a carry-on, as I could get off the plane very quickly and make a mad dash for the port. There was a ferry that was due to leave at 2:00 p.m. for Hong Kong International Airport (my next stop). If I would have missed it, I would have risked missing my next connection, but there was no problem. Before I knew it, I was sailing in the Pearl River Delta for Sky Pier (Hong Kong Airport's Port). They even refunded the Hong Kong tax money that I paid on my plane ticket when I got there (HK$120). There was an altercation with a very, very fat angry Chinese man, his group of friends(?) all in Hong Kong Disneyland attire, and a poor airline representative. It was strange hearing Cantonese again, with its elongated final tones drifting up or down.

After I got out of the port, I re-emerged into the Western world. This was the first time in six months. I was surprised to be surrounded by English books and magazines in the airport bookstore. I stared in wonder for about 20 minutes...things I completely forgot about--the shelves and shelves of business books, National Enquirer, pornographic magazines with their plastic wrap and black covers so only the titles are visible, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal...none of those things I have seen in six months. I also saw a plethora of Western fast food restaurants, lots and lots of foreigners, people in super-trendy clothes...it was a little overwhelming.

Someone (I forgot who) remarked about their China experience, how it all feels like a dream now. I had a similar feeling, like stepping through the looking glass, back into the Western world. Hong Kong, especially the airport, is firmly placed in the Western world.

The next stop was Manila airport. Here's a guide for the Manila airport, in 18 easy steps:

1. Fill out an immigration card on the plane. Get off the plane.
2. Walk over a disinfectant cushion (ala the UK during the foot-and-mouth crisis). There are also infrared cameras hanging from the ceiling at this point and a doctor closely watching the temperatures of each passenger.
3. Get in line and go through immigration, even if you're just changing planes. So I got a Philippines stamp, and had 21 days to stay in the country, even though I told them I was going to Guam.
4. Get in line and wait for your luggage.
5. Get in line and go through customs.
6. Walk outside the airport, and go down a road for 10 minutes to a different airport. Some people were taking jeepneys (very cool transportation in the Philippines), but I didn't anticipating having to have Philippine pesos. It's not clear where you're supposed to enter the other airport, but a security guard let me through a gate.
7. Walk up an obscure staircase and get in line to enter the airport. Show another security guard your passport and airplane ticket. If you don't have a ticket, you have to show your itinerary. If you couldn't print your itinerary for the past few days because every print shop in Kunming was closed for the Chinese New Year, he'll get a wadded-up print-out from somewhere and look you up.
8. Get in line and go through security. You can leave your shoes on.
9. Check into your flight and get a boarding pass.
10. Get in line and go through security again. Take off your belt and shoes and put them into the x-ray machine.
11. Give an official 750 Philippine pesos or US$15.50 for "airport improvement and security development tax."
12. Get in line and go through immigration. First you must fill out an emigration card.
13. Go through customs.
14. Find your gate and go downstairs. At the bottom of the stairs, give a security person your passport and boarding pass.
15. Give someone else your carry-on items so they can search it.
16. Someone else will wave a metal-detecting wand around.
17. Give someone else your shoes (take them off) for inspection.
18. Board your next flight.

I arrived on Guam this morning at 4:45 a.m. Back in the US, the first time in six months. I slept for a few hours in the airport until it was time to check into my hotel. After 5 a.m. or so, the airport was completely deserted except for security people and airline workers. I was awoken at 8 or so by Filipino flight attendants laughing loudly at dirty jokes. I decided to save a couple bucks and walked from the airport to the hotel. Nowadays, I think nothing of walking 30 minutes for something. It's no big deal, but I forgot...this is America, even though I'm in Guam. I saw the familiar roadside debris of Bud Light cans, empty packs of Doral. Some people shouted "Eyyyy!" at me, as some Americans shout at pedestrians where pedestrians are uncommon. I also haven't really thought about low-riders and sub-woofers, hip-hop music, backwards baseball caps, desolate sidewalks (I was the only pedestrian). It's strange being in America without a car.

This island is in the west Pacific, three times closer to Manila than Honolulu. There is a huge Navy base and Air Force base. There are lots and lots of Japanese tourists. There are nice beaches, but mostly Guam is used for duty-free shopping. I needed some supplies and headed for K-Mart. Guam has the world's largest K-Mart in the world. It's not nearly as exciting as it sounds. The locater signs in the store (housewares, pharmacy, plus sizes, etc.) are in English, Chamarro (local language), and Japanese.There was an interesting snippet I caught overhead between standard K-Mart muzak: short grammar lessons in Chamarro. I met a woman working at the airport from Palau. She taught me "thank you" in her native language: "muu lang." I also see many Melanesians, Filipinos, S. Pacific islanders. Some people are huge. I went to a restaurant tonight and guys as big around as they are tall kept eating and eating and eating, presumably keeping up their sumo physique.

Most people seem very laid-back and have a good sense of humor. They often lapse from English into other languages, things I have never heard before but include a lot of Spanish and English words. Most of the Japanese tourists here don't speak any English, so many signs are only in Japanese. I helped a family find their destination on the bus today and they seemed a little shocked that I could understand what they were talking about. When they got off the bus, they each waved to me, one at a time, in deep gratitude.

Tomorrow morning at 9 I have my interview at the Guam International Trade Center, 6th floor. The Japanese Consulate General is there, and hopefully this will get me into the Japanese Exchange and Teaching Program in August. That's the whole reason why I am there.

Also I wanted to save some money, so I changed my ticket and will go back to the Philippines two days early (cheaper than Guam, whejavascript:void(0)
Publishre nothing's cheap). From there, I'll fly back to Hong Kong, take a boat to Shenzhen, and then to Kunming. I was intrigued with the Philippines and need to see more. But now it's time for sleep.

Yuka and I took the night bus down to Hekou, on the Vietnam border. This bus was a sleeper bus, bunk beds, room for about 30. The beds are quite small and not designed for a Western frame, so I wasn't too comfortable. But we made it to the border just in time for the flag raising and the Chinese national anthem, signifying the opening of the border for that day. After we passed the border formalities, we walked across the Red River and into Lao Cai, Vietnam.

Vietnam is booming right now. It has the second fasted growing economy in Asia (8% last year, behind China's 10% but ahead of India's 5%). It just joined the WTO a couple of months ago. Bush was in Hanoi in November, I think that was when. So many things in Vietnam were similar to China, lots of construction, concrete buildings going up left and right, a burgeoning middle class, great optimism for a chance at a better life. However, Vietnam was different from China too. Sure, the Chinese influence was there, but the writing system uses the Roman alphabet (or something similar enough), so it was much easier to read things. There was a definite French influence from years of colonialism, and definitely their own "Vietnam-ness" which makes it completely unique from anywhere else. One US dollar is about 16,000 dong. It was not fun counting all those zeros. I ended up dividing by 2000 and thinking in terms of Chinese money, which was easier as prices in Vietnam are similar to prices in China.

We found a minibus driver who would take us 30km up to Sapa for 20,000 dong (about $1.25, or 62 cents each). We rode up through the winding mountain roads to a beautiful village underneath Vietnam's highest mountain, Fanxipan. This area is full of Vietnam's ethnic minority groups including the H'mongs, Black Thai, Red Thai, White Thai, Dzao, etc. Many people here, including the men (which is not usually the case in China), were wearing traditional clothes. Everyone in this town was in the tourist business.

Before we stepped out of the minibus, representatives from no less than hotels had crowded on (we were already full with 10 people on the way up). "You stay here $5 a night brand new hotel it's not in your guidebook mountain view come check it out if you don't like it no problem, ok?" We had pamphlets, businesscards, brochures crammed into our faces. We decided on the Green Mountain Hotel which did have a great view, private bathroom, balcony overlooking the mountains, and plenty of hot water for $5. We decided to go for a walk.

"Hello? Motorbike?" A guy pulled up on his motorbike. "No thanks," I said, "I just want to walk." "Hello, moto!" another guy shouted as he pulled his motorbike up. It was something we would hear consistently for the next two weeks. Granted, as we rode the bus and made stops, any person getting off, it didn't matter where, Vietnamese or foreigner, would get the same treatment. I didn't see many people walking in Vietnam.

The next morning, we found a baguette stand doing egg sandwiches for 3000 dong (about 15 cents). We also found a decent coffee shop, and had my first cup of decent coffee in six months. The Chinese are not big coffee drinkers, but the Vietnamese do it right, along with French pastries, baguettes, wine from the highland university city of Dalat, music. We walked down to Cat Cat, a H'mong village down the mountain about 3km away. We had to pay 3000 dong to walk the road. There was a beautiful waterfall and a pretty destitute village, people all sewing the blankets and clothes that were hawked all over Sapa town. The hassle here was much less, and we did see a new school being built. We chatted with some H'mong girls playing a game similar to jacks. Everyone speaks English and takes US dollars: "There are H'mong people everywhere, even in America," one girl told me. I knew this to be true as my friend Amanda told me of the large H'mong community in the Twin Cities, among other places. "Yes, that's right, I said." They of course had things to sell as well, but didn't seem to care if we bought anything. There were so many other tourists with more money to spend than me, a person on a Chinese university teacher's salary. Sapa's nice, really incredible views, but as Yuka said, "We're trapped." You can't go anywhere without having to pay or being offered something to buy.

We spend two days in Sapa, then took an overcrowded minibus back to Lao Cai, where we were dropped off at the driver's friend's or brother's restaurant, serving "Western food," also booking train tickets, which we prefered to do by ourselves 50 meters away at the train station, for cheaper. We ate next door to the station, a place decidedly not on the tourist maps, and chatted with the owner. He gave me a kind of sauce with orange chili peppers, ginger and sugar, and then something to drink that helped with digestion. When we entered the train station, a security guard pushed us to the front of the line and got us past all the scalpers. He even wrote down the price to make it clear. We booked a hard sleeper (6-berth sleeping car) to Hanoi.

Hanoi is called "The Paris of the Orient." I've never been to Paris--my only exposure to France was Calais which I'm told is not the best France has to offer--but I have been to Montreal, "The Paris of the North." Hanoi is not very similar to Montreal. But Hanoi is a great city--lakes, rivers, stately colonial-era mansions, "Hello-you-want-motobike" people in green safari hats ala the British in Egypt, superb coffee, art galleries, a maze of shops, ancient pagodas, Ho Chi Minh's preserved body. There are hardly any cars but tons of motorbikes. When the light turns green, it sounds like a motorcycle derby--every time. There is even a jazz club with live music 7 nights a week, and plenty of English language bookshops which is a rare treat in Asia. We went to The Bookworm and chatted with the Vietnamese owner. I picked up Wallace Stegner's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel "Angle of Repose" for 80,000 dong, about $5. The owner pointed out a place for us to eat, a fancy outdoor place where local Hanoi people went, very delicious.

I wish we would have spent more time in Hanoi. The next day we took a city bus to Ha Dong station, got off to tons of men grabbing us and pulling us toward the buses they were selling tickets to, going to Halong Bay or wherever. Yuka cleared about ten of them off her with a judo move and a "Don't touch me!" We scrambled for the bus station office and found someone responsible looking in a uniform. I said, "Ha Tay," the province that were bound for, and he pointed out the correct bus. Soon we were on our way to Xuan Mai, about 30km southwest, home of the Forestry University of Vietnam and my good friend, Chairman Mao.

While we were waiting for the bus to get moving, some young girls came on the bus, begging for money, but soon gave up and just played with us, braiding Yuka's hair. Another man tried to sell me some books...I tried to explain that I don't read Vietnamese very well. The bus driver climbed aboard, gave a couple of big honks, clearing out the non-riders from the bus and miscellaneous debris in the station lot, and we got rolling. Outside of Ha Dong, the road was crowded with bicycles and motorbikes. It was completely flat and straight, but for some reason, many people became carsick and were vomiting into conveniently provided small plastic bags and throwing them out the window. Before we knew it, the bus pulled up to a dusty stop and the driver informed us that this was Xuan Mai.

We hired some motorbike drivers to give us a ride to the forestry university and boy, did we suprise the guards at the front gate. I showed them Dr. Tran's (aka, Chairman Mao) namecard and also Dr. Tran's son Kha's mobile phone number. Soon a Western woman pulled up on her motorbike. Her name was Susan, from Australia, doing research, and the only foreigner in town.

"They called Professor Mao and then they called me," she said of the guards. Soon Mao and his son Kha showed up on their bikes and took us out to lunch. We left our bags at the front gate guard station.

We were greeted at the restaurant with a bottle of scorpion whiskey. In fact, two scorpions were inside, along with various herbs and who knows what else. It was strong, smooth, and sweet. I warned Yuka not to smell it before drinking. "Chuc mung!" Several other officials from the university were there, one the director, with a hammer-and-sickle pin on his lapel. He spoke excellent English. Yuka and Mao went to the restaurant's fish tank and chose a catfish swimming around for our hotpot lunch. Another official had lived during Soviet times in East Germany and spoke German (many older Vietnamese have been educated abroad in other former communist contries--Mao himself lived a while in Leningrad and was educated at Beijing Forestry University). They were all familiar with my university (the one in Kunming that is). Many had been there.

There were numerous toasts and photos. Soon another bottle of scorpion whiskey appeared and was opened, and consumed. The Vietnamese call it ruou--there were also gigantic bottles of cobra whiskey and some other large rodent-sized reptile--this was in restaurants all over Vietnam, as is paojiu (fruit and herb whiskey) in China. After lunch, we rode back to Mao's house, met his wife and looked at pictures. He showed me an award he won from Cambridge University--"one of the 2000 outstanding scientists of the 21st century." Another researcher from the university with excellent English came and chatted for a while. Mao opened his bottle of baijiu from Lijiang (spiced with ingredients from Xishangbanna, Kunming, etc.) and we had a couple drinks. Soon, it was time to go. I climbed on the back of Kha's bike and Yuka onto Mao's.

Leaving his house, which is situated on a small slope, Mao lost his balance and fell off his motorbike, crashing onto the pavement, Yuka tumbling after. The crash left a large scrape on Mao's cheek. He was all right, but shaken up. Yuka was ok. Don't drink and drive.

The next morning, Yuka wasn't feeling well, and Mao and Kha met us at the hotel to go for breakfast. I went with them but Yuka stayed behind. After a bowl of rice noodles, we continued to a small shop to see another Vietnamese friend of mine. His parents own it and greeted us with a draft of cold beer (this is at a 8:30 in the morning!). We ate peanuts, had some tea, some coffee, and chatted in Chinese, a little Vietnamese, and a little English.

I went back to the hotel and took care of Yuka. She was in bed most of that day. I took a step out to use the Internet and found a net bar--2000 dong per hour (about 13 cents). I got lots of strange stares and offers for a motorbike ride. Not many foreigners make it to these parts. Some people sitting in front of a shop summoned me over. I sat down and tried to chat with them. They gave me some pineapple and put a little salt on it. A guy offered me a cigarette. I declined. He then offered me some heroin and a prostitute, a young bored-looking woman sitting with us. An old woman with missing teeth cackled a laugh. I decided it was time to be on my way.

The next day, Yuka was feeling better so the two of us and Kha rented a car and driver and headed for Haobinh City. We climbed up, up, up into the mountains once again and ended up in a village called Ban Lac. The people here are ethnic Thais and live in huts with thatched roofs and on stilts. We were invited into one for tea and sat on the bamboo mat floor. The guest room had no furniture and plain walls. We sat on a hand-woven rug. It was very pleasant. The day was a communist party holiday (the 77th anniversary of the Party), so there were not many tourists. The pace of life was slow and not as aggressively touristy as Sapa.

After lunch we went for a tour of Hoabinh Dam (which supplies electricity as far south as Saigon), had to pay more than double the Vietnamese admission price and 10,000 dong for a required guide that spoke no English and didn't let us into "sensitive" places in the dam. After that, we went to see Ho Chi Minh's massive statue (over 20m tall) which is visible across the entire valley. A friendly Vietnamese girl we met that day took us to the market and had Yuka try on a new pair of jeans. Later we realized that Vietnamese do not wear jeans with worn out knees (as Yuka was wearing). Some kids pointed at her jeans and said something to me, probably along the lines of, "Hey, get your girlfriend some decent jeans!"

The next day we headed for the beach. We had a couple carsick bus rides to Haiphong, then took a ferry to Cat Ba Island in Halong Bay (UNESCO World Heritage Site). This was slow season, so there had to be twice as many motorbike drivers as there were foreign tourists. Every ten seconds we were offered a ride, which we continued to decline. The beaches were splendidly deserted and the offshore (and onshore) scenery is spectacular--limestone rocks and islets jutting out of clear water for miles and miles.

One day we actually did hire some motorbike drivers and went up to Cat Ba National Park. On the way up the mountains, we stopped at Hospital Cave. During the "American War" (as it's called in Vietnam), this cave served as a secret hospital. One old man, still in his North Vietnamese Army uniform was a caretaker. He showed us around and explained each room in broken English: the kitchen, the officers' quarters, the operating room. Then we came to the meeting room. Suddenly his eyes lit up and he broke into a rousing song whose chorus went, "Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh." You could tell that he had some strong memories from that time and the bare room seemed to fill up with the spirit of the time. His name card sitting beside me now says, "Vu Dinh Khoi--Distinguished War Veteran." He didn't seem to care that I was American or that Yuka was Japanese. He put his arms around us and posed happily for pictures. "Vietnam and America are good friends," he told me, and this is becoming truer each day.

Cat Ba National Park is gorgeous and the hikes and views are spectacular. That's all I have to say about that--the rest you'll have to see to believe.

After our lazy days lounging on Cat Ba, we made it back to Hanoi, took a night train to the border, crossed the Red River once again and spent a day in the boring border town of Hekou, China. It was nice being able to speak Chinese again.

Finally our night bus to Kunming was ready to depart. It was a sleeper again, and an older model, well worn. It proved to be the worst bus trip of my life. For the first four or five hours, there was no road. They are currently building a new expressway linking Kunming and Hanoi, and we were taking a bumpy dirt road instead. People were smoking and spitting on the floor. I saw one guy blow his nose on the floor. The bus lurched and rocked incessantly, dodging earlier landslides and midnight traffic with deafening honks. We had top bunks and I was clutching the sides with an iron grip for fear of being thrown off. There were numerous times I was bucked into the air like a rodeo clown. I was wholeheartedly determined that if I fell, it would be anywhere but on that floor. The bed was too small for me and if I tried to lie on my side, my hips would start aching from the jolts of the bus and the wafer-thin mattress provided no cushion against the metal frame.

The entire ride reeked of diesel fumes--I suppose there was a major leak. The guy next to me was snoring loudly. We stopped a couple of times, but there was no bathroom--we just went behind the bus in the middle of the night, our shoes encrusted with mud. After 14 excruciating hours (the bus was over two hours late), we finally made it to Kunming. It was another hour on a crowded city bus (no seat), and then finally home sweet home and a long hot shower. Later that day, Yuka and I blew our noses--the tissues were blacked from the diesel fumes. Next time, I will look closely at the long distance bus before getting on.

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.

I found out that Friday's classes were canceled. Instead, this was the first day and Opening Ceremonies of the SWFU Sports Festival. The sports meet is a huge deal in China, three days of track and field extravaganza. I was asked what I did for Sports Meet in America. I told my astonished colleagues that we don't have such a festival. Everyone participates, or at least attends. Mrs. Jiang of the Foreign Languages Dept. showed up to my Thursday class with a sleek black track suit (my students told me it's a famous Chinese brand, and very cool); all of us in the department would be wearing matching uniforms in the meet. Thursday afternoon was spent practicing our marching, learning where to stand, and when to wave the little green flag. Every department from the college was practicing in a different area: students, teachers, staff, administration.

On the big day, we all lined up at 7:50 a.m. outside the soccer stadium. I was the only foreigner in the ceremony. Some march music played over the loudspeakers. It was just one song that played over and over the entire three days. It was something I never heard before, but will recognize for the rest of my life. We marched a lap around the track, chanting "Yi, er, san, si (one, two, three, four)," trying to keep in step. This is where my four years of high school marching band practice came in handy. However, the department seems to be full of nonconformists (a good place for me!), as I heard many people counting off in English, and even one guy in Japanese. We also chanted, "Jia you!" which means, "Let's go!" I looked this up in the dictionary to find out the Chinese characters, and this term can literally mean, "Add oil," or more loosely, "Fill'er up!" People also say "jia you" at the gas station, but imagine it's said less enthusiastically.

After the circuit, we marched to the center of the field and faced the stands. There were a few hundred in the field, and the bleachers were packed. The crowd went wild. People pounded on big drums and blew through noise makers. There were some obligatory speeches made by some of the "big cheeses," or "top bananas" as my Chinese colleagues like to say. Then we did an about-face and watched some military people raise the Stars-&-Stripes, er, 5-Stars-Red-Flag. The Chinese national anthem, "March of the Volunteers," was playing. Out of habit and respect, I put my right hand on my heart as we do in the US. Then I noticed that no one else was doing this. However, some people standing near me saw this and quickly placed their right hands on their hearts as well.

The Chinese flag is not as prominent in China as the American flag is in the US. It is found in front of government buildings and schools (I don't believe it's lowered at night), usually accompanied by pastel-colored flags on either side. I have yet to find out what these other flags signify...they are just solid colors. I have never seen a flag for Yunnan Province or Kunming City. My university has a flag, but I have seen it very rarely.

Then the festivities began. I wouldn't be participating until the next day, so I watched a few events then headed home. I needed to get caught up on grading papers. Friday night, I met a former teacher of this school, an Australian who sold his house and is hanging out in Dali, writing a book. We went to the Camel Bar (expat hangout, and I've heard a 24-hour bar) and had a Western meal with four Americans, three Chinese, and an Australian. Of course, the inevitable question comes up: "Why did you come to China?" Some people here, many people I know, "just bailed." Usually the people that say this to me are in their 50s, single or recently divorced and sick of life in the US. Coming to China is a chance to start over. Some people are searching for something, and China is often a pretty exotic place...if you're bored here, it's your own fault. So in the midst of Chinese life, something is bound to to be found. Other people are secretly missionaries.

Why did I come to China? Well, right now is a great moment in history, and this my chance to be a part of it. What is happening in China has never happened before--at times the entire country seems like a giant construction site. Development is occurring on insanely fast scale. In four months, in my neighborhood, I have seen buildings--entire apartment complexes--go up. People are working from before dawn to well after dusk. In many ways, this is a Renaissance that will probably dwarf the Italian Renaissance, but no one knows what will happen. China isn't just emerging, it's re-emerging. Remember, this is a great civilization--one of the oldest in the world, and the people are very aware of their history. It is commonly believed that the almost all significant inventions were created in the Western world. However, this is not true. The Chinese are the people who invented or discovered magnets, movable type (printing), paper, gunpowder, compasses, wheelbarrows, row planting, parachutes, paper currency, and toilet paper. There is a great optimism here, an optimism usually associated with Americans.

This development is very interesting because it's not happening in neat squares: it's growing organically. Take my block, for example. I see third-world poverty, open sewers, horse-drawn carts. But on the end of my block, 50 meters away, there is a Land Rover and Jaguar dealership. I have been in the nicest restaurants of my life maybe ten minutes away. Downtown, I have even seen a Maserati dealership. And Kunming is not considered a "developed" city by any stretch of the imagination. There is a great and growing disparity between the extremely rich and the extremely poor, something causing great tension in society, something that the government is trying hard to alleviate by developing the western and rural regions. However, this is a difficult task. There are 1.3 billion people here. The US, the third most populous country in the world, has 9 cities with a population over 1 million; China has 100. Kunming, at 3.5 million, is a medium-sized Chinese city. Have you heard of Chengdu or Tianjin or Chongqing? They are each larger than New York.

But I digress. I have always been interested in China. When I was 20, I made it a goal to learn Mandarin, and now that goal is coming true. So, in short, I was curious and I came to check it out, and I am glad that I did. Soon China will be the world's number one tourist destination. Please come check it out before everyone else does. The food is great, by the way.

Back to my first Sports Festival. Saturday morning came around, and it was time for me to take part in the 4x100 meter relay. I would be running with some other English faculty (the under-35 age group) against six other departments. Our team practiced our handoffs, and I did a couple quick sprints that even impressed myself. However, we are above 6000 feet, and I am not used to running. It became very difficult to breathe, especially toward the end of my turn. We were already behind, and I didn't help. We came in fourth place for our heat. However, it was all in fun. My boss told me, "You run like a tiger!" and also proceeded to ask me questions about the non-existent American sports day, and then cheerleaders.

I watched a few other events: hurdles, shot put, javelin, 800m races, etc. and went home to take a nap. After this, I biked downtown to treat myself to some coffee and doughnuts (I found a Chinese-owned Dona Doughnut shop). As you are probably aware of now, there seems to be no traffic laws in China, so bicycling is not simply a recreational activity. It requires full concentration, a clear mind, and a tai chi-like form of negotiation. People drive cars like they are on bicycles. I stole a joke from someone, and my classes thought it very funny: "In the US, we drive on the right side of the road. In Japan, they drive on the left side. In China, people drive on *both* sides! " It's pretty true. Usually, there are off-road paved bike lanes, so I'm not worried about cars but negotiating with the thousands of cyclists. It is a form of dancing.

I was thinking about stop signs. In the US, of course, they say, "Stop." In Spain, they also say "Stop." In Morocco, they say "Qefa," and the writing looks like two people sledding on a toboggan. In Mexico, they say, "Alto." In Japan, they say "Tomare." I was trying to think of what they say in China. Then I realized I have never seen a stop sign in China! I have seen plenty of stoplights, but absent of these, it's just an open intersection. Then, on Saturday, I saw my first stop sign. It was on a side road that ran parallel with a canal. There was little, if any traffic on it, a very residential street. Up a small slope was a railroad crossing. At the crossing was a diminutive sign, but the familiar red-octagonal shape. It said, "停"/ting. I will go back to take a picture of the first Chinese stop sign I have seen in almost four months.

At Dona Doughnuts, I had some delicious pastries and sat in the first "No Smoking" section I have seen in China. This has got to be one of the most smoker-friendly countries in the world. The Chinese are 20% of the world's population, yet smoke 30% of the world's cigarettes. It's mostly the men who do the smoking. A man entering a bar or restaurant will, before even sitting down, first pull out his pack of cigarettes and pass it around to his companions. I am offered at least one cigarette each day, usually more. I always decline, but people often look confused. I have seen some Vietnamese students smoking in the classrooms during breaks and many people smoke in the school hallways and offices. If I have a guest in my apartment, no one asks whether it's ok to light up...they just ask me where the ashtray is. In some rural areas, I'm told, over 90% of the men smoke. However, the percentage of Chinese women who smoke is much less than the percentage of American women who smoke. So I saw this "No Smoking" section sign and thought it was a joke, especially when a guy in his 20s sat down and lit up. But sure enough, an employee came by and told him to put it out. He held it under the table while he finished it.

One time my dad asked me about Chinese gas stations--if they are similar to American gas stations. I had never been inside one. There is one at the end of my block, with a traditional Chinese sloped-roof over the station and the filling island. I decided to check it out. It was much smaller than a 7-11. There was some engine oil for sale, but no funnels. There were some soft drinks for sale (no soda fountains), but no coffee. You could buy bottled tea, but there were nothing cold (no coolers). You could buy some salty snacks such as the ubiquitous sunflower seeds, potato chips, etc., but no chocolate. Of course, as anywhere, cigarettes were available, but no beer. There were some interior auto accessories that people like to hang from their rear-view mirrors: red Chinese knots that say "fortune" at the bottom, in a locked display case, some gold Buddhas that people put on their dashboards for protection, some very expensive glass thermoses. There was also some shampoo for sale, dish soap, and floor mops. This is the Sinopec gas station in Bailong (White Dragon) Village.

I also went to my first Chinese Christmas party on Wednesday night. It was organized by the undergraduate English majors. It was held in a classroom with a small Christmas tree, some streamers and balloons, some ornate Christmas designs on the chalkboard, and many Chinese students eager to celebrate Christmas with foreigners. So of course, I was obligated to come. We played musical chairs, had a gift exchange (I got a Santa hat), and of course the foreigners had to sing some Christmas carols for the students. There were a lot of oranges, bananas, peanuts, and sunflower seeds. A French girl who is on an intensive Chinese course at Yunnan University also showed up. She sang a beautiful Spanish song. A Chinese student sang an English pop song. Then it was time go.

Last night I gave my first guest lecture. I talked about the Great American Road Trip, and the allure of the open road. I had some technical difficulties in the presentation. First, the room that was reserved was taken, then my music and video files wouldn't work. But all in all, it went pretty well. The students were mostly English majors, and the room was packed, and overflowed into the hallway. They were most astonished when I told them that my family has five cars. "Wow, you are rich!" one student said. Then I told them that this is pretty typical for Americans--one car per person. In China, only 5% of the population can afford a car, and being middle-class is owning a scooter. If the family is fortunate enough, they will have a car. Of course, this is changing very rapidly, and already Kunming has a bad traffic problem. However, as an American, I always find it strange that there are so few cars on my college campus...maybe a total of 11 at any given time for a campus population of 10,000.

Yesterday, I went to a meeting in the Foreign Affairs Office. We four foreign teachers were told that we will be moving tomorrow to the new building on campus. Initially, I was hesitant on moving at the end of the semester...there is too much going on, and the building was rumored to not be ready. But as my boss outlined it, everything seems to be very organized. We were asked to have three students show up on Saturday at our old place, and load everything into a waiting truck. The truck will take everything up to new building, and we can put it on the newly-operational elevators. There is no furniture to move, so it should be a lot less painful than past moves.

We were also told that we would be getting paid for the months of January and February in advance. I was told that there is an extra DVD player they forgot to put in my old apartment, and it would be installed in my new one. I may be getting a cellphone from the college. And then they gave me 300 yuan for the bike I purchased (I just have to leave it here when I go back to the US). So I was very happy. Then they gave us a tour of the new building, which I haven't been in yet.

We will be living on the 9th floor, the top floor, which overlooks the entire city of Kunming. The view is great. The main floor of the building will is a giant lobby with an enormous chandelier and marble hotel desk (and clocks indicating the time in Beijing, New York, Tokyo, London, and Moscow). There also will be a restaurant soon. The bottom six floors are dorm rooms for freshman girls. The top three floors, inaccessible from the rest of the building without a key, are hotel rooms and apartments for the "foreign experts." Then I saw our new homes.

This is by far the nicest place apartment I will have lived in: 40 square meters, all wood floors, big windows, two balconies, a large, open, fully-furnished kitchen, all brand new furniture, leather sofas and chairs in the living room, classy wooden chairs and desks in the bedroom, a swanky shower (no curtain needed--all enclosed by glass), and a 27 inch television. I told my boss this was too nice for me. Even by--especially by--American standards, this is luxurious. I asked for the west side of building, hoping to take in the night view of the city on either of my balconies. I'll take some pictures tomorrow during the move.

This morning I saw my cleaning lady, and even she seemed excited about it. She said (in Chinese--she doesn't speak any English)--"It's beautiful. You must be so happy, so happy!" Yuka will be here in less than three weeks--I think she will be really excited. Now I just received a call from the Foreign Affairs office, and my January paycheck is here, so I can pick that up a full two weeks early. I'm off.

This is a fortunate way to end 2006. 圣诞快乐！(Merry Christmas, all!)

It's mid-December in Kunming and the cherry blossoms are blooming. Other leaves are changing colors. Nature is in a state of confusion. One of my students, from the cold, cold north of China, remarked that she didn't even know what season it was. It's Christmas season, and there are a few Christmas trees in the shops, some tinsel here and there, and pictures of Santa. But Christmastime in China is very low-key, and I like it that way. I spent the past two holiday seasons working in big-box consumer electronics retail, clocking in at 4:00 the day after Thanksgiving for that 6 o'clock mad dash of greed, stacks of cash, and thinly veined accusations that I was actually hiding that product that we claimed to be out of stock. The pressure to sell extended warranties on "anything with a current passing through it." The same songs over and over on Muzak. Sleet and snow and stress.

Here in Kunming, it's palm trees, sunny skies, and highs in the upper 60s. It's like a Corona commercial but no beach (no, Lake Dian doesn't count). I've been invited to a few Christmas parties--most students I've talked to seem eager to celebrate Christmas with foreigners, so I'll do my best to bring the yuletide Christmas cheer. No eggnog this year.

During my speaking class yesterday, Bruce, the Foreign Language Dept. secretary, ran into my classroom in a state of panic. "It's an emergency!" he shouted. I stepped out in the hall as he ran down the FedEx guy. My package had finally arrived. My aunt and grandmother had shipped me a box of treats last week from Iowa. Thanks! It made it to Kunming in three days, but promptly got shipped back across the country to Shenzhen. The tracking information on the website said, "Clearance Delay." My grandmother was worried that the customs officials were eating my chocolate.

I got a call a few days later from a Ms. Lai, I assume from FedEx. "I have a box of commodities for you. The customs declaration says it's coffee and chocolate. Are these commodities for business purposes or personal use?" I told her it was for me, because those two items are like gold here in Bailong Village. I wasn't going to sell anything...but perhaps I could use it as a bribe to get my students to talk in my English Speaking classes. She promptly informed me, "Then please fax us a copy of your passport and a statement saying so." So now I have a box of Christmas sweets in my apartment, coffee, a hunk of fudge shaped like the great state, and a pile of chocolate packaged as an "Iowa cow pie." I opened this box in my class and taught my students some new vocabulary. And no, Grandma, the customs officials did not eat anything.

Last Friday night I stopped by my local for a quick beer and a chat with the owner, a Mr. Xiao Ma (Small Horse). There were some musicians setting up, and I ended up getting fed and sticking around for a night of Chinese death metal. Three bands, and one was quite good. The drummer was a girl from Beijing named Rosa Lee and she played a mean double-bass drum. There was some excellent shredding on the guitar, flashy keyboard skills, some head banging, but fortunately no moshing (too small of a venue). I've heard some great Chinese rock since I've been here: if you can find it, check out Muma, Zi Yue ("Confucius Says"--at first I thought it was Primus singing Chinese), Zhou Yunpeng, Bu Yi Ding, Zuoxiao Zuzhou (like Nick Cave/Tom Waits), Badhead and Modern Sky Records. I've also heard some very cheesy Dongbei rap, cheesy enough that I'm gonna have to buy it.



On Sunday I went to Cuihu Park with my good friend Định of the Forestry University of Vietnam and a Chinese girl named Panda. I think they have some sort of budding relationship, but, alas, he's now in Hangzhou studying bamboo and rattan and such for two months. Along with the rest of the population of Kunming, we saw thousands of beautiful Siberian gulls (Larus heuglini) who are wintering here in Kunming. They (the birds) will catch a piece of bread tossed into the air, midflight. We also saw seemingly thousands of beggars.


I am jealous how quickly the Vietnamese students are picking up the Chinese language. The two languages are from different language families, but China has strongly influenced Vietnam for thousands of years (I'm often reminded that Vietnam was a part of China longer than Yunnan Province has been). Much of the vocabulary is the same. Vietnamese and Chinese are both tonal languages. There is significant overlap of cultural cues. Vietnamese names are readily made into Chinese characters (as the entire language was formerly written), but mine is a clunky Sino-fication of "Ryan." Etc. Over the past three and a half months, I have learned much more Chinese (and Kunming-hua) than I expected to, but I am frustrated to have so far yet to go.

Another fine Sunday, I met a Chinese Lily and a Japanese Daisuke at the 1200 year-old Yuantong Zen Temple. We arrived in time to watch part of a service. There were thousands of practitioners in brown robes singing and chanting melodic hymns, bowing simultaneously, praying in front of a statue depicting the Bodhisattva of Compassion Guan Yin (Avalokiteśvara/Kannon/Gwan-eum/Quan Âm), thick clouds of incense blowing in the breeze, monks ringing bells, turtles and carp and goldfish swimming in the moat, arched bridges, fruit and red envelope offerings, the works.

We had lunch up the hill near Yunnan University. There are many foreigners and places catering to foreigners in this area, resembling a typical Eugene, Oregon Saturday Market if it suddenly became a global village and dropped into SW China: the scruffy-looking backpacking type "on the way to Laos or Chiang Mai or wherever," Frenchmen with dreadlocks, Italian punks, goateed-shaved head-pierced-&-tattooed Americans, Chinese hipsters smoking expensive cigarettes. Nobody seems to speak much Chinese in these parts. However, there are a couple good spots in this area including an English language book bar that stocks smuggled Beer Lao (both light & dark flavors).

I am hoping to get my online magazine up and running soon. Things have been really busy lately as the semester will conclude in about four weeks. Right now I am trying to get caught up on correcting all the papers from my composition classes (about 150 assignments coming in on a weekly basis and I'm seriously behind), teaching a group of 12 year-olds once a week, teaching a group of 5 year-olds once a week, writing lesson plans, teaching grad students 16 hours a week, taking Chinese classes whenever I can, popping in on a third-semester Japanese class conducted in Chinese (now that's tricky), running a weekly film club, tomorrow I'm giving a thematic lecture to the English major undergrads on the Great American Road Trip and the Allure of the Open Road (in pop culture and personal experience), Saturday morning I'm participating with the Foreign Languages Dept in the school-wide Sports Day, and hopefully tomorrow afternoon I'll have some time to do some weightlifting with one of my students named Earth. I still have time for a three-hour siesta each day. Some Chinese people expressed concern that we Americans don't typically have a rest in the middle of the day. Also they are concerned that we drink ice water even in winter.

I am missing something in my routine. It's called music. Also I am very excited for Yuka to come next month, and possibly Mariko. And as always, I enjoy hearing from all my friends and loved ones!

Thank you and goodnight.

Amateur - Lasse Gjertsen

On a fine sunny Sunday, I ventured down to Cuihu Park, Kunming's answer to New York's Central Park or London's Hyde Park and a little of Marrakech's Djemaa dl-Fna thrown in (although at night, my own neighborhood looks like a tiny nighttime Djemaa el-Fna, can't beat it). Cuihu's got to be one of the best parks in the world. The name means Green Lake and it dates back to the Ming Dynasty. It's right in downtown Kunming, a breath of fresh air amid the drab concrete buildings and honking cars. It's got Hanzhou-style arched bridges crisscrossing four small willow-lined lakes, brightly colored pavilions, vendors selling food, and traditional Chinese musicians. Beautiful Siberian seagulls spend the winter here. Did I mention it's free? On a sunny Sunday, this scene is nothing short of glorious.

I was asked to pose for four or five photos with Chinese strangers, but really when are the Chinese strangers? I saw an old minority woman in traditional clothes and bound feet. She hobbled along. I saw a beautiful young Bai woman in traditional dress out for a stroll with her parents. I heard some amazing music and listened for an hour or so. During this time, I read some Jack Kerouac: "Food is always better eaten in doleful little pinchfuls off the ends of chopsticks, no gobbling, the reason why Darwin's law of survival applies best to China: if you don't know how to handle a chopstick and stick it in that family pot with the best of 'em, you'll starve. I ended up flubbing it all up my forefinger anyhow." I can't remember the last time I used a fork or knife.

Right now is dry season in Kunming, so the sun is bright and the sky is majestic. Just about every day. The mornings and evenings are a little chilly, jacket weather, but by the afternoon the weather's figured itself out enough to be perfect. Some leaves have turned colors, but other flowers are blooming and the grass is green. I stepped inside a music shop and tried playing the erhu, a Chinese two-stringed violin. Also I dabbled with the yueqi, the "moon guitar." They had a few more instruments, but I had an intense cold and a runny nose, so it was time to stop sniffling and head home. I stumbled through the flower and bird market in Kunming Old Town (or what's left of it, unfortunately), very fascinating. I peeked in a Chinese antique shop--these are always the best. Old coins, stacks and stacks of Little Red Books (required reading during the Cultural Revolution), Mao buttons, the obligatory Japanese samurai swords leftover from the occupation.

I have been here three months now. I have had three colds. Each cold was treated quite effectively with Chinese medicine and a trip to the mountains and fresh air. Last weekend I had a cold and went up to Xi Shan/The Western Hills with one of my classes. "Hills" is an understatement. We left early Saturday morning and found a "bread bus," a 17-seater that would drive us from the bus station up, up, up into the hills. It started out pleasant: students taking turns singing folk songs, including a new one about the railway to Tibet. Soon it became apparent that this driver was extremely aggressive, his right hand permanently pressing the horn, cigarette dangling from his mouth, occasionally driving the bus into the bicycle lanes when traffic was too congested and ignoring red lights. He did not relent when we reached the winding roads of Xi Shan. We zigzagged up into the mountains, whizzing past 500 year-old Buddhist and Taoist temples, dodging dogs and pedestrians, horses, cars. Soon some students became carsick. By the time we reached the village at the top, each side of the bus had a girl hanging out the window, vomiting, gasping for fresh air and escape from nausea. The driver did not relent with his mad dash to the top or blaring that horn.

We stayed at a hotel in the mountains that served us a home-cooked meal in the courtyard. Some students elected to play mahjong or sing karaoke, but it was too nice to be inside. A few of us hiked up through the karst topography of Little Stone Forest. It is obligatory to shout a "Hoo!!!" at any significant peak. Others will respond. I think the Chinese, being mountain people through-and-through, do it best. Maybe this is worldwide. I don't know. I'm from Iowa, where the highest point is Hawkeye Point, on the Sterler Farm in Osceola County, a pitiful 1670 feet above sea level. As I write this, from the ground floor of my apartment building, I am already 6,265 feet up, 1000 feet higher than Denver. Lhasa, that city down in the valleys of Tibet, is twice as high as here. And that ain't nothing. We peered down hundreds of feet off sheer cliffs to the massive and toxic Lake Dian (an unnatural chemical green from all the surrounding factories). In the middle of the rocks, wherever possible, were boards set up vertically, holding about 36 brightly colored balloons. For 2 yuan, you could shoot a BB gun and try to pop them. These were all over, along with people selling plastic bird-shaped whistles that gave a tweet tweet. Way up in the mountains! Where did they come from? We talked with some Kunming locals way up there, whose dialect was difficult even for the students from neighboring provinces. One man in a worn suit jacket told me, "Be careful up here. Your life is valuable but mine is worthless." What do you say to that? Even if you could speak Kunming-hua?

After returning to the hotel, I had a long nap. I got my own room, and the door opened out into a view that stretched into eternity sunshine Shangri-La. We had a home-cooked supper, this time inside, and persuaded the hotel owners to get a bonfire going in their courtyard. So they took a big old wok, filled it with wood, and we had a warm fire going in no time. There was some fire dancing, a game of "hot potato," but instead of a potato, it was played with a chopstick. And we played some truth-or-dare. This was nothing like American truth-or-dare. I think the most risqué moment was when a male student had to carry a female student around the circle on his back. In front of everyone! Or when a girl had to call her boyfriend in Inner Mongolia and tell him that she loved him. In front of everyone! There is an innocence and freshness here that we have somehow lost in America.

The next day, we hiked up another hill, this time straight up, through a tree (not stone) forest, to a summit that gave us an inspiring view of all of the whiteness of Kunming City and beyond. At top was a 150 year-old Buddhist pavilion and a very modern military radar station, done in traditional Chinese style, arched roofs and all. After returning for lunch, it was soon time to go back to Kunming. I was exhausted and slept on the bus.

One student woke me up. "Koby wants to meet us at Baita Road." "Huh? Why?" "I don't know." So we got off at Baita Road. Sure enough, Koby was there in suit and tie along with a friend. They quickly escorted us to a fancy karaoke hall, to a private room filled with about 10 familiar faces. They insisted that I sing some English hit songs. Let me warn you about Western pop music in China: it's bad. Everyone loves Celine Dion's "My Heart Will Go On," (and all of Titanic for that matter) which they insisted I sing. Also, they wanted to hear me sing some Michael Jackson (who is still huge here, along with Michael Bolton and Kenny G and the Backstreet Boys, seriously). One time, a friend, a really cool and trendy guy, broke out his top-of-the-line MP3 cellphone and played "Right Here Waiting" by Richard Marx.... The cheesier the better. "Sleepless in Seattle" is by far one of the most popular movies in China. So please, America, please Europe, please whoever, send some better Western pop culture over here to China, at least for my sake.

After karaoke, we went out to eat, had some delicious lotus root (a delicacy I haven't seen in the States), eggplant, tofu, and a big pot of sour fish soup. About ten people came back to my place for a night of singing and playing guitar and drinking beer and by then I was really exhausted.

Thanksgiving was last week. Many students wished me a happy Thanksgiving, but it didn't really feel like Thanksgiving. First of all, I had to work. Second of all, Lester and I went for supper at a Xinjiang restaurant and ate naan bread and watched Uighur traditional music videos. The only pilgrims around were those on the road to Mecca.

This week I've gotten a couple of calls out of the blue from parents in the neighborhood who want me to teach their kids English. The first group was four 12-year-olds, very well behaved, two of them who spoke better English than some of my grad students. I showed them Google Earth on my computer, zoomed in on my school where I teach. I zoomed in on my Kunming apartment, then I whisked them around the world to show my father's house, zoomed out to show my tiny hometown, then to Oregon to show my girlfriend's apartment, and back to China to show the Forbidden City of Beijing. I love Google Earth. It was fun.

Tonight, however, was different. I had five 5-year-olds show up, and two parents to supervise. It was madness from when I opened the door. I tried to teach them some vocabulary, but when I could get two or three of them to focus, the other ones would start digging through my apartment which was not kidproofed to begin with. They broke two things, shouted, and fought over markers. I finally got them to focus and draw pictures of Yuka and me (Yuka, you are blond and have green skin). They liked to draw pictures of butts (Pigu! Pigu!).

I've been here long enough that life is starting to eek out some sort of pattern. So I'll try to elaborate the best I can on daily life in my home, Bailong Village.

1. Midnight.

Chinese people typically go to bed early and get up early. After 11 or so, the bustling street that runs past my house is dead. Maybe you can see one or two people going home, and a guy selling barbecue under a red lamp, lit by a car battery under his grill. By now the bars are closed, the street vendors are packing up, and most people are asleep. Up and down my street there are about 20 hotels with flickering neon signs; many students live here illegally instead of in the dorms. Bailong Village isn't really a tourist destination. However, a little outside my village, on the main road connecting Bailong Village and downtown Kunming, I do still hear the big blue construction trucks blaring their air horns up and down the street 24 hours a day. The mosquitoes are a nuisance year round.

2. Morning.

I usually wake up between 5:30 and 6 a.m. I go to the kitchen, turn on the propane-fueled hot water heater, and hop into the shower. Chinese bathrooms of the middle-class lifestyle typically have a sink, a western-style toilet, and a very, very small bathtub. There is no shower curtain, so water sprays everywhere. Apparently, you can buy a shower curtain & rod (very rare items) at one of the Wal-Marts downtown, but I don't go to Wal-Mart, not even in China. The sink has two faucets, but no hot water comes from them. On top of most of the apartment buildings here are giant solar panels that heat tanks of water. Most people get their hot shower water this way, and don't have water heaters. You can't flush toilet paper down the toilet as the sewers can't handle it.

One superior form of Chinese engineering is the thermos. You will see these thermoses everywhere. The thermos is huge, holding about 2L of water, and keeping it hot for *days.* I boil a kettle of water a few times a week so I can enjoy a cup of Nescafé instant coffee or a glass of water in the morning. (Coffee and chocolate are very hard to find here, especially those of decent quality. There are a few coffeeshops downtown, but it's expensive.) Also, you can't drink the tap water, so the water must be boiled or bottled.

Each morning at about 6:30, I hear a person dribbling a basketball down to the apartment complex's court. At about 7:30, young children start swarming the preschool next door to my apartment. Around 8:00, senior citizens congregate on the basketball court to practice tai chi, tai chi with fake swords, tai chi with folding fans, traditional dancing, balancing a tennis ball on a racket while moving around, basketball, anything. Senior citizens in China lead very active lives. There is a bus from my apartment complex up the big hill to the college. I live away from campus, a good 20 minute hike up a steep hill. So the college bought a bus to ferry the teachers up and down a few times a day. It's pretty crowded in the morning as most teachers have class at 8:00. Many things here are pretty crowded.

I put on my jacket and usually have breakfast at the open market; a big bowl of freshly made rice or wheat noodles, mint, cilantro, pickled vegetables, and chili pepper set me back 2.5 yuan, about 30 cents. I see people brushing their teeth and women washing their hair in the street. Cleaning ladies are sweeping all the garbage and other debris up. There are a lot of stray dogs, but all of them are very small. I am told that owning a dog is forbidden in Kunming, but it hasn't stopped anyone. At the open market, you can get dogmeat noodles, so I am told.

Alternately for breakfast, I'll buy a piece of pocket bread stuffed with grilled tofu and other mixed vegetables and spices for 1 yuan, about 12.5 cents. It is unbelievably delicious. The owners make everything from scratch and cook it up on the back of their bicycle. You'd be surprised at how much goes on and comes off of bikes here. Sometimes I ride my bicycle up to school instead of taking the bus.

It is also convenient to take the sanlunche (三轮车), one of the splendors of the Orient. This is a three-wheeled vehicle; the front half resembles a motorcycle, and the back half is an enclosed square box with two padded benches and curtains for privacy or warmth. It's usually powered by a motorcycle--some call it an auto rickshaw, but sometimes it's powered by foot. It's very important to negotiate the price before getting in! The driver wears a thin red plastic helmet.

I teach in the main teaching building, a seven story contraption that many people here call "Budala-gong" (布达拉宫) because of its resemblance to Potala Palace in Lhasa, Tibet. Chinese buildings six stories or less do not typically have elevators. Almost everyone, including myself, lives in six-story concrete buildings that bear a striking resemblance to one another. Almost every building here is made of concrete and covered with white bathroom tile. I walk down the dark hallway to my class. The hallways are usually unlit. No buildings in Kunming have central heating. I have about 35 students in each class, a blackboard, and chalk. There are no computers, overhead projectors, or texts in my classes. Each class lasts two hours with a ten minute break halfway through. I also take Chinese classes in this building. The bathrooms in the building are somewhat clean, although a bit smelly. The men's restroom is indicated with a "男" and the women's with a "女." The toilets are the typical squat toilets and there is usually water all over the floor. When you use a squat toilet, your back faces the wall. Toilet paper and hand towels are almost never provided in Chinese restrooms, so remember to bring your own. Also, did you remember not to throw the toilet paper in the toilet?

Afternoon.

I usually eat lunch with my students or with my Vietnamese classmates from my Chinese class. It is very rare to eat alone in China. My college has two main dining halls (very crowded at meal time), a Muslim restaurant (my favorite place to eat, although it's usually a 10 minute wait to get in the door), and a third small dining hall. Near the Muslim restaurant there is a long line of students filling their thermoses up with hot water. I often see my students lugging their thermoses to class. The metal school-lunch tray comes with a large serving of rice (0.7 yuan, about 9 cents), then a variety of fixin's in the buffet line, ranging in price from 0.6 yuan to 2.5 yuan per item. Chinese students often complain about the quality of cafeteria food--I assume this is the case of students anywhere--and I assure you that Chinese cafeteria food is much better than the cafeteria food I ate in the US & England. Also there are a few a-la-carte options such as noodles cooked in a clay pot, fried rice, Chinese burritos, bread, sweets. There is an attached convenience store where it's even possible to buy beer. It's not too bad eating there, although I pass on the ever-popular "Coffee Cola."

Most people have a two or three hour siesta after lunch. I have a three hour break and usually come home after lunch, check my email, and chat with Yuka whenever she's online. I am constantly reminded that it's important to take a nap, so I try to do that, but it's very strange for me to sleep during the daytime. I head back up the hill for my afternoon class, and have supper around 5 p.m. with my students. I often eat with Koby, the basketball superstar who knows everyone in Bailong Village. He tirelessly recruits other students to come with us, and usually tries to invite pretty girls he doesn't even know (it hasn't worked yet). He is the kind of student who learns more outside of class than inside, so it is a great opportunity for him to improve his English (and he is undoubtedly improving).

In the late afternoon, the street fills up with fruit vendors selling apples, oranges, pomegranates, pomelos, durians, bananas, pineapples, grapes off the back of bicycles. Also there are a few larger horse-drawn carts selling watermelons. There are many people selling snacks from their stalls. This chaos is set in the middle of the street, with all the vehicles, bicycles and pedestrians, and the shepherd boys bringing their flocks home from a day at the pasture. Each day it's a sight to behold and a chance to pinch myself and remind me that I'm in China. Wow.

Evenings.

After supper, I usually return home again. This is one thing I like about China: not so many cars, so people are always out walking around; it's inevitable that you will run into people you know, especially if you're a foreigner. It is a good time to make plans for the evening. Around dusk, all the barbecue people set up their red canopies and knee-high tables and ankle-high stools for a night of some serious grilling. Next to my apartment complex there is a restaurant of some repute. People go here for birthdays, celebrations, and occasionally weddings. It is a rowdy restaurant. Public vomiting is not really frowned upon here like it is in the US, and more often than not, you must watch your step in front of this restaurant, if you know what I mean. My colleague & friend Marietta said, "It must say something about the food there."

At the entrance of my compound, a guy on a motorcycle brings a daily big barrel of milk and people line up with their pots to fill up. Milk is popular here, but scarce. It usually comes from Inner Mongolia. I say, if you want to make money in China, sell milk. I've often been given a packet of milk as a treat, although I'm not a big fan of milk, I must be polite as it's relatively expensive. It is a person of status who is a milk drinker.

At my apartment complex in the evenings, the center of everything is the basketball court. The activity lasts from about 8 p.m. until 11 p.m. There are kids running around with toy battle axes, games of soft-volleyball with serious officials and whistles and cheers and flipping scores; old men standing around, smoking, and shooting hoops (simultaneously).

This is a bare-bones view of what goes on in Bailong Village daily life. There is plenty more that adds color and confusion and joy to my experience, and I'll get to that next time.

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.

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.