Ni hao, Comrades.

Good grief, it's been almost a month since my last blog post. I had no idea it's been so long . . . Needless to say, it's been a whirlwind several weeks.

We left for China on July 14 (and arrived on the 15th). When we landed in Beijing, we were met by Wang Ying and her son (Xiao Xiao - I'm not sure if I'm spelling that correctly):



As you can see, they took us to the Water Cubic and also the Bird's Nest:



We couldn't get much closer than that because everything is heavily guarded in anticipation of the Olympics.



You've (I've) gotta love a place where the police ride bicycles. But lots of people ride bicycles in Beijing:



The place is filthy with bicycles, actually.

The next day, we headed out to the Forbidden City . . .

. . . which is one heck of a big place. They've been spiffing it up for the Olympics; many of the buildings had received a fresh coat of paint and were downright resplendent:



The architecture was completely amazing. Pictures don't do it justice; I'm sure you've all seen a bazillion photos of the Forbidden City and they just look like that tacky China stuff. But see them in situ and it's a completely different matter . . .

After the Forbidden City, we went to the Temple of Heaven.



Again, totally amazing, and on a scale I would not have expected.

The next day, we were off to the Great Wall, which first involved a cable car ride:



I haven't been on a cable car since I was four years old; that was a treat in itself.

The Great Wall is, of course, iconic:



You can only walk on parts of it, and so one tends to see the same pictures over and over, but here's a new one:



Holy sh*t, Sherlock. I am in China. Red frickin' China. Behind the Curtain Formerly Known as Iron. I have to pinch myself about twelve times a day, because even though I've been here over a week, there are moments when I simply CANNOT believe it. (We all feel this way.)

OK, so then it was on to the Summer Palace, which was my favorite spot, I think.



Again, you think you're seeing one palace, and you end up going to a compound, this time complete with a lake:

Look, Ma! No motors!

And there's a guy practicing his calligraphy. Apparently they have competitions in water calligraphy. (These people are crazy for competitions, a trait we are using to advantage in our teaching here in Harbin.)

After those amazing four days, we flew to Harbin, where we've settled in to our apartments, learned to negotiate the washing machines (small ones; we each have one in our bathroom and of course the dial is completely in Chinese, so it's anyone's guess what happens when you start 'er up), the grocery store (sort of Meijers on a very small scale; I got an alarm clock, an electric kettle because no tap water in China is potable, a loaf of bread - rare in China outside of Harbin - and some jelly, a bathing cap (cost all of a buck), and several ready-to-eat meals), the lockers in the grocery store (punch an incomprehensible key on a keypad, which generates a ticket. When you take the ticket, your locker door springs open. You stow your stuff, and when you come back, you pass the ticket in front of a barcode reader, and your locker door springs open again), the dining hall (that's a long story!), and all the rest of it.

And of course there's the teaching. We're all going to be spoiled silly, because we have students who are eager to learn, who come to class prepared, and who take initiative. (Fr'instance, I set up email groups - and several students, for various reasons, were not on their group. So they emailed us, requested access through Google, did EVERYTHING possible to get connected. What they did NOT do was whine, "Oh, I couldn't do the reading because I wasn't on the email group!" I might stay here forever, y'know?)

As for China itself - well, that'll have to wait for another day, but suffice to say that "everything I thought was true has turned out to be wrong." As the US becomes more fascist and China's borders become more porous, there's really less and less to choose between the two. (Except that people seem happier here. But why shouldn't they be? Their economy is booming and their future is bright . . . ) I expected to find this place interesting, but as it turns out I like it a whole lot more than I thought I would.

That's it for now. My camera is on the fritz; tomorrow I'm going with my Personal Assistant (each of us has a student assigned to help us negotiate the culture when necessary)to get a new one. I'm sure that'll be a story and a half . . .

In the meantime, there are plenty of pix on my Flickr site. And if any of you have Skype, I'd be more than happy to talk to you . . .