Happy Summer to everyone. Hope all of you are safe from the up-coming hurricane Irene, and that you and your belongings have not been affected by the East Coast Earthquake. It has been a whole semester since my last entry, and yes, I am still teaching in China, and I have signed another year's contract. 5 years have passed since I have signed my first contract at Taizhou Teachers College. Though I have stored 1,000s of photos from 10,000s of miles of travels across this vast country of China, it has actually become more difficult and frustrating to post the entries. Time has become limited, since I am involved in many more college and city activities, and above all, the slow and un-reliable computer speed is simply driving me crazy. The photos up-load slowly, and often, ... read more

MERRY MERRY CHRISTMAS, 2010 AND HAPPY AND PROSPEROUS NEW YEAR, 2011 !!! The years 2010/2011 have been my 5th year at Taizhou Teachers College in Jiangsu, China: It is the right and special time to thank my loving and supportive family; all of my many eager and sweet students and colleagues (former and present); the wonderful and dedicated teachers and staff and the kind and caring administration of TTC; and my many dear friends around China, in America, in Canada, in Australia, in New Zealand, in Germany and in so many other countries, for YOUR continued encouragement and for YOUR love, and for having shared YOUR hearts during another exciting year in China. TO ALL OF YOU, I wish a happy and loving holiday season with your family and your friends. May the joy of this ... read more

I have been able to recover one of my lost TravelBlogs, an entry I had prepared for publication many months ago. So as not to confuse this journey to the West of China two summers ago (2009) with last summers travels (2010), this 2009 journey was an official visit by the administration of Taizhou Teachers College to our Sister College in Yining, Xinjiang, in the far North-West corners of China. Gratefully, I had been invited as part of the visiting delegation, as it was a more structured and organized visit to the city of Yining, on the border of Kazakhstan. I hope you enjoy the 124 photos of this exciting journey to a part of China, few foreign visitors have to privilege to experience. For my vegetarian friends, and those, who are a more sensitive to ... read more

***Dear Friends: PLEASE MAKE A NOTE OF MY "NEW" E-MAIL: HSchneider101@gmail.com (The reasons are noted below) The Financial Crisis and the difficult and tense economic conditions in Western Countries, especially in America, seems to be putting the jobs of many teachers in jeopardy. Educated and experienced and reluctantly, some instructors will retire early, recent graduates will look for positions in vain, others may feel personal frustration with their insecure employment conditions, while many more may have already been layed off. If you find yourself among these groups of anxious individuals, may I suggest the opportunities available as a teacher at my college in China, "TAIZHOU TEACHERS COLLEGE", in the East-coast Province of Jiangsu. TAIZHOU TEACHERS COLLEGE invites qualified college graduates to apply for the positions available as English teachers or German teache... read more

This past sunny weekend, just before the official opening of the Shanghai World Exposition-2010, I received an invitation to explore the Exposition Grounds along the Huangpu River in the center of Shanghai. It was an experimental "soft opening", to prepare for the official opening on May 1st, 2010. Countries from every corner of the world will display their treasures of architecture, technology, innovation, style and traditions in exciting, imaginary and dreamy pavilions. The Expo site is a 5.28 square kilometer zone (some 2.5 square miles) in the shadow of the beautiful Lupo Bridge. All was build from scratch, at a cost of over 45 billion Dollars, to showcase sustainable urban development in accordance with the Expo's "BETTER CITY, BETTER LIFE" theme. It is the very first Expo to be hosted by a "developing" country. The developement ... read more