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Peter Rotundo
I am an American from Massachusetts going to China to work at a school in Shanghai teaching English. I graduated from Vassar College in New York in 2009, studying world history. I worked with kids with developmental disabilities through a social service agency in Cambridge, MA in 2010 and 2011. Luo Bide
Travel Blog Posts
January 2nd 2012
One day this fall, I made a day trip to a city a bit to the west of Shanghai called Suzhou. Suzhou has a long history. I have heard that for many years, Shanghai was called “Little Suzhou.” It used to be a major center of trade, and is especially famous for its silks. The city gets marketed as “The Venice of the East,” which might have fit it better before many of its canals were paved over and all the concrete high-rises went up in the twentieth century. Some of its canals remain, though. I visited a stretch of one canal where there are a number of shops and teahouses in old, classically Chinese buildings. Suzhou’s appeal to tourists is now primarily in its gardens. A number of gardens are well preserved from as long ... read more
October 10th 2011
Last week was the National Day Holiday in China, and the other teaching assistants and I went to Hainan for a few days. Hainan is a tropical island in the far south of China, close to Vietnam. We stayed in a resort city, Sanya, on the southern coast. Our hotel was right next to the beach. You can see from the photos that the weather was often gray or rainy. We arrived a day or two after a typhoon hit Hainan. There seemed to be a fair amount of damage on the beach, with a number of concrete paths clearly destroyed, though the damage looked older than a matter of days. The drainage on Sanya’s streets was a problem: after an afternoon’s rain one day, there were two or three inches of water on one of ... read more
September 2nd 2011
This was the first week of school. I am a little too tired to do a full blog post, but I will give a list of ten things I did this week that I had never done before. This week, I... 1. Introduced myself as “Mr. Rotundo.” 2. Shouted "quiet" and silenced 75 seventh-graders. 3. Worked one day from 6:45am-9pm. (That won’t seem very impressive to my sister who works in film.) 4. Had a room full of people laugh at my expense and didn’t care. 5. Graded papers. 6. Spoke Mandarin in front of a large audience. (Fortunately not related to #4) 7. Went to a CD release party. 8. Participated in a department meeting as a teacher. 9. Explained and led activities in a gym. 10. Took part in the founding of a school. ... read more
August 28th 2011
Yesterday, I went with a few other teachers to an old town to the west of Shanghai called Zhujiajiao. A core of the town’s old buildings—classically Chinese, many dating back hundreds of years—have been preserved surrounded by recent development. Canals run through Zhujiajiao, with many boats giving visitors tours. It’s a popular destination for people in Shanghai on the weekends—there was quite a line for the bus there. The old town’s alleys are full of restaurants and shops selling crafts, clothes, toys, trinkets and food. Unlike Yuyuan Gardens in Shanghai, there were no Starbucks or Dairy Queens or other chains catering to an international clientele. ... read more
August 20th 2011
Today, I went to the French Concession, a part of the city that used to be controlled by France—it had French laws and leadership. I ate at a restaurant there that used to be the home of a famous Shanghai mobster in the early 1900s, Du Yuesheng. He rose from being an orphan selling fruit on the streets to a mob boss who led a group called the Green Gang to control Shanghai’s criminal life. A student of my uncle’s very kindly treated me to a delicious (haochi 好吃) lunch of Shanghainese dishes. I’ve included photos of what we ate. ... read more
August 16th 2011
Last night I posted a piece about my school, but I took it down because I think it would be better to post my thoughts about YK Pao privately, even though they have been very positive so far. I am going to invite the people who already subscribe to the blog to view my private posts. (Sorry for all the emails!) If you don't subscribe and want access to those posts, let me know by email: pwdrotundo@gmail.com. ... read more
August 14th 2011
Today, I took a trip to People’s Square, in the heart of the city on the west side of the river. There is a park there and some museums. Skyscrapers surround the square. I’ve been impressed with a lot of the modern architecture—there are some very distinctive skyscrapers in Shanghai. I’ve also been impressed with the green spaces and how many trees there are in the parts of the city I’ve visited. In the park, we came across some older men teaching younger ones tai chi. We also came across the marriage market. There is an area in the park where parents put up signs advertising their eligible children for marriage. What I could understand from the signs was that most of them included the child’s gender, height, what year they were born (most seemed to ... read more
August 12th 2011
I just had my first dinner in Shanghai, at a hot pot place. We picked this restaurant because it was close to the hotel, and it was full of Chinese customers. The waitstaff spoke less English than I speak Mandarin. I didn’t know that it would be a hot pot place until my flatmate and fellow teaching assistant, Andy, and I sat at the table to see a burner in the middle. I was able to use words to get us a table and order drinks, but we needed the pictures on the menu to order. The waiters were friendly and worked with us to communicate around the language barrier. It was a good meal, with lotus root (a bland and crunchy tuber that absorbs flavors well), fresh-made noodles, and mushrooms in a broth given its ... read more
August 12th 2011
11 8-12 Day One I arrived with the other two American teaching assistants last night. It was a 15 hour flight. We flew west, and outside the plane it was bright the entire flight. All the windows were closed and the lights turned off, so it felt like night except for the few times when someone at a window seat would open it to peek out and flood the whole cabin with sunlight. There was a slight delay in landing, since we flew in through lightning. While the secondary school is under construction, YK Pao is putting us up at a hotel near the primary school campus, which we’ll use for the first month of classes. The school and hotel are located in Changning district, in the western part of the city. It’s a very nice ... read more
August 4th 2011
You may notice the name of the blog is “Luo Bide” (罗彼得). That’s my Chinese name, which I worked out with my wonderful Chinese teacher, Qing. “Bide” is the Mandarin version of Peter, and “Luo” is the closest a common Chinese surname comes to my own last name. “Luo” and “-de” are both pronounced with rising, question-like tones, and “bi-” takes a dipping tone that falls and rises. Qing was a Chinese teacher at Phillips Academy this year, and volunteered to tutor me in Mandarin when she found out I was going to China without any experience with the language. In exchange, I helped her with English, though with her many years of teaching experience and my months of ESL volunteering I don’t think that was quite an even exchange. I’m certainly not complaining. I was ... read more
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