Olympic news China Daily, the official English newspaper, had a story about water. The Olympic visitors will have drinkable (potable) running water. I wonder how that will be accomplished. No one in China drinks faucet water. Water is drunk hot to be sure it was boiled. My visitors do not want cold water, even on hot days, and none of my guests has ever said 'yes' to the offer of ice in the water. In Beijing, one day a month is queue day. Everyone in Beijing has to line up for the busses, elevators, etc., on that day. As it gets [View Full Entry]

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Traveling with Family The Great Wall of China—one of the seven wonders of the world—lives up to your expectations. It’s a massive construction project spanning northern China from Beijing in the east to Gansu Province in the west. This was my second visit to the Great Wall. I first came in 1978. I was young then and had promised myself that if I quit smoking I could climb to the top of the Great Wall of China. I remember that climb and the victorious celebration when I got to the top hill outside Beijing. At that time I had one [View Full Entry]

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Jiansu Province Kun Opera It’s not the Beijing Opera, but it’s great to be in the audience. The operas are staged in an old Confucian temple and a small theater so you can really see the details of the performers’ costumes and make up, as well as the emotions they project. This is a long blog, but my sons and daughter-in-law are coming this week for ten days, so I want to get caught up on these blogs. After this one I want to tell you about the incredible cave paintings in Dun Huang in Gansu province in the desert. [View Full Entry]

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Magpies bring you good luck and crows bring you bad luck. Luckily, I see magpies all the time. Of course, I've always been lucky. A few weeks ago, while walking through the old campus, I heard a lot of squealing and squawking in the air. A magpie was attacking a bat. This was about three in the afternoon so I had several questions. Why is a bat out at three o'clock? Usually I see a lot at dusk. Why is the magpie attacking it? Do magpies eat meat? A magpie is about 4 times as big as a bat. It [View Full Entry]

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Spring and Yuntai Mountain, Spring has come to Nanjing Nanjing is a beautiful city now, but it wasn’t always so. Back in the 1930s and 40s after the Japanese had invaded and occupied Nanjing, killing hundreds of thousands of Chinese, the city was a mess. Many destroyed buildings, ruined roads, etc. and no money to fix it up. To hide the destruction, the Nanjing natives planted trees. After I heard that story, I wondered about Beijing Xie Lu (Beijing Street West) which has beautiful old plane trees (from the sycamore family), all pruned to shade the street on both sides. [View Full Entry]

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Hong Kong Tomorrow land! Hong Kong is awesome! I stood in awe over and over as I looked at the skyscrapers and pedestrian walk ways, the clean busses, the efficient use of space. I was in awe later at the activists collecting petition names at a table by the giant escalator. They were protesting a building-zoning issue, publicly and getting a lot of participation from the passers-by. Hong Kong territory, 1102 sq km, is divided into four areas--Kowloon, Hong Kong Island, the New Territories and the Outlying Islands. The northern side of Hong Kong Island is Central and is the [View Full Entry]

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My blog Anniversary & New Year’s Eve (Lunar) Hello World! On April 5, I will have been blogging for one year. That's the first milestone. The others are that my blog has had 5,610 hits and this is the 45th journal entry. I never expected to reach those numbers. I swear I have not been going to my blog several times a day to get a high hit count! Thank you, world of supporters! I missed telling you about Hong Kong. So far, I think it's my favorite city in the world. I used to say Paris, but I haven't [View Full Entry]

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Hainan, February 4-9, same latitude as Hawaii, was the exile for disgraced officials, now is a balmy vacation paradise. In 1988 Hainan became a SEZ (Special Economic Zone) and now 80% of the economy comes from tourism. The southern coast of the island, around Sanya, has the best beaches in China. [View Full Entry]

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I've been asked questions about the civil service examinations, because I showed you photos of the examination rooms, in my last blog. This tradition is really the basis for Chinese education today. Although the first examinations were in the Qin dynasty, the examinations fully based on the Classics began in the Tang Dynasty (618-896AD) and continued until 1905, and for that thousand years, was the scope and breadth of Chinese education. All officials were recruited through the examinations. Men could aspire to a position regardless of class position by studying the Classics to prepare for [View Full Entry]

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After Xi'an, Sally and I spent two half days seeing parts of Nanjing. Wu was kind enough to go with us. Jan. 30 we went to the Nanjing Museum of Art. As always, it's traditional art, not modern art. It's a new museum with rooms for different types of art: painting, ceramics, brocades, sculptures, etc. We moved slowly, but we saw a lot. I liked the ceramics especially. I'll include some photos. One bright room had a sculpture display by a current artist. I'm adding a few of the sculptures here. Here is the preface to the room. People make history, [View Full Entry]

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