#104 Teaching at Taizhou Teachers College, China (Freshmen Military Training at TTC, Sep. 2008)

I appreciate your presence in China
Hello, and what an excellent blog, and more so an excellent life you are living there! Without such a life you couldn't not make such a blog! I lived in China for 1.5 years and recently returned to the US. I appreciate and encourage your sincere, secure and confident engagements with the Chinese people, I especially like how you are not at all off put by any negligence but rather confront it joyously. That is most excellent! Though it is unfortunate I think that so few Chinese seem to realize the political motivation behind the military training, which if you did not know was implemented around 1990...I like how you focused on the experience itself, which as you stated is mandatory and for now inevitable. I am glad to know that there is a fair-minded, and apparently very intelligent, kind-hearted, and interested American such as yourself living there in China and creating such blessed connections. Godspeed brother!

Hi, Hans, in this story, the reactions of those students at the first encounters with you are vivid and very true. Due to a completely different cultural background and the isolation, this kind of behavior is rather a failed coverage in a reserved way for the excitement deep inside. Just wish more opportunities for these young people to exchange with the world beyond. Oh, military training for students and civilians isn't a new thing at all. It's really an old tradition and many had fun of it. Really happy to see the white clouds drifting in the blue sky in the photos. Hope the sky stays that way!