Tree Planting for Qing Ming
This weekend, I went on an excursion sponsored by the Mandarin Club. I, along with 4 students and a Chinese supervisor, went to a city close to here named Jin Zhou (think of Joe)- the same place that we went mountain climbing last weekend. It is a very old city, having been an important strategic location for centuries due to the fact that it is the narrowest part of Liaoning peninsula. From the top of the mountain you can see the Yellow Sea on one side and the Bohai Sea on the other side.
Anyway for Qing Ming, the Tomb Sweeping festival, people visit the graves of deceased relatives and offer cold food and paper money offerings. Because it is spring, they also plant trees. Mr. Zhong told me that it is a law in China that everyone plants a tree every year, but none of the boys had heard of this! ANyway, it was an interesting trip and we had a lot of fun. James, Mike, Tracy and Boris.
For centuries China stood as a leading civilization, outpacing the rest of the world in the arts and sciences, but in the 19th and early 20th centuries, the country was beset by civil unrest, major famines, military defeats, and foreign occupation. A... ... read more 
