Shenzhen
My friend Thomas came over to meet me in the hotel lobby at 6:30 to go eat. We took a taxi to the subway station and meet his girlfriend. Thomas was the Business/English major who worked at the Sanbao Ceramic Institute the first year I did a residency in 2006. He is from Inner Mongolia and we used to eat la mien noodles together all the time when in town at Jingdezhen. He would eat so very, very fast that we used to tease him that he would never get a girlfriend. "Slow down Thomas" was our mantra for him. We have kept in touch over the past seven years and I am excited to see him again. He is linked to me first Sanbao experiences. I meet him in the lobby and see an older version (30ish) of the young boy I remember. It feels familiar to be with him and we start reminiscing about people we know and updating about our experiences.
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 
