by Alison | Oct 14, 2026 | Blog, Chinese Language and Culture
This semester, I’m auditing another Chinese Literature class. Since this class is called Chinese Literature II, I, along with the other students, assumed that the class would be more focused on recent literature. Our class last semester went from ancient Chinese poems...
by Alison | Oct 7, 2026 | Blog, Just Life, Travels
Guangdong is full of interesting cities. In the past, I wasn’t very interested in traveling around my province, but the more I have traveled in Guangdong, the more I love it. I especially love the mountains in my province. The mountains aren’t as impressive as the...
by Alison | Sep 30, 2026 | Blog, Chinese Language and Culture, Just Life
Mid-Autumn Festival (中秋节; Zhongqiu Jie) is one of my favorite holidays in China. I like it partly because it reminds me of Thanksgiving which is one of my favorite American holidays. The other day, I was talking with some of my students about the similarities between...
by Alison | Sep 23, 2026 | Blog, Chinese Language and Culture, Just Life, Travels
During my first year in China, I had lots of adventures. Some of them were traumatic, some of them were fun, and most of them were crazy. But over the years, I’ve developed less patience for things that look like they are going to be crazy. I started saying no to...
by Alison | Sep 16, 2026 | Blog, Just Life, Thoughts about life
As a teacher, I spend a lot of time and energy thinking about how to motivate my students to study well and work hard and learn the material that I have prepared for them. But for the last few months, I’ve had a hard time with that because I didn’t feel motivated...