In the Chinese literature class that I’ve been auditing, we spent several weeks looking at Tang and Song Dynasty poetry. I never imagined that I would enjoy poetry from these periods. I can barely understand English poetry unless someone explains it to me, but the...
I may have mentioned before that I really enjoy hot pot. China has many different flavors of hot pot. Different areas often have their own specialties. Sichuan and Chongqing hot pots are both spicy but with different degrees of spiciness and with different...
Since I live in Guangzhou (in the Canton area), I have plenty of chances to listen to Cantonese Opera when I’m walking through a park. However, since the music is everywhere, I didn’t realize how often I had heard it until I watched a small Cantonese opera show in the...
One of the advantages of being a university teacher is that I get the chance to see amazing performances. The other day, my roommate, Kendra, and I were out having adventures in the city (I’ll have to tell you more about those in another post). As we were getting on...
This semester, I decided to join one of my roommate’s Chinese classes. When she told me that one of her classes is Chinese Literature, I was pretty excited as that is a topic that interests me. Really, literature from any culture is interesting to me, but since I’m...
Last week was super cold, at least for this area of the world with no central heating. The cold had seeped into my apartment, and staying warm was a bit of a challenge. So I was thankful that some friends and I planned to go to some hot springs for the weekend. My...
Now that the winter holiday is here, it’s a perfect time to go out and explore Guangzhou. The weather is chilly, but still nice for walking around (much better than summer when it’s brutally hot!). And outside is actually pretty warm. When I was thinking about places...
The university where I teach has a really cool program for the students and the foreign teachers. We have dozens of foreign teachers from all over the world since our university is a foreign language university, and our school also has students whose major is teaching...
I’m a slightly adventurous person, but not all the time. With fashion, I’m very unadventurous. If I could buy the same pants or shoes on repeat for years, I would. I know this because I did that with jeans for a while. I found a pair that I liked, and several years...
After all of our adventures the day before (read about them here!), and especially after all of that crazy driving, my friends and I were pretty worn out. We had two days in Kangding (康定) , and we decided to relax a bit, especially on the first day. I told my friends...