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This will be short–our departure time for Zhangjiajie got moved up and I don’t have much time.

Life in Jishou has been good. Teaching has been better and better, though challenges seem to keep popping up. It’s not an easy task to make a lesson that gives students the feeling of learning, but also lets them do 80% of the talking. Especially when the materials that you have at your disposal include:

-A blackboard

-An endless supply of unprecentedly brittle chalk

-Sparing use of a printer

Printing is out-of-pocket, and most students don’t have email, so you have to be a little creative. So far, my students have made presentations comparing American and Chinese Value systems, and worked together to tell a part of Oscar Wilde’s fable The Selfish Giant (the non-christiany part).

There are also increasingly apparent environmental challenges: from classes that change location without warning, to torrential downpours that make my voice completely inaudible, to passionate saxophonists playing Careless Whisper in the echoey alleyway below (and only careless whisper).

I hosted my first couchsurfers this week. Dario and Elena are an Italian couple ~2 weeks into a 6 month trip through China and Southeast Asia (follow their blog here). We went hiking in the hills, and out to dinner with one of my more enthusiastic students, whose dream is to go to Venice.

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We sat in a cramped restaurant, eating Baozaifan and sipping sweet ginger tea. We talked about past travels, we explained why we don’t use the term “shemale” anymore, and we had just arrived at the subject of this year’s Jishou International Drum festival, when there came a peal of thunder. This wasn’t a warning of a coming storm, but an announcement of it’s arrival. We were shaken in our seats, and the sound was of a torn sky. And the sky did open, and the river swelled, and then the lights went out.

We ate by the light of telephone flashlights, then hospitably provided candles, and we walked home without umbrellas.

In the file of things I’m sure I don’t understand: Helen Keller Brand Sunglasses. There are advertisements everywhere for them. According to the company spokesman, the name was chosen because Helen Keller is a model of “optimism and philanthropy.” That doesn’t seem like quite a full picture to me, and I have to ask: Did they just want the headline? Or is there something else there?

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Next, a website I’ve been keeping an eye on. When you don’t speak much of the language, it can be hard to get access to Chinese culture, and to Chinese music that isn’t generic pop. This website changes all that, showcasing Chinese art and music.

Some highlights:

http://edge.neocha.com/chinese-creatives/some-illustration-works-from-chongqing-based-illustrator-luo-dan/

http://edge.neocha.com/chinese-creatives/some-painting-works-from-tianjin-based-artist-ren-han/

http://edge.neocha.com/posts/tracks-rapcdc/

http://edge.neocha.com/posts/tracks-carsick-cars-2/

http://edge.neocha.com/photography/new-photography-works-from-hefei-based-photographer-liu-tao-3/

http://edge.neocha.com/posts/tracks-p-k-14/

Finally, I’m not sure if I like the one-sidedness of this format, so I’m gonna ask you to participate a bit. Yeah, you. If you’ve been reading, and you like reading, leave a comment. I’ll ask a question each week to make it easier, so if you have a moment, give me an answer, or ask me a question, or both. All you need is an email. So, for this week:

What are you reading?

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fqwatkins

Hi, I'm Forrest. I grew up in Eugene, OR and went to Whitman College, where I studied Biochemistry, Biophysics and Molecular Biology and Spanish. I loved my time in school (and will probably love it again at some point), but right now it is time for something else. So I am embarking to realize my ever-expanding dream of biking around the world to document the effects of climate change and how everyday people are responding. For more on the project, check out: http://360bybike.com/the-plan-cycling/

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9 thoughts on “”

  1. I just finished “The Daughters if Mars,” about two Australian sisters from the Outback who are nurses. They volunteer to serve in WW I with the medical corps. Pretty sobering.

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  2. (continued) . . . “seems somehow relevant, don’t know why . . .” ( I just went back to get your exact words and then got cut off!). It’s handy to have a guy like Orwell around to help us put that feeling into words that explain so much.

    As to what I’m reading, it’s essays on European immigration to the American West in the 19th century — excerpts for discussion at a series of seminars a history prof friend is conducting here. So far we’ve covered an account of a Morman’s settlement and that of Irish copper miners in butte, Montana.

    Also a heavy article in SciAm by Laurence Krause on gravity waves perhaps providing information on the Big Bang, maybe with whispers about other universes.

    I’ll check out the web sites you included. Meanwhile I hope you enjoy your visit to Zhangjiajie. (I didn’t even know there was one!)

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    1. That’s an intriguing idea, though I think maybe a little narrow. In my view, great writing can show how/that we are all alike, but also how we are different. Making both difference and similarity understandable to a universal audience seems both the crux and the goal of writing. That’s probably more or less what Orwell was saying, albeit in more early-20th-century language.
      I don’t have anything coherent and relevant to say about your readings, but they sound interesting and I’m glad Cascade continues to inspire more investigation for both you and Gram.

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  4. [The “continued” note above, followed what I had written before and then lost because this blog format won’t let you (or, at least, me) leave the comment page for a minute with clicking the “POST COMMENT” button. So now, below, I will attempt to reconstitute from the beginning . . .]

    . . . My apologies for neglecting to comment on your “Army” posting — caught up in preparing artwork for local (Cascade) exhibit. (BTW, thanks for your quick response to my sending a photo of the work to you.)

    But now I want to address the matter of your having included the poem [Author / Title — (I can’t leave this site to find them, you see.)] at the end of your piece. I was reminded of it when reading the program notes for a recent concert here. The author of the notes was commenting on the symphonies of Beethoven and Shostakovich: “Something in their works speaks directly and personally. George Orwell described this quality when he explained how the work of a great write affects the reader:” Read him for [a few] pages and you feel the peculiar relief that comes not so much from understanding as being understood. ‘He knows all about me,’ you feel; he wrote this especially for me.’ It is as though you could hear a voice speaking to you, a voice with no humbug in it, no moral purpose, merely and implicit assumption that we are all alike.”

    I thought there was an echo of that feeling in your introduction to the poem — something like “This seems relevant. . . not sure why.”

    [NOW go back to pick up the “continued” text, in the earlier comment above.]

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  5. Unfortunately, I haven’t had much time for reading recently.
    The reading I do get around to consists of:
    emails
    my quantum physics and differential equations textbooks
    spanish history (written in Spanish)
    Al Jazeera
    my writing students’ work
    design process readings for work in the multimedia lab.

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