Settling In...Pat and Dennis come to visit!

The national holiday has officially finished since last week, however it has not ended without its share of stories! Hangzhou has proved to be a place with much to offer and as one of China’s most progressive, modern, and scenic cities it has drawn visitors for thousands of years. One of the city’s most historic mantle pieces is the Grand Canal. The manmade waterway began its construction over two and half millennium ago, and now stretches over 1,000 miles, easily making it the world’s longest artificial river. Hangzhou is the southern most destination of the canal, and the northern most end is Beijing. (Check out map on Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Canal_(China)) Dan, a friend of a friend from Westport, CT (small world), was kind enough to bring me to the canal and tell me some of the history surrounding it. Legend has it that the canal was extended to Hangzhou so that the emperor at the time could have access to the city’s famous scenic West Lake area (some of the Beijing summer palace is modeled after the natural landscape of Beijing) and beautiful women. Thus, I have dubbed the canal, the playboy waterway.
As evidence to the frighteningly small world this planet is becoming, my Aunt and Uncle just so happen to be in China during the month, and just so happen to have already planned to visit Hangzhou in their tour of the country. Dr. Dennis Lamb, a recently retired scientist and professor at Penn State in atmospheric physics has been visiting several former graduate students in China, and lecturing at their respective Universities. Having already spent a week in Beijing and then traveling to Taipei, Taiwan, and Shanghai, the next place to visit is Hangzhou before going to the yellow mountains. The timing also worked out that the first day of their trip fell on the couples’ anniversary, so happy anniversary Pat and Dennis and welcome to China!
The Chinese are famed to have invented several advancements in culture and technology long before other civilizations. Of these innovations are noodles, gun powder, and FIREWORKS! Seemingly every single night there seems to be a celebration that warrants a legit firework show. It would appear that the Chinese equivalent for a couple of friends lighting off roman candles in the states would be buying a dozen ‘real fourth of the-light-up-the-sky July” and setting them off for evey baby born in China (you do the math). On one occasion while socializing on the patio of a restaurant everyone outside was suddenly startled by a barrel of fireworks going off just 20 yards away. Below is the picture from a cellphone…notice the lights easily clearing the treeline.
Now that students are back on campus the place is crawling with the little buggers. Enrollment this year includes some 10,000 undergraduates yet the campus is less than a square quarter mile, so you can image the volume of people moving between classes and at the school’s single canteen for meals. With students back that means I have had to begin doing something except enjoy Hangzhou. The classes are all oral English, so the students basically listen to me speak for 2 hours, only kidding. The proficiency of most students is actually quite surprising, and sometimes even impressive. With that said I can’t pronounce their names if my life depended upon it, so students have been given English names. Where they get them seems to vary. Reading off the attendance sheet I had to hold back a few chuckles as I read, “Butterfly, sword, shiny, and soso” Obviously Chinese names don’t translate well. Then there were the miscommunicated names. Jenny turned out to be a boy, and Dan was a girl. Then there was my own personal change of name. Since Trevor comes out more like, “Tervwa” I decided James, my middle name and Grandfather’s namesake, would be more appropriate, especially if I ever wanted one of the students to ask a question in class. Despite mixing and matching names classes have been enjoyable. For many of the students it is their first opportunity to extensively interact with a foreigner and therefore fun for them. I too am trying to enjoy the experience as much as possible, and I have assigned my first assignment of finding and preparing for next class…an English joke.