From Grits to Chopsticks

Earlier in the year, an abundance of sugar cane was available along the roadside: I wanted to try it out, so a friend and I stopped to buy some.  The seller peels and chops it into a bag: and then you bite off a chunk and chew to extract the sweet juice:It’s not too bad… but […]

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As mentioned in a previous post, our city just experienced the coldest winter in three decades.  Many of the trees along city streets were severely damaged, leading to a massive pruning effort: As expected, all trees were trimmed to a uniform height, regardless of diameter:In spite of their best efforts, many of the trees were absolutely dead […]

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There are many cute children here in China.  We see them on the bus, in the park, and at roadside restaurants: Recently, our youngest son and daughter-in-law, who also live in China, surprised us with this picture of their baby on the way (at 9 weeks):Then, while Skyping with our daughter the next day, her youngest son was […]

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We’ve lived in China for six years, but we still see interesting things that catch our attention.  So to continue a previous post – you know that you’re in China when you look out one of your apartment windows and see people beating a drum and burning a huge stack of gifts (for the dead, I assume),and you […]

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Last weekend, we had the privilege of joining our son Timothy and his wife Caitlyn in the nearby city of Dali for the weekend.  We stayed at the Sleepyfish Lodge so that Caitlyn could enjoy some time with their two golden retrievers:On Friday morning, we rode a gondola lift midway up Cangshan mountain.  Rain was […]

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Continuing with the theme of a previous post – you know that you’re in China when you see old homes being knocked down to make room for new apartments:when you order fish at the school cafeteria and get this:when “Natural Beauty” means that you had your eyes, nose, and chin fixed:when “assorted knives” at the local store look like this:when […]

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We recently visited the Black Dragon Pool park on the north side of town to see the azaleas in bloom:This is one of the nicest parks in our city, with a variety of terrain and things to see.  There are some peaceful old places (look for the stone dragon head): and newer areas, including ponds for fishing and a […]

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For the second year in a row, our university department of foreign languages hosted an Easter Party and invited us to come:I had the opportunity to share a few thoughts about Easter,but the rest of the party they planned themselves.  They organized a game where students had to quickly memorize words and write them on the blackboard (I’m not sure where […]

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Once again, I am riding the school bus an hour to our north campus to teach this year’s business classes.  Our university now has about 10,000 students in our north campus and about 8,000 students in the main campus near our apartment.  I have some very good students in my class this year:I really enjoy our afternoon workshops in the […]

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On a recent Sunday afternoon, we rode to the north side of town to visit the new Kunming Waterfall Park.  Sidewalk vendors had already staked out space on the entrance road: Inside of the park, kids were piloting robotic dinosaurs and other machines:   Down the stairs, a wedding photo session was underway:We finally reached the falls (with a […]

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