aaaand we're back!

posted by Sarah

We're back in Spokane for the summer!

More updates to come, but right now I need some serious sleep time.

5 weeks left

posted by Sarah

So we have recently switched to posting on our blogs via email, because the Great Firewall has inconveniently blocked blogging sites in preparation for the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. More on that later...

Today, however, I'll post a little about the Duan Wu Festival - literally meaning the summer solstice according to the Chinese calendar - but more popularly known as the Dragon Boat Festival. This year marks the first time China has made it a national holiday - a way to ease the travel strains during the other parts of the year, and also to reintroduce some traditions that had been repressed during the building of the Communist Party.

Since we both had the day off, we spent it hiking up Baochu hill, a hillside park that separates our neighborhood from West Lake. Luckily the weather isn't killer hot yet, and we saw lots of families and elderly people spending their day off here as well - everybody seemed well prepared with tea, snacks, games, taichi equipment, yoyos, portable radios for dancing lessons, or just a newspaper.

Pictured here is an instructor of the Gong Fu Fan - actually she's teaching the same routine that I learned! One great thing about China is just how communal everything is - so anyone can stop to observe or participate in park activities. I especially like the looks of concentration on her students' faces - I'm sure I've had a similar look on my face when learning this routine!

Getting Ready for the Next Chapter

The last quarter of the schoolyear is in full swing -- my teaching load is 18 hours a week, for 4 different courses -- and Sarah's busy memorizing countless Chinese characters. We're so busy, in fact, that the fact that we are leaving China in almost exactly eight weeks hasn't really sunk in yet.But it's true! Let's recap the geographical Joel and Sarah timeline with a look at where we're headed next....

1999 Joel and Sarah meet in Seattle: College, friends, staying up late, and 5 years later, marriage!
2004 - 2005 Seattle, WA, USA: Living in an awesome house in Magnolia, workin' 9 to 5...
2005 - 2007 Eureka, CA, USA: Joel in school and freelancing, Sarah working at the print shop and perfecting the art of the apple tart...
2007-2008 Shaoxing, Zhejiang, China: Trying desperately to teach one language while trying desperately to learn another...
2008-2009 Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China: Sarah progressing much further in the study of one language while Joel progressing much further in the teaching of another...
2009 - 20?? Vancouver, BC, Canada

It's true! We are moving to the Pacific Southwest. Everyone has always said things to me like "you'd make a good professor," plus I think I have the right kind of glasses for it, so applied to several different schools. After much thought, solicited advice, prayer, and coin-tossing (maybe not all of that), we decided on the University of British Columbia. Not to get into the boring details too much, but I'll be in the Department of Language and Literacy Education working toward a PhD in Teaching English as a Second Language.

We're looking forward to a relaxing (or maybe busy?) summer and are right now tentatively making plans for a trip to Portland for a Dandelion Method reunion (not a show, just hangin' out), to California to see some friends and Wine Country, and just maybe some down time at my parents' house in Spokane during which we won't do anything. School starts September 1.

Until then, it's a race to the finish of the academic year! 加油！

Sarah's new blog

Yes, Sarah started a new blog. You can access it/RSS feed it/follow it here:

http://sarahjhh.blogspot.com/

Thus ends the horn tooting.

Nanjing in 48 hours

posted by Sarah

Since we had a three day weekend last week (Joel usually has to teach on Saturdays) we took advantage of the free time and spectacular spring weather to visit the city of Nanjing, perhaps best known in the US for the Nanking Massacre - which occurred at the start of WWII. Located in Jiangsu Province (the next one up), it took us about 4 hours by bus to get there from Hangzhou.

Our hostel was located a stone's throw away from the Confucious Temple, spectacularly lit up here.

These are the first rickshaws we've seen in China! For a fee, these snazzily dressed men will take you on a tour around parts of Nanjing, stopping at various points to give information.

Papercut-inspired lanterns overlooking the river

We ate at a touristy place decorated like an old-style teahouse. We ordered some Nanjing specialties: a slightly fermented sweet rice tea (what they use to make rice wine), the local version of stinky tofu, and garlic spinach (a standard dish we can't get in Hangzhou right now because spinach is out of season here).

Some deep-fried crabs. We didn't eat these.

the subway system has a "love zone" for elderly, disabled and pregnant women. I just liked the stick figures.

We stopped in a music store where you can buy Hello Kitty guitars in pink and blue. Sign me up!

We visited the Nanjing Massacre Museum (also translated as Holocaust museum) - it was extremely depressing but worthwhile to understand the history of China and the emotions associated with the last 100 years.

The museum architecture - reminiscent of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial - is fairly bleak and starkly depressing.

Located right next door to the Massacre museum is the Nanjing Brocade museum, which was extremely informative and impressive. Nanjing's silk brocade was the premier fabric in China during the time of the emperors, and all of the emperor's robes were made in Nanjing. Our tour guide described the process of designing a brocade piece as like a precurser to a computer program - a very apt description, I think.

Here's a master at work at a loom handweaving silk brocade - there's another person at the top, not sure what she does but she was constantly rearranging all the separate threads. One days' worth of work will produce 5 cm of brocade.Sarah with the fairy goddess of weaving - She figures prominently in a famous Chinese love story that you can read here. The Chinese have their own valentine's day based on this legend. Joel at the Sun Yat Sen Mausoleum on Purple Mountain (also a national park). Sun Yat-Sen is considered "the Father of Modern China" and the majority of the places we saw here were dedicated to him.

We're not sure why this guy is dressed up, but it says "old sports fan" on his tunic. 加油!

A grandfather holds his granddaughter up so she can try to remove the ball from the lion's mouth. (p.s. this is cute)

A glorious spring day!

A pagoda dedicated to the soldiers who fought against the Japanese during the Japanese invasion.

Joel from the top of the pagoda. The city skyline is faintly visible in the background.

This guy was just about as tired as we felt at the end of our long walk!

Suzhou in 36 hours (差不多)

posted by Sarah

We have often heard about Suzhou, because it's linked to Hanzhou in an old saying: "上有天堂,下有蘇杭" which translates as:

"Above is heaven, below is Su-Hang (the cities of Suzhou & Hangzhou)."

We decided to take a weekend trip to the city whose legendary beauty is matched only by our own Hangzhou. The weather was perfect and we got some nice pictures, which we will share here:

Suzhou is best known for its gardens, and its bird & flower market boasts some lovely things, like perfectly manicured bonsai trees.

We see these wisteria everywhere; they're beautiful and fragrant.Wandering through the narrow alleyways of Suzhou's neighborhoods, we came across a communal well - something we haven't really seen in other Chinese cities.

I love these old sewing machines - many women will set up shop on a corner for the day.

The Suzhou Museum - designed by architect I.M. Pei - beautiful!The central pond in the heart of the museum.One of my favorite pieces from the Suzhou museum - carved jade figures of the eight immortal beings (I think Tang Dynasty, but I'm not sure)An elegant tree in a traditional-style courtyardSuzhou is best known for its gardens - there are about 10 different gardens to visit. We chose the biggest and most famous - called the Humble Administrator's Garden - which was a riot of spring beauty - and a zooful of tourists, then we went to the Master of the Nets Garden, one of the smallest but definitely less crowded and still quite beautiful.

"General Description"
An ornate pavilionA nice stained glass motifSuzhou has two faces: the old city and the incredibly new and shiny Singapore Industrial Park area (we actually stayed in that area with a family through Couchsurfing.) The newer neighborhood is located between the old city and 金鸡湖 (literally "golden chicken lake"), which boasts a pyrotechnic light show in the evenings. We were looking forward to seeing this show but sadly it wasn't running that night. We did manage to recoup our evening by getting ice cream from Coldstone Creamery.

Singapore is really invested in Suzhou - this sculpture titled "Harmony" was unveiled by some political bigwig from Singapore.
Joel is king of the world! Or so he thinks.

Joel's Parents in Hangzhou & Shaoxing!

posted by Sarah

We spent a good week with Joel's parents in our adopted home of Hangzhou. Besides seeing the sights, we also stuffed ourselves silly and had multiple massages (foot and head) - a great way to get the tension out of those sore muscles! Our week in review:

Hangzhou's West Lake - its most prized tourist attraction

Hefang Jie, a touristy old street selling old fashioned things - as well as a lot of new stuff too - tea, silk, knick-knacks, etc. This is blown sugar, an old method that's dying out with the advent of factory made confections.Here's video of a candymaker using caramelized sugar to create a bird. You spin a wheel to determine which animal you get (of the 12 zodiac animals). Pretty impressive!


We went to a show called "Westlake Impressions" - a nighttime spectacular directed in part by Zhang Yimou, the guy who brought us "House of Flying Daggers" and "Beijing Olympics Opening Ceremony." It was pretty impressive - people walking on water, giant multi-storeyed boats, and lots of cool lights.

We also visited the National Tea Museum and Dragon Well Tea Village - where China's best green tea (龙井 - Longjing - or Dragon Well) is grown and harvested. Here we are at the Botanical Gardens - one of our favorite places to go, especially now that spring is here!Sarah at Hangzhou's biggest teahouse. You pay for a really expensive cup of tea (about $10-12 USD) and get an all-you-can-eat buffet of delectable snacks in a cool setting. On Thursday we spent the day in Shaoxing, where we lived last year. We had a great time revisiting old sites and a sleepy boat ride on Shaoxing's canal (it's one of China's old water towns).

Kevin & Jane in our 4 person boat - it had a little table in the middle so you could bring along snacks and sip tea.

Joel with some very excited Chinese students at the Lu Xun museum. Lu Xun is one of China's best-known modern writers (he lived at the beginning of the 20th century) - some people compare his work to Mark Twain's - and his family is from Shaoxing.We met up with a few of our colleagues from last year for dinner; it was a wonderful reunion! We miss them a lot. Notice how Sarah is the shortest of the group. *sigh* On Saturday we bid a fond farewell to Jane & Kevin at the Shanghai airport. (They had a safe trip back). See you in the summer!