Goodbye Year of the Ox
31 Dec 2009 Leave a Comment
Since I only teach three days a week, and spend most of my time studying, reading, blogging and sheltering from the cold, wintry rain it is easy to forget where I am. A quick jaunt about the campus quickly reminds me that I’m not in Pennsylvania anymore.
Just beyond the dingy metropolis, my university was nestled at the feet of a jagged, tent-like mountain, green with bamboo, shrubbery, and leafy sword blade foliage. Students roamed the campus in packs on their way to classes, parties, or speeches. Every day at lunch and dinnertime a campus wide loudspeaker system blares out happy-go-lucky pop music, advertisements and announcements in Chinese as well as English sound bites. Stray dogs – enough to provide a respectable cast for a Disney movie – scampered to and fro on errands with or without some tasty piece of trash held in their mouths. Somebody’s chickens pecked at piles of trash. There was the smell of burning trash in the air, and students sang, and played flutes and erhus . They smiled and practiced their hellos on me.
