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Traditional Chinese Medicine & Elizabethan Theatre
With 16 teaching hours per week and a four day weekend it seemed that I had an abundance of free time. There were no office hours required, but I provided nine hours during evenings throughout the week for students wanting to talk about literature, culture, or life. It had to be evenings because the studentry were in classes all day long, day after day. But despite this I was practically on sabbatical. I had the free time to get literary, practice yoga, explore grimy Chenzhou, and plan my upcoming Tibet expedition. I contacted the Xiangnan University medicine school faculty to meet with them for a tour of their facilities, and…
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Being a Highly Respectable Foreigner with Chinese Characteristics
You like spicy food? You know how use chopsticks? You know Chinese President Hu Jintao? Of course I do. Chinese people are so easy to impress. Either their expectations are very low, or I just don’t fit the mold of a stereotypical American. A college mathematics student at a party told me that while hanging out in Beijing and Shanghai she was amazed at the ignorance of foreigners pouring into the country without knowing the current president or the role Deng Xiaoping (kind of pronounced  like “Dung show—rhymes with plow—pingâ€) played in the Reform and Opening of China. Of course everybody knows Chairman Mao Zedong. But to know that under…