Some more pictures around Dinghai #2

Some more pictures around Dinghai #1

These are views from the 13-story building my office is in. You can see the surrounding city, and the students doing their morning exercises.

New York Times Aricle: A Move Towards Greater Social Harmony

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/12/world/asia/12china.html

I can't say that I'm yet aware of this shift toward greater social harmony here in Dinghai, but I can say that I'm seeing a lot of the problems this article refers to. It's interesting to hear what's happening at the top here in China.

A photo of me bicycling in September

A walk in Bamboo Park

Here are some pictures from a walk in Bamboo Park, in the hills near our apartment.

Pictures from Putuoshan

A day on Putuoshan

This last Sunday Mary and I went with a young English teacher from the school, whose English name is Jessie, Chinese name Zhen Cong something, to the island of Putuoshan. Putuoshan is a famous island in the Zhoushan archipelago, because it has many Buddhist temples and one of the four holy Buddhist mountains in China.

We left at 7 am and took a taxi half an hour east to the port of Shenjiamen. On the way we passed an area called Lincheng where the Chinese government has decided to build an entirely new city to be the capital of Zhoushan City ("cities" in China are regional governments containing districts, which are like counties ... Zhoushan is a city and Dinghai is a district and also the urban area where I live) replacing Dinghai. They are taking a large formerly agricultural plain near the ocean and building huge 25-story hotels and office buildings, and rows of apartment buildings and mansions. It's hard to see it being a liveable city, but they are certainly building the big buildings quickly. Apparently our school will move to Lincheng sometime in the next 10 years. Thank goodness it's still in Dinghai. Jessie said that Dinghai is too crowded and built up for the government to do the kind of development that it wants to do, and besides the government makes a lot of money off of big construction projects. And apparently the Chinese economy can accomodate the creation of a brand new city.

We then pulled into Shenjiamen, a grimy and glitzy port city that they call Little Shanghai apparently, because it's more modern than Dinghai. It has a great seaside street that wraps along the waterfront with seafood restaurants and views out at the fishing boats. We caught a small fast ferry to Putuoshan here. The ferry went out and under the fairly new bridge to Zhu Jia Jian, and arrived at Putuoshan in half an hour.

Once on the island we walked or rode buses between a whole series of Buddhist sites, from a huge statue of the goddess Guanyin, to a temple where she landed when she jumped onto the island from a nearby island, to the largest temple complex on the island. Jessie had been to these places before and kept us moving along. At the large temple complex, at the foot of the holy mountain, we ate a lunch of the vegetarian food the monks eat, a tasty cabbage stew, soup, and rice. We then climbed the steep stone steps to the top of the mountain, where Jessie had never been before. We hung out in a temple on the top for a while and then wandered down the mountain the wrong way, on an access road that wound around the back side of the mountain. That was actually my favorite part of the day ... the road gave us nice views out over the water and that shore of the island, it was quiet, and we ended up walking all the way from the top of the mountain to the port where we caught the ferry back to Shenjiamen.

We had another smooth ferry ride back to Shenjiamen - the boat pulled off the dock about ten seconds after we boarded - and an interesting bus ride that dropped us off right by our apartment complex in Dinghai. So we were home before 4 pm, and I had a well-deserved nap!

Jessie's traveling style was definitely rushed, and didn't allow us to hang around soaking up the sights in the Buddhists temple, but he'd been to these places many times and his commentary on things more than made up for the rush. He's an interesting person and speaks about Chinese society much more readily than other people we've interacted with. I learned a lot from him about such things as the new capital at Lincheng, interactions he's had with foreigners, how he feels about Buddhism as a non-believer in a largely Buddhist society, and marriage in China - he and his girlfriend are planning their marriage for next year. Hopefully we'll get out to do more hikes and travelling with him in the future.

Photos by the sea with my student

A bike ride and lunch

Yesterday I had one of those experiences that seem to typify my time in China. Mary and I went out on a long bike ride, heading back out the way we'd come in from our last one a couple weeks ago. Our goal this time was to cross to the ocean on the other side of the island. We rode along some fairly quiet, tree-lined roads through small villages, and up past a reservoir and through a tunnel to the other side of the island. As we approached the tunnel I'd had a student yell and wave at me - I seem to run into students everywhere in Zhoushan - and he passed me again in a bus right as we entered the tunnel. Mary and I then coasted down the other side of the pass and pedal along for a while towards the ocean. We turned off onto a smaller road that looked like it might go to the sea. As we neared a village, there was my student again running towards us.

He's from one of my classes of younger students that have had only a year of English, and I unfortunately haven't learned his English name let alone his Chinese name. He asked us to join him at his friend's grandmother's place for lunch, motioning eating rice out of bowl, so we followed him through the village to their courtyard. We met his mom and his friend and his mom, as well as his friend's grandmother. We sat down around a wooden table with lots of seafood. I got further instruction on how to eat crabs (my favorite seafood here so far) and was encouraged to eat something that I feared was eye-balls or some such thing, but turned out to be delicious potatoes. They also served us bowls full of beer (this was at 11 am) and when they noticed that Mary hadn't drunk any of hers they poured more in until it was practically overflowing. It's been hard for me to assess how much English the students in his class have, but it was clear from this lunch that he doesn't have much. He was having trouble answering basic questions about what he'd been doing on his holiday and things like that. But then again, I had almost no Chinese to use to speak to him and his mother and friends, and he could understand me fairly well.

Once we'd finished lunch I motioned to them that I'd like to take a picture of the group. At first I thought we were going out to the courtyard for the picture, then the street, and then there we were, all seven of us, walking half a kilometer down the road to the ocean so we could take the picture with a proper background. We passed his friend's grandfather and other villagers who were quite interested by this procession. The road took us past fish farm ponds and a small farm plot that, as best I understood, his friend's grandparents farm. We reached the sea wall and entered a fish unloading dock, slipping through the bars of the gate to take pictures with the sea behind us. The pictures are pretty amusing - I'll try to post a couple soon - this student's a real character. After getting the pictures we walked back together, his friend's mom grabbing Mary's hand so they could stroll along hand in hand.

After spending a little more time at their house, and declining their offer to have us rest through the heat of the day there we headed on. We found a great road built through a remote stretch of mountains that dropped us right down into Dinghai near the university. The climb was definitely a challenge on the one-speed bikes, but we slogged up and had a great ride down.