Hainan Island - Sanya

Located in the south part of China, it is an island that is supposed to resemble Hawaii. Like Hawaii, it has clear ocean water, shells, mountains, colorful shirts (and more) and lots of palm trees. Unlike Hawaii it has a lot of Russian tourists and lots cheap tour buses. Our first full day was beautiful and sunny but not too hot. We took advantage of the great weather and spent the day on the beach and in the huge hotel pool - both times carefully positioning ourselves under the big umbrellas. We still got sunburned, Cynthia got the worse – I had a good enough “base tan” from St Simons that I just got a little pink. For Zac’s information and anyone else that surfs – In Yulong Bay where we were staying there were no surfable waves and this was just days before a typhoon (their version of a hurricane) would be passing by.

One of the biggest differences between the USA and China is they do not cover the weather as thoroughly as we seem to do. We looked for information on many of the TV channels and still heard little about when or where it would hit. Weather seems to be American’s “small talk” where as the “small talk” for the Chinese seems to be centered around food.

The Wave - Qiantang River Tidal Bore

Mid-Autumn Festival is a national holiday so we got Monday off. I didn’t do anything special because I was giving my back a break from the “adventure” of Chinese travel and because there was lots of rain due to a typhoon off the coast of China. During this holiday people in this province eat mooncakes, look at the full moon, and watch the famous Qiantang River Tidal Bore. Our school is located on the bank of the Qiantang River so we joined the thousands of other students and families in watching this event. This tidal bore is supposedly the biggest in the world, but it still looked rather small to me. Click here to read more about tidal bores.

I was initially more fascinated by all the people that came to watch the small dirty looking wave roll by but I changed my mind when I found a video online of Brad Gerlach an American surfer surfing the “Silver Dragon”. The "Silver Dragon" is a colorful name for this wave that runs from one side of the river to the other. The unfinished bridge that you see in the video is right beside our campus so we might have been witnesses to this event – but I doubt it. We did see a wave runner close to the other side of the river but no surfer.
http://www.surfline.com/video/video_player/video_player.cfm?id=17637

Mooncakes And The Wave

This is the Mid-Autumn Festival where everybody gives everybody else Moon Cakes usually in beautiful boxes and bags. Presentation is really important here. Moon Cakes remind me a LITTLE of fig newtons. But cake on the outside is much harder and dryer and the filling might not be fruit. Sometimes it is a sweet redbean paste with an egg yolk in the middle, sometimes it is a sweet green pea filling or a rubbery fruit filling (they are my favorite if I have to eat them). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mooncake They might be better if they were sampled with a big glass of ice cold milk, which is impossible here because all you can buy is the room temperature box milk which just doesn’t do it for me.

The Mid-Autumn Festival falls on the 15 day of the 8th lunar month, so the actual date will vary between mid September to mid October. I think it might have something to do with the harvests but I found lots of legends online – this web site had the most common 4 – just scroll down http://www.chinapage.com/Moon/moon00.html

Kris and Jim - Aren’t you Jealous?

Last semester, the Dalton Georgia couple Kris and Jim and I would frequently eat at the restaurant we called the “Short Cut Restaurant”. We gave it that name because someone would always tear out a tree so we could easily take a short cut to get to the restaurant (and they have already torn a tree out this semester too). Shown above are some of Kris and Jim’s favorite foods, “shoestring potatoes”, and “smells like fish pork”. (Don't worry Kris, the “cabbage hot pot” was on its way) The restaurant was full so they made us a table outside to eat. YUM – don’t you want to come back…. We miss you!

Things to Amuse Us While We Wait For Our Food

It takes talent to pick up 2 peanuts with chopsticks as shown by Steve but exceptional talent was shown by Beth, another English teacher from Hangzhou Normal University which is across the street from our University.

CTs, Dogs, Cows - Chinese Medicine

When I was in the hospital they asked me if I was willing to have Chinese Medicine- I replied that I didn’t care just so it worked. I was given these great patches that really do work and some pills that I take 3 of -3 times a day. I got Penny to translate the ingredients in the pills. And if she translated correctly there were various herbs along with the part of a spine of a dog and part of the knee of a cow. Woof Woof & Moo Moo…. But, I am still acting fairly normal after 6 doses of the pills with no cravings for grass or cats.

Pictured above is my CAT scan and medical records - they let you keep them and all my "medicine" ... all for the low cost of less than 100 dollars.

Newbies

We have 4 new Americans here this term. It is the first trip to China for all of them. John Paul, 24 and his wife Rachel, 22 are from the mid west, Andrea, 26, is from Michigan and Steve, 22, is from Long Island. They all seem to be adjusting really well (better than I did the first time) and will probably really enjoy their adventure in China.