David's Big Adventure in China

About 3 weeks ago I played a small role in a made for tv movie. One of the national tv networks here is making a movie about Deng Xiao Peng, one of the former leaders of China, and needed some foreigners to play French soldiers. That part of the movie took place in 1929 in South China and our scene was very short. A single Chinese man wanted to pass through the road we (French soldiers) were guarding and we refused to allow him. We had rifles and he had nothing but he defeated 7 of us using Kung fu. I was the last soldier and he jumped high in the air and kicked me in the chest causing me to fall backwards to the ground. No, I didn’t have a stunt double but they did put a mat on the ground for me to fall on. The movie is supposed to be shown on national tv in November or December. It took all day to film the scene and they paid me 300 yuan (about $45). I posted some pictures for your enjoyment. Autographed copies may be purchased at davidisnowastar.com.

About a week ago I went to Kunming (the city where I lived last year) for the weekend to visit friends there. It was nice to go back and see everyone there. The weather was nice……not as hot and humid as Nanning but the people there were complaining about it being too hot. The teachers that I worked with there were telling me about how bad the living conditions became at the school there. They said there was construction noise almost 24 hours a day preventing them from being able to sleep and frequent unannounced water outages. I’m so glad I left there to come here as I would not have been happy if I had stayed there. I need my beauty rest!

This week is finals week and after I finish grading the exams and do the paperwork I’ll be on vacation for the summer. On July 16, I’m heading to Japan for 3 weeks, 2 weeks of which will be with a tour group. Then I’ll come back here and do some travel in China assuming I’m not stuck in quarantine due to H1N1 concerns.

I have been busy recently preparing for the final exams and the end of this semester (July 3) and also preparing for next semester. I will teach two different classes next semester: International Business English, and Finance and Accounting English. The second class is a new class that I will develop. At this point I don’t have a textbook for the new class so I will have to find and develop my own materials. It will be a lot of work but I think I will enjoy teaching those subjects much more than teaching Writing.

At the end of May we had the Dragon Boat Festival holiday and I had 4 days off including the weekend. I went to Chongqing which is located in the middle of China. It is a municipality reporting directly to Beijing similar to the District of Columbia in the states. It is about the same size as South Carolina and has about 31 million people with about 5 million being in the central urban area. For comparison, South Carolina has 4.5 million people and the most populous state in the U.S., California has 37 million people. Chongqing is an industrial area with many factories and thus the air there is very bad. Even after a couple days of rain and holidays when the factories should have been closed, the air was very bad. Chongqing became the capital for Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists during the second world war when Japan had occupied much of the East Coast of China. It also hosted some American troops during that time as the U.S. was supporting China primarily via the Flying Tigers supply services flying in material via India.

While in Chongqing I visited the Dazu Rock Carvings which are “a series of religious sculptures and carvings, dating back as far as the 7th century A.D., depicting and influenced by Buddhist, Confucian and Taoist beliefs. Listed as a UNESCO World cultural Heritage Site, the Dazu Rock Carvings are made up of 75 protected sites containing some 50,000 statues, with over 100,000 Chinese characters forming inscriptions and epigraphs.” It was about a 2 and ½ hour bus ride to get to the Carvings site. I also visited the Great Hall of the People, the Three Gorges Museum (so-so), and the Ciqikou Ancient Town, a 1000 year old area which is now mostly shops and dining. I also visited the General Stillwell Museum and the Flying Tigers Museum which are located across a small road from each other. Chongqing is famous for its spicy food such as hotpot and its beautiful ladies. The food is definitely spicy; I had a dish that they said was just a little spicy and it almost made my tongue numb….lol. Some of the ladies had skin that was more white but I didn’t think they were any more beautiful than ladies elsewhere in China. The Chinese consider white skin more beautiful. I have posted some pictures of Chongqing so just click on the link on the right hand side to view them.

I will finish with some information I read on the Wall Street Journal website that I found interesting. “China followed this general trend, and has seen its software piracy rate drop from 90% in 2004 to 80% last year, thanks to better enforcement and a government push to encourage the use of legitimate software in its computers. Worldwide average last year was 41% pirated.”