David's Big Adventure in China

The spring semester is over and I’ve been in China for over 7 years now. I signed a new contract so I’ll be teaching for at least one more year. We finally got the key at the end of April to the apartment on campus that Bonnie has purchased. We haven’t started any of the finishing/decoration work yet and won’t start it until October or so since we will be gone for the summer and Bonnie will be very busy in September and early October. Since I signed a contract for another year we can stay in our current apartment until this time next year so we don’t need to be in a hurry to finish the new apartment. Our current apartment is comfortable enough, provided to me at no cost and is more conveniently located so we’re in no hurry to move.

In May, Nanning hosted the China National Gymnastics Championship and in October will host the World Gymnastics Championship. We went to see the last 2 days which were the individual event finals. I was amazed that about half the seats were vacant considering that the ticket prices were not that expensive (less than $15 per ticket per day for the most expensive seats) and Nanning is a city of more than 5 million people. We have purchased tickets to the World Championship for the individual event finals and the most expensive tickets cost about $45 each. Very affordable prices for such world class events I think. See the pictures by clicking on the link on the right.

About 3 weeks ago I got a call from someone here at the school saying that there was a Yao minority group festival taking place in a small town about 90 minutes away from Nanning that day and they were looking for some foreigners to attend. They like to have foreign faces at these types of events and the foreigners always get photographed and interviewed by the local media. I agreed to go and was picked up by a couple people from that town. The one who spoke English happened to be someone that I had met before because she was friends with a couple of the Americans that I worked with at the pig farm company. The town where the festival was taking place was near the town where we had one of the pig farms. We arrived late and didn’t really get to see much of the festival but the performances I saw were entertaining and showed aspects of the local culture. I was treated like a VIP and was ushered in to sit next to a fairly high ranking provincial official. There was an obvious police presence at the festival as I believe there is at any large gathering of people with the purpose most likely being to prevent or respond to any terrorist attacks and to make sure the gathering stays focused on its intended purpose. There was a German guy that we went to pick up to take with us but when we arrived to pick him up it turned out that he was a local Chinese. Someone got his phone number confused with a German guy’s number and called him to invite him to the festival. Because when he answered the phone the person spoke English he replied in English. He studied in the US for a couple years so he speaks English well and the person calling him didn’t realize he was not the German guy. It was a very funny situation and even though he wasn’t a foreigner he joined us anyway. He is an interesting guy and is the manager of a company that he may also own or be a part owner (often facts about these sorts of things are not very clear here). I had lunch with him a week or so later and he told me that his daughter, who is an American citizen having been born in the states, is living with his late wife’s brother. He said that his wife owned a company and after she passed away the brother-in-law forged documents preventing him from inheriting his wife’s company and that the brother-in-law also bribed court personnel to help him get custody of his niece. It’s a pretty strange tale and I have no idea how much of it to believe. It’s often very difficult here to sort out fact from fiction. I have posted pictures of the festival.

We will leave on the 16th to head to the states for the summer. We will visit Florida, Texas, Indiana, the NE/New England/Quebec Canada areas and also go to the US Open tennis tournament. Until next time…..

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