Family visit

Charlie wrote up a brief summary of the first half of our trip.

http://charliebrummitt.blogspot.com/

More details, including pictures and videos to come later.

New Ambassador to China

President Obama nominated Utah’s current governor, Jon Huntsman Jr., as the new ambassadorto China. Huntsman was a Mormon missionary in Taiwan in the 1980s before going into government service.

Last summer in Beijing there were four American students at my university who had similar stories as Gov. Huntsman . They all grew up in Mormon families in Utah or Idaho, graduated from high school, went through several months of intensive language training, and then were sent to Asia for two years. Two went to Taiwan and the other two went to Korea. All four were really nice people and sharp students. I got to know three of them really well and had no idea that they were Mormon and had already lived in Asia until it came up one day. I imagine schools like Brigham Young University must be long on mature and hardworking 20 or 21 year old freshman who speak a foreign language.

Some facts about Nanjing

I’ve been in Nanjing for nearly three full months now and have explored a good part of the city on my bike, but I haven’t visited any cultural sites during that time. In a trip to Nanjing last fall I hiked around Purple Mountain (it’s more like a big hill) and visited Sun Yatsen’s tomb (a massive set of stairs leading up to his mausoleum), an old temple that is now several touristy pedestrian streets, and the Nanjing Massacre Memorial and Museum.

Since I’m expecting visitors next week, I took out my copy of Lonely Planet China and went online to look up the points of interest in Nanjing and learned a few things about Nanjing. It has the longest city wall in the world and is believed to have been the largest city in the world in the late 14th and early 15th centuries, when the population was nearly half a million people. It was the capital of China under several dynasties and for a time served as the capital of the People’s Republic of China in the early 20th century. Now I know why there’s an area just north of my university that reminds me of the embassy district in Beijing, minus the guards on every corner; it used to be the place where many embassies were located.

Today Nanjing has 7.5 million people, which ranks 7th among Chinese cities. The city has the 10th tallest building in the world (free standing structures, which includes some TV towers); the nearly finished Zifeng tower is 450 meters tall and is only a few blocks away from my apartment.

Speaking of tall buildings, the Sears Tower (#4 on the same list) has new owners and hence a new name – it’s now called the Willis Tower. One Sunday last month a 50 story office tower in Nanjing caught on fire. I could see it from my English school on the 25th floor of another office building a couple kilometers away. It was a surreal sight to see flames leaping from a tall building.

See if you can find me among the pictures at my English school. There are lots of little kids and most of the pictures are from activities in and outside of school.

May Day weekend

Much of my birthday and the three day weekend was spent outside at a park, doing activities with little kids. A big event for kids was held there (and at a shopping mall Saturday morning) where my English school had activities with our regular students. In the park, we had a stage and microphones, and all I did was say a few words like “sweep the floor” and “wash the dishes” when we taught chores, and “apple” and “banana” when we made fruit salad. I get paid an insanely high wage (15-20 times the minimum wage) because it looks good to have a native English speaker on the staff (even though all I do is say a few words into a microphone and pose for lots of pictures).

The best part is the staff I work with and the fact that I was the only non-Chinese teacher all three days. About 20 assistant teachers from the school (where there are many, many more Chinese teachers) were there to set things up and help with all the songs, kite flying, food, games, etc. They’re all around my age, they’re really close with each other (kind of like camp counselors), and they all find me fascinating. We spent all of the down time chatting (they’ve all studied English extensively but find that it’s easier to talk to me in Chinese) and then I’d come home to an inbox full of pictures they took with me and friend requests on Xiaonei (a Chinese social networking site that is almost an exact copy of Facebook).

On Friday night, after we had packed everything up and took seven or eight taxis to get everything back to the school, three teachers took me out for dinner and surprised me with a birthday cake.

It was sunny and hot on both Friday and Sunday and I got a little sunburned. It rained all day on Saturday. That’s been the typical weather lately.

Finally, after discovering that the locals have no idea how to make a pizza (though they really try hard – for an activity making pizzas at school two weeks ago the Chinese teachers bought ketchup and white bread – they were convinced that’s how Americans make pizza), I decided to write a pizza recipe when our writing teacher assigned us a short essay describing how to make something.

做比萨

大家都吃过比萨，是世界上最有名的料理之一。有各种各样的比萨, 可以过过所有的口味。无论男女老少都喜欢吃比萨。虽然做比萨又容易又好玩，但是很少人会做比萨。
先准备比萨面。最简单的面是三个配料：面粉，水，与酵母。你可以加鸡蛋，盐，或玉米粉. 放热水在一个碗里面，加一点酵母，让溶一下，然后加面粉（大概3：2 面粉：水）。 等一个小时，面会大一点。把面揉五分钟。在桌子上，放一满手的面粉，然后把面弄平。
面准备好，放番茄将在上面。然后放蔬菜，奶酪，与肉。先要切蔬菜和肉成块儿。最流行的比萨配料是洋葱，青椒，蘑菇， 菠萝， 香肠，培根，等等。在中国，玉米，海鲜，与色拉将也很多。
最后，要把比萨放在烤箱里考八九分钟。