Friday, December 21, 2007

Wet Christmas

  • It is raining Cats and Dogs Today in Wuxi.  Tonight, we are having the school Christmas party.  I have heard that as many as 300 students will attend.  It will be a Christmas Party with Chinese characteristics.  Students and Staff will be performing plays and songs, most of which will have nothing to do with Christmas.  One student is going to sing the dreaded pop song that goes I'm a big big girl in a big big world.  I agreed to play Santa Claus because it gets me out of playing a woman in a traditional Chinese play that our study assistants are performing.
  • Yesterday morning on my walk to school, I saw all the students, of this experimental bilingual primary school, dancing arm-in-arm with partners on the school ground.  I wish I had brought my camera with me.  It was boy and boy, girl and girl, and sometimes boy and girl.  I remember once in my Junior High days, learning square dancing in P.E.. class.
  • This morning on my walk to work in the cold downpour, I saw a poor man, a hobo type, walking with his arms in a shivering gesture not carrying an umbrella.  He was wearing sandals and threadbare clothes.  It was a pathetic sight.
  • Thanks to John Derbyshire,  I have a link to a very thoughtful article about China.  It opens with this quote from Dr. Sun Yat-Sen:

The Chinese people have only family and clan solidarity; they do not have national spirit…they are just a heap of loose sand…Other men are the carving knife and serving dish; we are the fish and the meat.

  • David Warren  talks about the U.S. and China.
  • Tony was in a good mood Friday night.  I had him laughing and smiling.  He still has a deep chesty cough, but otherwise he looks handsome and healthy.  His complexion is better.  I like how he can smile at me from six feet away.  I am sure he recognizes and loves me. 
  • The King of Wuxi has joined the Wuxi Expat Facebook Group.  You should too if you don't want to be eternally unworthy.  The King of Wuxi has been given admin privileges in the group but he will use it only for the good of humanity.
  • I am going to do a show for 500 students at Tian Yi Middle School.  My biggest audience ever.  Nervous am I?  No.  I just hope I can fill the unforgiving 80 minutes with 4800 seconds worth of distance run.  That way, mine will be the Earth and everything in.  Or to be more modest, I will have the audience in the palm of my hand, slave to my every whim.

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