Things I was told in September 2014

• A student told me that they had to write an exam on a Sunday evening. A Sunday Evening!!

• A foreigner told me that he was accosted by a local woman on the street who told him he shouldn't be dating Japanese woman while he was with his girlfriend who was a local.

• A student told me their favorite flavor of ice cream was rose. She insisted on this when I questioned the existence of rose flavored ice cream. She then denied that she meant strawberry.

• A student told me that she had gone on an exchange trip to Denmark. I asked her if Danes struck her as being particularly happy, perhaps the happiest people on Earth. She told me that they liked to party till five in the morning and that she hadn't meet an unhappy one.

• My wife told me that a man was arrested for peeing on a Wuxi Metro train.

• Other students told me that parents letting their baby pee on the Wuxi Metro train had made the news.

• We Chat silliness engaged in by me has my colleague being shunned by members of Wuxi's American Football team. Or so my colleague told me.

• A young male student was upset because he learned that his school was going to have a sports day on October 1^st. The day is supposed to be the first of a three day holiday for everyone.

• A student told me her favorite movie was Roman Holiday. I have probably had a hundred students tell that this is their favorite movie.

• The students told me that they had to go to work or attend school on the Sunday before the October holiday.

• Someone keeps telling me and other people that he has broken up with his Chinese girlfriend, only to still be living with her the next day or week.

• On the day that I heard about the riots in Hong Kong, I just so happened to have in class, a student who is going to go to Hong Kong to study. Talking to her more, I learned that she had spent a great deal of time in Hong Kong, even spending summer vacations there because her parents' Hong Kong flat. I asked her if she had heard about the riots. She told me she did and that she was surprised because she thought that the Chinese government was doing a good job of running the place and couldn't understand why the people in Hong Kong were so upset. I told her if I was in their shoes, I would do the same. Hong Kong, I told her, should be running China, not China running Hong Kong. She also told me that when she is in Hong Kong, she prefers to speak Cantonese because Mandarin speakers are looked down upon.

• A student told me she will go to the M & Ms factory in Shanghai.

• A student told me that she would never eat the street-made fried dough sticks, called youtiao by the locals, because she had heard that the vendors use soap when making them in order to enhance their golden brown appearance.