Theme of the trip: Solitude can be both painful and exquisite. The following are some notes I made during the day.
Take the freeway from Jiangyin to Changzhou. Nice to look out the window. How is China’s economic my doing? I ponder. I see factories, road construction, and shacks. Who can say?
The foreign teachers had a choice of going to Yixing or Changzhou. All, with the exception of moi, choose to go to Yixing. In some ways: that is good. But the bad part is that I have to look at our grade 12 students.
Tony was thinking that all the teachers went to Yixing because I went to Changzhou. I knew all of them didn’t want to see the grade 11 or 12 students. I thought it would be unseemly to go with students that I don’t teach.
I go to Changzhou Joyland: an amusement park. Half of its rides are closed.
Tony rode in this bus.
I rode in this bus.
I go to the park’s high point of elevation. It is similar to the Wuxi Big Buddha. It is at the far end of the park from the entrance. To get to what looks like a big silver lotus, you got to climb a lot of stairs.
I’m winded by the time I get to the top. But it’s nice as I am the only one there, save an old security guard.
The noticeable feature is the closed down coffee shop under the lotus. I suppose that long climb is not popular.
I would have stayed up there longer if I didn’t see students making the climb. My solitary bliss had ended.
Kids wearing the uniform of my old school.
Tony meets his art teacher.
I find a theatre to sit in. Nice but I get kicked out when the show ends.
I mostly wander. Looking for a quiet place to sit and read. Reading Anthony Burgess writing about James Joyce kept me sane.
No comments:
Post a Comment