Little Me in Big China

Four years ago, I went to Japan, and wrote a separate post about every single day.  

It makes me giggle to think I had that much time during the trip to blog every day, and that I thought people were that interested in my trip.

This time around, I am trying mostly to hit the highlights.

So here we go:

I spent 10 days in Beijing and three days in Taipei with 10 students, 1 spouse of a student, and two other faculty members.

We stayed near Beijing Normal University, which houses a small family therapy program. Their faculty and students hosted us during our stay, along with students and faculty from Nova Southeastern and the University of Maryland.

The first night, they took us to a hot pot restaurant, where a dinner of cooking things in boiling broth quickly devolved into our students trying to do things like this:

We then spent the next few days touring Beijing, and seeing many sights, including the Forbidden City, where someone snapped a picture of me with Rick and Roy (the other two faculty members from BYU).

 We saw the Peking Opera, which reminded me a lot of the first act of a kabuki play I saw in Japan: elaborate costumes, makeup, men dressed as women, atonal singing, overly dramatic acting.

I spent a lot of time hanging out with the students. I tried to keep some boundaries, but it was pretty hard, especially when we went to church on Sunday and I was asked to comment on the young single ex-patriate men in the branch.

We spent time in Taipei, where Lexie introduced us to mango shaved ice, which, up to this point in my life, has to rank in the top five of best things I have ever eaten. We bought one of the dishes below to split between three people, and then bought another, and, finally, another.

We found a karaoke place near our hotel. Below is a picture of Rick, who is singing a duet with me to "Superstar," by the Carpenters. I think my soul left my body for a second. Conspicuously absent from this outing was Roy, but he made up for it later.

We visited the Temple of Heaven one day, where there were all kinds of activities going on around the grounds, including a little girl getting a chess lesson,

A group of retired people singing loudly from music books, 

And what turned out to be (I kid you not) a group of middle aged people holding "ads" for their unmarried children in the hope of pairing them off. I haven't told this story to my mom yet because I haven't wanted to give her any ideas.

Like Japan, much of my motivation for going to China was for the food. Most of the food we ate was family style, at a round table with a Lazy Susan. We served our own portions with our own chopsticks, which, unsurprisingly, resulted in several of us contracting the same digestive bug.

Or, possibly, it could have been one of the many things I ate from street vendors. I had to ask my students who speak Mandarin which pastries were filled with honey, and which were filled with red beans.

And speaking of Beans, this one is for all of my fellow former students of Roy Bean himself, whom I estimate make up 50% of my total readership. You're welcome. Now try unseeing it. Just typing this post, my brain was having trouble dealing with the logic that would allow him to wear this and simultaneously deem karaoke unacceptable.

Eventually, we did have a conference with several American scholars, several Chinese scholars, and a few students and faculty from both countries, so it was kind of like a work trip. 

Here's a shot of the entire BYU group at the conference.

I have many other stories about this trip, and I may get around to writing some more of them down at some point. However, tomorrow is the first day of school, so it will probably be awhile before that happens. It was a great end to the summer, and I am grateful for every moment.