Brainwashin'

So, teaching. I know that's probably the thing most of my friends back in America are most curious about, so after the brief introduction to what's going on before, this is my first subject to tackle.

The Soft Grand Pre-Re-Opening

Okay, so probably anyone reading this knows by now that I'm teaching in Korea, and that it's been roughly 18 months since my last post. So, let's get on with it!


I have no idea how often I'll be posting about Korea topics here... at some point I might even do some retrospectives on travel in Asia in 2010. I'm sure you can handle it.

Oh yeah, that bit.

So, I was going to write about the last day of my trip in Xiamen, but it just isn’t that interesting. I’ll throw in a couple of pictures to discuss the few highlights, but there weren’t many.

Jing and I’s first stop on the itinerary for the day was the Xiamen University, which has the repuation of being the most beautiful of all university campuses in Southern China. It was a bit of a snoozefest to me, but the buildings were certainly cleaned up and spiffy, in the way that they strived for, anyway. The problem was twofold: A) there just wasn’t that much of the campus to look at, and B) the damn wide open soviet realist style paved walkways. They could really use some more plants there, the climate is perfect for having a very lushly terrascaped place. Anyway, here’s a few pictures:

The King Donut

So, the next day, Jing and I got up bright and early to get a bus to Yongding Village, or Yongding County, depending on how you want to translate it. I guess county works a bit better, its not just one small village.

There’s one distinctive thing about Yongding county, and that’s the legacy left behind by the Hakka ethnic peoples who live in the area. The Hakkas were a pretty mobile people, and live over a vast swathe of East Asia, going as far south as Singapore and as far east as Taiwan, and their language is variously referred to as Hakka, Minnan (literally means “People of the South”) or Taiwanese, although only Taiwanese people (who are mostly not Hakka) call it Taiwanese.

A Taste of the Old World

So, the last trip took in China that I have to write about, aside from ones from the beginning of the year for which I’ve lost all pictures, but might be able to get around to sometime 4 or 5 months from now, was a trip I took during the spring to the province of Fujian, with the purpose of visiting three locations: Xiamen, Wutaishan, and Yongding Village.

I never actually got to Wutaishan, so this instead will just be about Xiamen and Yongding.

Onto Some More Rocks

So the next morning, I got up and ready to go to Yangshuo. I went to the cafe area of the hostel and ordered a sandwich, which was disappointing in the way that Western food made in Asian hostels usually is. Ya Ya, the girl I had agreed to go to Yangshuo with, also got up at the right time . . . I think at about 9:30am we set out for a bus to Yangshuo. It would be a short ride, but I did my best to make it horrible by allowing her to continue to talk to me about Taiwan.

A Few More Trips

I’m sitting now as I type this in the port of Mawei, a special district in the Chinese city of Fuzhou, located just across the straits of Taiwan. In approximately one and a half hours from the time I’ve started writing this, I’ll be aboard that boat, heading to Taiwan, and leaving China behind, for who knows how long.

This means a couple of things. First, it means that over the next couple days I’m going to crank out a couple of blog posts about previous travels that I haven’t yet covered, and maybe another couple of shorts about Shanghai.