Yellow Mountain

HUANGSHAN – I’ve had some time off while my students practice their marching and chanting on the school’s football field during mandatory pre-college military training, so I decided to head to Anhui Province for a few days and climb a mountain.
I hopped on the overnight train in Nanjing, where my inability to speak Mandarin landed [...]

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Military training

YANGZHOU – Sometimes, it really pays to work for a technical college.
Take this morning, for example. If I had been a regular American citizen passing through Yangzhou on holiday, perhaps on my way to Slim West Lake or maybe a bit of shopping on Wenchang Road, I might have been a bit confused (and perhaps, [...]

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So, was it worth it?

With the Olympics now in our rear-view mirror, it’s time to answer the $40 billion question.
Was it worth it?
China spent $43 billion on these Games, more than doubling the previous record of $15 billion for the 2004 Games in Athens. The government shut down hundreds of factories across northern China and pulled half of the [...]

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