Leaving-taking from Lian Da was tearful and hectic. At last, I'm home.

For my final teaching project at Lian Da, I wrote an adaptation of Romeo and Juliet in modern English prose. Each of my seven sophomore classes did its own production.





















Romeo kills Tybalt to avenge the death of Mercutio.




















Juliet imbibes the poison.




PS Now that I'm out of the reach of the Chinese censors and can see my published blog, I notice that YouTube sometimes appends others' videos to mine. Sorry! I couldn't see that until now, and I don't know how to fix it.

The "sacred" flame: On July 7, the Olympic Torch relay made its way through Lanzhou. The earthquake on May 12 had put only a brief damper on local hysteria over the Olympics. As the arrival of the torch approached, the people of Lanzhou were once more in a lather. Vendors appeared on every street corner, selling flags and T-shirts. The shirts were something new in my observation of Gansu styles. In the past, there were plenty of imprinted T-shirts, but few of them said anything meaningful. Many were gibberish, while others were made-for-export projects gone wrong. With the Olympic spirit came T-shirts with a message; China has discovered a new propaganda device. The use of the heart shape as shorthand for "love" is new in Gansu. The use of English is surprising, since only a small minority of local people can read it. (I saw a few shirts printed in Chinese, but very few.) The fine print on the shirt says, "China, jia you, Chinese, jia you." Jia you means, idiomatically, "rah, rah!"