The most recent set of photos: http://aufrecht.org/picture/folder-view?folder_id=8644

The network continues to be very balky. Packet loss isn't always up at 80%, but things are always very slow. Also, I'm told that some people are borrowing other computers' IP and MAC addresses in order to impersonate them and avoid billing charges. Great. Some of my outgoing mail sits in the queue for days before it's finally sent.

In other news: we (the Americans) were invited to a karaoke contest Tuesday night. I finally found out what's in that student-center-ish building between the library and the gym: a student center. The main floor has a mid-sized auditorium, and we got reserved seats in the second row. The singing varied from weak to awful, though two or three groups were actually not bad. A caveat, though: well-performed traditional Chinese singing is like well-sung country music. If, like me, you believe that the genre (be it country or Chinese Opera) spends too much time in vocal registers man was not meant to hear, then well-performed doesn't mean "pleasant."

I mailed in my ballot for the Seattle/King County/Washington election. A few people were vaguely interested in the ballot, but in general, if people here are desperate for democracy, they're keeping it well-hidden.

I had a tip that many students had fabricated their essay sources, so I asked everyone to bring their sources with them to class next week when I hand back their drafts. Each class exhibited a visible wave of panic, followed by a storm of preemptive excuses: it's in Chinese (the requirement was for all English-language sources), I don't remember (good thing you put down the page number in your paper which I've got in my hand), I don't have it any more, it's in the library and I can't check it out. Depending on how I feel next week, we may march over to the library to turn the screws. This culture attaches the same stigma to academic cheating that Americans attach to speeding tickets, and it's hard not to judge them for it, and hard not to take it personally. I've explained that fabricated sources on the final draft of the midterm will result in a zero for the midterm, and I'm trying to get a classroom with a computer so I can do some demonstrations of internet research. But I went into Tuesday's classes with a bad attitude, and the students were pretty apathetic too, and the material (more fallacies) was hard, and I ended up finishing both classes fifteen to thirty minutes early.

Yesterday I gave the second lecture in my series, this one on "management." This one went better than the first, and I had better material (Edgar Schein's stuff, mostly - see http://aufrecht.org/content/article?id=6040#8445). But only ten people came. Our poster went up only one day before, and somebody covered it up with their own poster the night before, so that may be part of the problem. More posters for next week's lecture: Ethics.

Most evenings, Art and I have dinner at a hole-in-the-wall restaurant across the street from the school. I read the latest news from the New York Times, BBC, etc, and we argue a little politics, and then, while he's still eating his rice but after I've finished my noodles, I go to the mini-mart next door for a chocolate bar. Li Xu introduced me at this mini-mart my first week here, and they treat me well. I don't bargain, and they don't cheat me. One day I got batteries for Julie's camera at another store and was charged Y12 for four AA; later the same day I needed more batteries, 'cause her camera's a battery hog, and I went to the mini-mart and was charged Y8 (and learned the word for battery: dian-chi).

I usually have a Y5.5 45g bar of Dove Milk Chocolate. Since this happens more days than not, the girls who work at the store (probably extended family of the main cashier, a grizzled man who is very patient with my terrible Chinese) are used to me. My entrance to the store is frequently greeted with the chant "Do-fa tcha-ka-li," Dove Chocolate. There are other brands of chocolate bar which are cheaper, but they don't have any chocolate in them. I prefer Dark Chocolate, but they usually only have that in the larger bars and those are very stale, so I have small bars of Milk Chocolate. They also have a few varieties with nuts in them, which I steadfastly ignore. Chocolate, like ice cream and peanut butter, is clearly meant to be smooth.

A few days ago, I looked behind the bars and saw some new, unopened stock. Yesterday, I found a single, fresh large Dark Chocolate bar in the box of Larges, on top of a bunch of Hazelnut and Multinut bars. Naturally, I picked it up instantly, and just as quickly, the girls exchanged a burst of gleeful dialog which I am guessing went something like this:

"You see - he found it."

"How did you know that he would go for it?"

"Well, I knew he preferred the Dark Chocolate, and he never gets the ones with nuts ...."

"But he found it so quickly!"

"Anyway, I win the bet. You owe me Y10."

It's been raining a lot recently, so I've broken out some additional high-tech garments. You may recall my fervent endorsement of the REI neo-Coolmax t-shirts, the similar boxer-briefs (and presumably the equivalent for the ladies), and the thinsulate socks. Let me add to the list the Pearl Izumi rain jacket. Designed for use on a bicycle, its wide assortment of features make it well-suited for any precipitation encounter. It's bright yellow, waterproof, has a felt-lined collar which contains a rolled-up hood; side and rear vents; a fold-down butt-bib (like a conductor's coat-tails) for when you are leaning forward on a bicycle seat (what's the conductor's excuse?); and many bits of cleverly placed velcro to keep everything from flapping about. The only drawback is that, as it was designed as the "Outerwear Layer" of the Pearl Izumi "Three Layer System," the sleeves don't have a mesh lining, and if you wear it over bare arms your arms will sweat so much that they'll be wetter than if you hadn't any sleeves at all and just wore a rain vest. This can be overcome, though, by buttoning the jacket at the throat and disregarding the sleeves altogether, instead wearing the jacket as a sort of hooded cape. Naturally the butt-bib should be deployed in this configuration.

I don't, by any means, wish to denigrate the other Pearl Izumi jacket I own, a simpler black pull-over which I bought at half-price (original $80) at one of those annual Seattle bicycle gear rented-warehouse mega-sales. That jacket served me quite well, in particular when I had that railroad-track-induced fall from my bicycle and twenty-foot slide on the concrete; despite bruises and an abraided rotater cuff, there wasn't any blood at all, and the jacket suffered only the tinyest tear around the left wrist. Alas, I lost that jacket at least twice on Bainbridge, and its current disposition remains a mystery.

Although I haven't broken them out yet, let me mention at this point a topologically innovative pair of rainpants from REI, which stuff into their own pocket for convenience.

Not too much else to report recently, so I'm catching up on some earlier adventures:

Sunday 16 Sep, Day two of Ziyuan trip.

We went on a boat ride today, down the Zi river. When we got to the landing, we had to wait about an hour for our boat to be ready and for the water level to be adequate. The water level is governed in part by the dam which creates the lake on which we boated yesterday; that dam drains into the Zi just downstream of the landing. There are two classes of boats - inflatables, where you wear a life-jacket and get a paddle and tools to bail water; and narrow motorized boats about thirty feet long with awnings, chairs, and room for over a dozen people. I think there's a price difference, and there's certainly a class difference. The people in the boats are enjoying the ride; the people in the inflatables are there to party.

Party means to splash water in all directions as much as possible, using paddles as well as the bailing tools (squirt tubes, pans). So whenever we passed a bunch of rafts, they would start squirting and splashing us. Sometimes the protestations of our guide were enough to make them stop, and sometimes not. If you remember the context of this trip ( http://aufrecht.org/content/article?id=8336), you can probably imagine what the splashing did to my state of mind. I was ready to jump into the river, wade to the next raft, and starting hitting people. But the weather was pretty good, vaguely sunny, and I had brought a ziplock freezer bag for my wallet and palm-pilot (and it was big enough for the sheets of homework I brought with me), and so I just fell back on a tri-partate mantra of "don't get angry - you lose if you get angry," "relax," and "I have a passport and they don't."

Here's a photo of a splash fight in progress: http://aufrecht.org/picture/photo-view?photo_id=8590

The scenery was nice, edging towards but never quite getting to spectacular. Lots of limestone cliffs. Very tall bamboo trees. We stopped at one small gravel bank, across the river from a giant cliff face, and waited an hour for the dam to release enough water for us to proceed. I graded papers. Some of the rafts went by, splashing away, but we were out of range on the bank, plus I was thirty feet up on a rock promontory.

At one bend in the river we pulled in to a model Zhuang village, where costumed villagers prostituted their traditions and customs to try and get us to buy things. We skipped the recreation of a wedding dance and mostly just hung out. I sketched the view, which was superb - upriver, we had just come down a narrow valley; the river bent around a massive, curved stone wall hundreds of feet high, and proceeded down another valley. Li Xu played with a praying mantis at least three inches tall. Twenty minutes after it became clear that none of us, the Americans, our hosts, or the other tourists on our boat, were going to shell out money for anything, we set out down-river again.

Finally, we edged down towards some particularly big rocks (see attached thumbnail, or picture at http://aufrecht.org/picture/photo-view?photo_id=8589), but then made a wide U-turn and headed back to the shore. Presumably there isn't enough water for that section, or it's just too rough for boats.

After the boat trip, we had a few hours for lunch and to wander around Ziyuan. There isn't much to do in Ziyuan; Li Xu bought a nice bamboo cup for his son; I priced dried ants (Y16, $2, for two ounces of "Wild Rarity Big Black Ants) and graded homework. We ended up in the lobby of the our hotel, across the street from the long-distance bus station (http://aufrecht.org/picture/photo-view?photo_id=8587).

The bus ride back was quite pleasent, at least for the first two hours as we descended from the hills. Once we were near Guilin it was crowded and much less pretty, and I saw a collision for the first time. A truck was lying on its side in the right lane of the highway.

After we disembarked at the Guilin train station, it was time for the cab ride back to the University. It was just past dusk into true night, an incredible amount of dust hung in the air, and our cab driver was the most timid wimp ever to drive a cab in Asia. Perhaps it's unfair to lambaste both sides of the cab-driving spectrum, the psychotic madmen on one side and the hapless twerps on the other, but frankly I was ready for a ride with a madman who would simply get us home. Instead, we took a maddeningly lackadaisical, unexpectedly surreal journey through the dusty night. Most drivers switch back and forth randomly between brights and normal lights, and of course the road is filled with the usual variety of obstacles, most without running lights, so it was a real Ridley Scott trip back to campus.