I’m not sure how many of you care about Chinese Folk art, but I have several videos that I took at the Wind from the Plateau, a performance held at the Koger Center here in Columbia.  Instead of making several posts, I am just going to shove all 12 of the videos I uploaded to YouTube. Enjoy!

I am sure I will have more of things like this to come in the new future.

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It took awhile, but I finally have an idea of where we are going.  The name of the city is Langfang, and it is located in the Hebei province between Beijing and Tianjin.  Phil and I haven’t signed our contracts quite yet, so anything could change, but that should be happening very soon – just as soon as our contracts get prettied up and finalized.  The name of the school that we will be teaching at is the North China Institute of Aerospace Engineering.  If anything, it should look good on my resume right?    There isn’t much about the city or the school online.  I have scowered the internet and haven’t turned up any sites where other foreigners have blogged about their experience, save one or two articles that didn’t really tell me anything. I did turn of something interesting, though, and I told Phil I didn’t care how much it cost, we are totally staying in this hotel.

Shou, Fu, and Lu as the Tianzi Garden Hotel

Yep, that is a hotel, alright.  The Tianzi Garden Hotel(translation – Son of Heaven Hotel), to be exact, and it is located in the Son of Heaven Garden (天子庄园), Yanjiao Economic-Technological Development Zone (燕郊经济技术开发区), Langfang.  The god’s depicted are Fu(福 – symbolizing fortune – center), Lu(禄 – symbolizing prosperity – right), and Shou(寿 – symbolizing longevity – left). The peach being held in Shou’s hand(green circle) is actually a suite.  I have no idea how much it costs, but that would be an awesome place to catch some shut-eye.  The blue circle shows some other windows in the hotel.  The entrance to the hotel is through Shou’s “shoe”(red circle).  I wonder how much flack someone would get if they made a Jesus hotel like this one.

I also read that Langfang has one Wal-mart and one McDonald’s.  It is always good to have a western fix nearby.  Although, Beijing is only an hour or so away and it is chalk full western goodies if one were to desire it.

My only beef with the city is going to be the cold.  I don’t do well in cold temperatures.  I guess I should go stock up on long  johns.

Until I learn something new . . .

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For some reason, we thought this was one of the scariest elevator doors that we had ever seen and insisted on getting it on video. I will admit that while it just looks like an elevator on video, it was rather terrifying in person. Having no real light in our hallway may have contributed, but it could have just been the rickety sound of the door opening. Who knows. I just know it was frightening getting on and off the elevator every day.

If you can’t tell, I’m having a horrible time coming up with stuff to either post or write about.  I’ll work on posting something more real next time.

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