Modern China

Chao Zhou
Originally uploaded by morningmilk8.

This is anohter photo from my weekend in ChaoZhou.... There was a huge agricutural area right in the middle of the city. It was really amazing to see to the contrast between agriculture and city life.
In other modern chinese news, if you haven't heard there have been many protests in Shenzhen (where i live) against the Japanese. Many chinese hate japanese and with the publication of a textbook in japan that glosses over japan's aggressive and violent past, chinese are pissed. there was a demonstartion last week and another this weekend, right near my house. i was on a bus yesterday on my way to meet friends for lunch and i saw a huge group of policemen and military if front of a japanese owned mall.... we made it through and i didn't see any protestors, but my friends were coming from the shoppping area near where the protest was and they had a hard time getting through the crowds. they said people were yelling at people driving japanese cars as well. i heard today that some cars were damaged, but i don't think anyone was hurt.... tensions are incredibly high here!! its a strange dynamic with china-south korea-japan-taiwan-u.s.a.... china and south korea don't like japan, japan doesn't like anyone except they are supporting the u.s. in their support in china vs taiwan....its quite a mess, but i think i'm pretty safe....
i've had students tell me they want to kill japanese and one of my friend amy's students told her that he wanted to join the chinese army so that he could kill japanese...
other than that, things are great!
patti and i caught a little boy stealing the other day. i ran after him, but his friend ran in to me to stop me and the boy ran off, i then, unlike chinese people, ran to the man he stole from and told him what had happened, or i motioned what had happened.... dunno what he did, but at least i told him.....
congratulations to my friends tracy and bart ellingson, their daughter emma jo was born on april 6th! she's so beautiful and everyone is doing great.... as i hope all of you are.... till next time