Qing Wendy

               Let’s say you have a neighbor.   You’ve known him for years.   He is very hardworking, conscientious, thrifty and talented.   In fact, he’s made most of the stuff in your house, including your favorite cell phone.   You don’t see eye to eye on politics.   You think he is a bit too authoritarian with his kids, but you have to admit that they are always well-behaved, greet you with smiles and offer to help take in your groceries if they see you have a big load.                He has a pretty thick accent and you don’t always understand what he says.   He seems to love America though.   He always wears a New York Yankees baseball cap and has a shirt   with funny sayings written in a kind of broken English.   He owns a Ford and a Chevy.   His kids love Disney and you can hear “It’s a small world after all” coming from the smallest girl’s bedroom at all hours of the day and night. His wife has made you her specialty dish.   She calls it “Phoenix claw”, but you think

Dave with our "exit coupon" Andres Gide writes in  The Counterfeiters:    “One doesn't discover new lands without consenting to lose sight, for a very long time, of the shore.”   Well, ain't that the truth?!    M any of you are asking how we're doing.  The short answer is fine, although it has been awhile since we've "seen the shore."     This feels like a good time to give you an essay in pictures of what life, in a semi-totalitarian state under corona virus, looks like.  First, What is daily life like? On one hand, I feel extraordinary safe.  There is no way the government wants anything to spread beyond Wuhan.   And in China, if the government doesn't want something to happen, it doesn't happen.   China is all about saving face, and dead ex-pats are the last thing they need or want .   Officials with armbands taking our  "Exit Coupons" As a result, we (and everyone else) is on virtual house arrest.  We hav

"How the corona virus has changed my daily routine" Wendy on Jiaoda Street during the 2020 corona virus epidemic.   Fruit for sale on the street Flowers are still for sale Closed store Closed shops Vegetables for sale WeChat app daily updates: Shaanxi Province Corona virus statistics.  Zero deaths WeChat app daily updates: World wide corona virus stats. 813 deaths How the corona virus has changed my daily routine. What’s it like living day to day in Xi’an, China with the novel corona virus?   We still remain in a semi-quarantined state, going out just for the essentials and to get our 8,000 steps.   We still   wear our surgical masks outside, stop for temperature checks when we go into the Vanguard supermarket and return to our village.   Compared with our pre-epidemic state, our neighborhood looks, sounds, smells and feels different.   It even tastes different since nearly all the restaurants are closed.   But,

With unexpected extra time on our hands, I decided:  Let’s take a break from news about “the virus-that-shall-not-be named.”  Instead, why not gain some insights about what my students learned about American Literature over Fall term?  While not all of it was what I remember teaching, as we all know, the gap between what we teach and what students learn is always interesting to discover when exam time rolls around.  The class was for Juniors who were English majors.  The class met once a week for 2 hours.  This is the typical time frame for a Chinese class.  Chinese students take 12-15 different courses/week and meet for 2 hours for each class.  American Students have 4-5 different courses/week that usually meet 2 or 3 times per week for 1 or 1.5 hours.   The Chinese method – one intense class per week -- is, to my mind, crazy pedagogy.  It encourages mad memorization at the end of the term.  They struggled in my class because there wasn’t a set text, and so nothing to memori

               Living in China during the novel coronavirus epidemic is an exercise in cognitive dissonance.   Just in case psychology 101 is too far in your distant past, cognitive dissonance is a psychological term that describes that uncomfortable feeling of holding two contradictory ideas in your mind at the same time.   On the one hand, I am getting frantic messages from family and friends at home who are informing me of this very dangerous disease and asking me to consider returning to the United States.   On the other hand, I am comforted by the behavior of my Chinese friends and acquaintances who are taking appropriate precautions to avoid infection and carrying on with life.   Let’s look at both sides of this story. I will start with the worries and the worriers.             The novel coronavirus is a serious concern.   The World Health Organization (WHO) has called it a pandemic, a world wide epidemic.   As of today, February 4 th , the numbers of cases are still increa