http://www.cohousing.com/ginaandlouinchina Gina and Lou are in Ya'an, Sichuan, P.R. China for the 2006-2007 school year teaching English at Sichuan Agricultural University. Thu, 12 Nov 2009 05:15:52 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Year of the PigXin Nian Hao! There are many ways to say “Happy New Year” in China. Many people say xin nian hao, which is “new year good”. It is the year of the pig, having left the year of the dog behind. This pig year is special in that ... http://www.cohousing.com/ginaandlouinchina/?p=13 In Ya’an, the cut flower shops are mostly outdoors. Our first experience with flowers from one of these shops was on Teacher’s day. One day I noticed that the shops were all swarming with customers. That evening we got a call from a Chinese friend of a Chinese friend who ... http://www.cohousing.com/ginaandlouinchina/?p=12 (See Shangri La part 1, posted on September 24th, for the first part of this adventure.) When we got back to the road, Dai Ou made a phone call (the cell phone service here is remarkably good) and arranged for the next bus to pick us up and take us on ... http://www.cohousing.com/ginaandlouinchina/?p=11 In the 1930’s the American James Rock wrote a series of articles for National Geographic comparing the Chinese town of Zhongdian and the area around it with the legendary Shangri-la. The articles inspired the novel Lost Horizon by James Hilton, which was later made into an Academy Award winning movie ... http://www.cohousing.com/ginaandlouinchina/?p=10 Sichuan Province is home to the largest concentration of pandas in China. We had the opportunity, while still teaching in Chengdu, to go to a panda reserve with several other foreign teachers. I wasn’t all that worked up about it, but open and interested nevertheless. At the time I was ... http://www.cohousing.com/ginaandlouinchina/?p=9 Here's a photo of the bicycle the university gave me to use while I'm in Ya'an. Click on the image for a description of its features. http://www.cohousing.com/ginaandlouinchina/?p=8 Many of our family and friends have emailed us requesting not just pictures of China, but pictures of us in China. I can understand this request. However it's not easy when: A - we are usually behind the shutter, and B - when we do take pictures of each other ... http://www.cohousing.com/ginaandlouinchina/?p=7 Chengdu is your basic big city with lots of traffic, people, buildings, shopping and air pollution. Picture New York, Paris, London, Madrid, Nairobi. In China however, the number of human powered vehicles is astounding. You'll see people pulling or pushing all kinds of carts with anything from bean sprouts to steel ... http://www.cohousing.com/ginaandlouinchina/?p=5 Like most Americans, we have changed our residence a number of times. It's never pleasant, but we are more or less used to sorting through our belongings, packing them up or throwing them away, cleaning out the refrigerator, changing our mailing address, and taking care of all the details of ... http://www.cohousing.com/ginaandlouinchina/?p=4