Pic o' the Day Appendix F - Around Town

You gotta draw people's attention somehow. Why not a hundred banners?

The bus stop to go to the new campus. Learning to get all the information from the bus stop signs took forever, but now that I can do it, my life is so mush easier.

It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing. Sorry, that stamp is what I meant. Without a red stamp do not pass go, do not collect $200. Some things, like these notices, need a whole collection of stamps.

Pic o' the Day Appendix E - Young Folks

The kids who watched us fishing so ineffectively.


My students in the listening lab.


One of my students teaching a young girl in a supplementary English school. These are popular on evenings and weekends.

Pic o' the Day Appendix D - Christmas

More Christmas in Mianyang

This is what we saw at the fanciest hotel in town. They were singing Christmas songs in English. It was really beautiful.

Eerie Christmas lighting in front of the Party's fancy hotel next door.

Pic o' the Day Appendix C - New Friends

More pics from the time o' the Pic o' the Day, but not included in the first cut.


Having a drink with some new friends. We met these guys after dinner and they offered a toast. How could we refuse?

This is what was going on outside in the main square.

Pic o' the Day Appendix B - Sport

Morning near the school gate. I took this shot on my way to Chinese class. The message is some sort of slogan about helping the school develop.


At the basketball courts. The NBA is all over the place here. Yao Ming and the Houston Rockets are #1, but lots of students are big fans of Alan Iverson.


Shaq recently signed a deal to endorse a Chinese line of sports apparel, Li-Ning. The founder is a former Chinese Olympian. Like so many sports lines here, he found inspiration for a logo from Nike. He must have also be moved by Adidas's slogan, "Impossible is Nothing." Li Ning's slogan is "Anything is Possible."

The new tennis courts are being built.

Tennis is very popular on TV here and everyone knows China's famous doubles players, Li Ting and Sun Tian Tian. More and more people are trying on new sports from the west like tennis and golf.

Pic o' the Day Appendix A - Wedding

These are some pictures that I wanted to include as Pics o' the Day, but that didn't quite make the cut. Then I realized that there was no real need to cut things. So, an indulgent final wrap-up from the Pic o' the Day Project.


At the wedding. Some weddings here have an MC. He's giving the groom a hard time about making promises for the future to the delight of the guests.


What's a wedding without firecrackers? No wedding at all. These things can be seen (and heard and smelled) at every wedding in China. Just put them on the sidewalk or the street and light 'em up.


With all those firecrackers, you gotta have some water nearby just in case. This is from a Chinese middle school. This is the place to wash your clothes. In the winter, it can get a bit ugly. Students' hands start to swell and turn interesting colors because of washing in the cold cold water. For me, just washing dishes is a painful, unpleasant business.

Pic o' the Day #42 - Final Pic o' the Day

Which documents do you take if you want to leave China for a vacation in Thailand and India?

If you chose the ones on the right, you'd be correct.

If you chose the ones on left, you'd be me.

I have 3 passports. 1 US personal passport, 1 US Peace Corps passport, and 1 Irish passport. I had a cunning plan: Exit China on my US Peace Corps passport. Use my Irish passport to enter and exit India and avoid the 1000 baht visa surcharge for Americans. Then re-enter China on my US Peace Corps passport. Like you, I was impressed with this plan.

However, I put the wrong docs in my pocket. At the airport, just before border control, I realized my mistake. The US passport that I brought showed no Chinese visa nor any evidence of legally entering the country. I was worried. Lisa thought we could schmooze our way across the border. But in the place that invented and perfected the use of official red stamps, that was not to be.

I had to go back to Mianyang and get the right papers in order to leave. Lisa and the plane left without me. I got on the next flight, 2 days later, and tried to forget all about my cunning plan.

BTW, the red document on the left is my Foreign Expert Certificate. It entitles me to get a work visa here. It has a red stamp, too.

I really enjoyed this little project. I find that I was taking different pictures than I normally would and seeing my world with a little more attention than I had before.

Now, I will just make regular old posts with pics from current events and a few blasts from the past. If there is anything you'd like to see from China, please let me know. I'd be happy to try to get some snaps.