Thought for the week

"Planning a lesson is like caging a tiger. Sometimes you have to do it, to make sure that everyone feels comfortable and safe; but whenever you do, you have to feel sorry for the tiger."

CIS Hangzhou 'TV Channel' launched

After much discussion and delay (and a vexing last-minute assault by the massed gremlins of the Blogger platform!), our long-planned video blog for CIS Hangzhou is finally live: CIS Hangzhou TV Channel.   Check it out.

Thought for the week

"None of us want to be in calm waters all our lives."

Travels through China

Last week, as one of our 'Project Week' excursions around China, I led a small group of students (all girls, oddly enough) on an 1,800 km odyssey from Beijing back to Hangzhou.
Since China's celebrated 'Grand Canal' has its origin point in Hangzhou (branching off from the Qiantang River, just to the south of the Yangtze Delta) and is a central element of the city's identity, we thought it would be appropriate to consider the history and the continuing importance of this mighty thoroughfare, and explore some of the major cities along its route. 
Our party flew to its terminus in the northern capital of Beijing, and then returned to Hangzhou tracing the route of the canal (although there's not very much of the original waterway left any more; nothing, really, north of the Yangtze) - with stops along the way in the canalside cities of Dezhou (the 'capital' of China's burgeoning solar power industry), Xuzhou (home to a bigger lake than Hangzhou's, and a collection of terracotta warriors smaller than Xi'an's but equally impressive), Wuxi (famous for its Jichang Garden), and Suzhou. We made a point of trying to use as many different modes of transport as possible: 高铁, local train, bus, taxi, long-distance coach (on all of which my French colleague M. Biret and I managed to sleep!) - and even a waterbus, for the very last leg of the journey in Hangzhou, from Wulin Square Wharf back to our local Walmart on nearby Gudun Lu.
It was a fascinating journey. And I think I'll definitely be going back to Xuzhou at some point - the nicest city I've found in China!