Today is a rainy day in Wenzhou. I wish I could send my rains to California. All I can do is hope they get there soon to calm the fires that are raging through the region. Here, the problem of air quality is the norm. These numbers that you share of 350ppi and such are numbers that I’m familiar with. I’ve owned a variety of masks through the years. I’d say that getting some would be a good idea.

Rainy Wenzhou. We need this wash. The air here is constantly filled with a kind of haze that lingers, until it settles on things that need to be cleaned off. My motorbike, after being outside while I’m at work, needs to be cleaned off. It’s already so dirty that one finger’s glide along the seat comes up with a blackend fingerprint. I keep a towel in my bike-body for this purpose.

This city has hidden gems. I wish they weren’t so hard to find. On the way here, I read about its history, and about how it had a vibrancy from the manufacturing that surrounds it. I read about the tea in the hills, the language that’s unique, the epochs it has existed. I hoped I’d get a taste of that length of time in the form of a few buildings, some temples, perhaps a tourist-haunt that is over-wrought with marketing at least. Well, there are bits. There is an island, a slim one, half of which is dedicated to the history of this town, with a temple with a funny story and pair of poems on its front. There is a park, a mere 23 kilometers away that I’ve driven past on the way to the airport that seems like it too is dedicated to the history of the town. There are a few remaining gates from the ancient city, in a neighborhood that is now mostly a shiny marketing zone, and so perhaps tempered in the vein of charm. There is good tea. It is the first city that I’ve found green tea that I’m actually happy about drinking. Most of the tea I drink is of the many other varieties, Pu er, Yellow, Wu Long, and the sort. They even grow their own red tea here that I’ve found to be pleasant. Then, thanks to a small hiking group, I even have been able to enjoy the great mountains that helped this area retain its unique nature for so many years. They have ample hills for the avid hiker.

On the other hand, I find that my weekends are often 50% napping and 50% reading and writing. So, thanks to the rain, I didn’t need to make a decision, and here I am, just under 500 words of thought to you today. My teaching load is pretty even, but takes a lot of effort. For example, last Friday, I had to show two classes 90 minutes of Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, then instruct them in regards to the worksheet that goes along with it. Hah! And I teach an actual literature class that forces me to read and analyze poetry on a regular basis. I even used one of my own recently as a surprise quiz for the kids. It was pretty cool to see academic writing about my own work, even if it was planted in that way. Wenzhou isn’t so bad. Busy though.

I’ve never been in a city that was so aggressive about tearing down old buildings as I have witnessed here. Most of the buildings aren’t pretty or historic, but they are for the most part, fully functioning. The purpose of the tear-downs is to create new buildings on their sites. The land here has rocketed in prices lately like nobody’s business. I have basically the same size apartment that I had in Fujian where I am right now, but am paying twice what I paid there. Many of my co-workers were simply unable to find anything under 5,000 yuan per month when they arrived. This, when many of us were paying 1-2,000 y/m at our previous locations for comparable digs.

I look forward to an era in my experience when I can study more and read more again. After this blog-post, I’ll focus on a conference application and language learning until well into the afternoon. I found a set of about two thousand photographs that I intended to review a couple years ago, but somehow missed. They are of a collection of ancient Buddhist carvings lining a riverside, a meander through a city that stood as the capital of the Eastern Zhou for 13 dynasties until the Qing unified China, the summer residence of Sun Yat Sen, a day-trip to the Shaolin Temple, including a hike through its tremendous mountains, the kind of stone that reaches straight out of the ground for thousands of feet and gently nestles into the landscape at the same time. Those and more are what I found in the set that waits. I know two thirds of them will toss quickly, but as is stands, that’s still a lot of photos to review. I’ll get there. Plodding along.

I’ve got a promotion going for early supporters on a plan of mine. If you join up on my Patron, you can receive a calendar that I’ll create in about a month’s time. I’ll be producing it through a function Flickr provides so that I can import my photos onto it. (I’m not actively using their site these days otherwise.) If you’d like to join in, and stick around to help with the grand plan, check it out at the link to the right Support the Expedition.

Time to amble on. And please, think of the comments section like a guest book.

I hope you’re alright~ Happy day~