Barbara & Bruces' Asia Adventures continue (China, Hong Kong and Korea too!!!!)

View from our hotel window We are now in Beijing, and are staying slightly outside of the central area of the city (near the north side of the 4th Ring Road, for those familiar with Beijing). We are near the site of the Beijing Olympics and there are lots of massive streets, tall apartment buildings with small shops (including car repair, convenience stores, a near-by shopping mall and a few walkable subway stops (about a 10-15 minute walk away-which is not bad in this immense city.)  We spent our first day orienting to the neighborhood and getting water and food supplies. Now that we are in China, my phone translation and Mandarin reading apps were essential to any sort of communication - we don’t speak Mandarin (besides a few basic words) and no one knows much English beyond saying 'Hello' and 'Good By'. I am very appreciative of these apps on my phone and the technology behind it, without which it would be very challenging to explore. Family on subway ...

Diamond Hill exit with Lion's Head in background I have just finished a 4-day intensive (8 hours + each day), teaching Laban Movement Analysis (LMA) as part of a greater Chinese (e.g. it includes Hong Kong) Dance/Movement Therapy training program. The class was actually held in the same studio, so I was familiar with getting there on my own, even thought the local organizer and students were new.  This photo of the metro (MTR) exit to the studio shows newer apartment buildings and behind them 'Lion's Head Rock', symbol of Hong Kong pride and independence. Because I have taught in Hong Kong before (but not teaching this particular course.) I got the wonderful privledge to learn about the culture through my students. This time, it was a particularly enthusiastic class of 11 students with 6 folks from Hong Kong and 5 from Macao. The students were often already counselors, therapists or teachers and were giving up the Christmas holiday as well as taking at least one d...

Season's greetings!  You might be wondering what Christmas is like in Hong Kong.  There's no simple answer! At one level, Christmas is huge, as you might be able to tell from the holiday decorations in the mall shown at right.  And this is not unusual--lots of both indoor and outdoor lights, displays, decorations, Christmas sales, and so forth.  And it's a holiday from work, as is the day after (though not for Barbara, as she's teaching these days partly because it's a time when her students have the time off to attend a class that runs from about 9-6 each day (most of them have jobs).   But much of the observance is a reflection of the relative affluence of Hong Kong, its long history (until 1997) as one of Britain's last colonies, the draw of glitz and glitter and gift-giving, and shopping.  But on Christmas Eve, when we were wandering back to our youth hostel, we enjoyed stopping to listen to a group of perhaps thirty folks singing...

We return to Hong Kong. It is the day after the solstice and we have been busy: My and our return to HK has a feeling of familiarity (which in itself is a strange thing to say... I never imagined that I would be returning to this city, much less Asia and China so frequently.)  The LONG plane ride was punctuated by a lovely but too short visit with cousin Sue in Seattle, and then 14 hours watching movies, taking cat naps as we sped halfway around the globe. (Somehow, I always forget how long and exhausting the flight is, but perhaps that is a good thing). We arrive and even our 'hotel/hostel is familiar, since I stayed here for a conference on Dance/Movement Therapy and Creative Arts Therapies last year.  We are in a lovely but  not too fancy hostel, with friendly desk folks and in a large (especially for HK) , clean quiet, comfortable room, with a view of a small pocket park where elders stretch, move and exercise each morning. We also can watch several English language...