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

I am writing this on the first of our last two days in Beijing (at least for the moment). The temps have dropped slightly but there is a stiff, steady wind that makes moving around outside challenging. Our computer weather says it is about 33 degrees F., but neither of us believe it. Walking around today I wore about 7 layers on my upper body and 2 on my lower body. It was about right. It also feels like we are figuring out how to make our way around, just as we are about to leave.  Workers where Bruce has his breakfast coffee and roll,  smile hello as he enters. This evening we went to a nearby restaurant, and even though it is only our second time there; we are greeted with smiles and the wait people give us time to slowly figure out what we want to order. We are also getting pretty savvy pushing our way into the subway during rush hour (like everyone else) and I am finding it increasingly easy to use my translation app for talking and reading menus and signs. Dragon...

Typical student photo.. FEET ! (in HK)  Each time I teach a course in China, I learn more from my students than I suspect they learn from me. Especially as I get to know some of them better, our conversations are deeper and more substantive. In addition, how they respond to movement and psychological frameworks also helps me get glimpses of both differences and similarities between my cultural patterns as an American and their Chinese ones.  This time, the course I taught in Beijing was an advanced level course focusing on Laban Movement Analysis (LMA). We use this in dance/movement therapy to help us better understand the meaning of our clients’ movement and body patterns. So learning LMA means learning this systemic framework for making sense of all non-verbal movement patterns. Because movement is so complex, LMA is a complex and challenging system to learn and I am used to students becoming easily overwhelmed and frustrated in their learning process. The st...

Food is important to everyone everywhere--but it seems, more so in China. There are so many cafes and restaurants on most city blocks here in Beijing, offering such a wide variety of tasty dishes.  I get the impression that people here care about their food, and have an opinion about it. And some eat almost everything that's historically been important (or at least available) in their daily diet, using many parts of animals (for example) which Americans would often toss.  But food which once might have been eaten out of necessity has been kept by many out of preference and taste. Food here seems less mysterious in its origins.  There are so many open-air, public markets for raw fruits and vegetables (not already packaged), and meats which are hanging in front of you, with a butcher you can ask for the specific cut you want (if you speak Chinese).  So in markets like these (these photos are from warm-weather Hong Kong, not winter Beijing) we see...