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

Opening Circle  Moving Together  I had the wonderful pleasure of talking and leading a workshop on Dance/Movement Therapy (DMT) for my friend Ming Ming, who directs a Music Therapy program in Beijing. (She was in my class at Augsburg, on a grant to study in the US last year, and it is fun to be able to visit her and see a bit of her personal and professional life.)  The class was fun, 22 students and Music Therapy graduates, who gathered in the school’s basement dance space.  The students were at first shy, and a bit reluctant, and I wasn’t sure what would happen. But soon, (and very easily) they started to move more freely, expressively and became playfully creative.  It was so much fun, and Ming Ming shared afterwards that she was also pleased and surprised at how much her students opened up and relaxed. Working with Chinese students is somewhat of a cultural challenge for me. While in the US, the therapeutic focus on DMT is on findin...

Shanghai Train Station (a small one) Fast Train Platform- all aboard!!! Welcome to Beijing !!! After a 4.5 hour fast train ride (comfortable, clean and easy) from Shanghai to Beijing, traveling at times about 215 miles/hour, we arrived in Beijing. This time the differences between the two cities feel more obvious than before. Beijing is larger: it takes more time to get from one place to another. There seem to be more people and (I sense) greater economic diversity among them. We see many women dressed in stylish fashions, but many more in casual jeans and tee shirts of some sort. At least where we have been exploring, there seem to be fewer young women with hair dyed blond/white.  This is a trend in contemporary China according to news articles. We are not sure if this reflects the desire to become more western in China’s desire to surpass the US, or reflects something about the psyche of Beijing and its relationship to the US and the west. Our first hotel, perhap...

Greetings once again, with local buzz (and a message from President Xi) about Karl Marx' 200th birthday, and the 170th anniversary year of the publication of Marx and Engels' Communist Manifesto in 1848.  It's still said to be a guiding philosophy for China's re-construction as an officially communist country.  But would Marx recognize China today in his vision of the future?  I've been thinking about this lately--partly as a result of my immersion in local museums, while Barbara meets each day (all day!) with her classes--as I zoom about on Shanghai's excellent Metro system (photo below of the People's Square station as people change trains).  The trains are running on time. My experience of three very different museums (though all excellent!) is that the story they tell focusses on the struggle and sacrifice to fight foreign influence (imperialism) and to establish a communist society which will build a new China that replaces the older, outmoded,...

Grandmother and grandson exploring in Arts Park Would you like to find out your BMI? Street near out hotel  It is early early-early-early morning, and I am getting ready for my class. The news on China Global TV in our hotel room is covering events in Central and South America as well as women’s issues in India. One of the things we enjoy here  is that China news covers the rest of the world in greater depth than most US news stations that we watch back home. The city is waking up and traffic sounds enter our window, as do the sounds of construction, an ever present sound morning, evening and weekends in this part of town. On my walk to the Metro, once I cross the bridge over a small creek, I pass a small arts park surrounded by high-rise apartments.  It is filled with sculptures, places of water and water plants and filled with people- including grandparents, children and people walking around the circular outer path. The signs encourag...

Greetings again from Shanghai, as life here settles down after the three-day May Day (May 1st) holiday.  Here (and in other parts of the world including Europe) it's Labor Day or Workers' Day, and more special in countries like China whose founding story is centered on workers, peasants, and social change. We weren't sure what to expect by way of celebrations.  There were some special events here and there, and according to the news about 50 million people here took advantage of the three-day break to travel and visit family or friends.  But we spent most of the time where people were gathering, particularly local parks.  In the photo above we see children in Fuxing Park, the French-style park (in its rose gardens and parks and fountains) established when this part of Shanghai was part of the "French Concession."  But the concession is also where some of the key organizers of the Chinese Communist Party held their early discussions, and where the first Par...

Greetings from Shanghai, this time from me (Bruce).  Barbara has already posted twice about our adventures, but I have some additional thoughts and photos (especially ones of her, which of course she can't take--especially when she's dancing!) to share.  In the photo below we see her at People's Square (part of the heart of Shanghai), where she's been moving to the music and steps while watching people vigorously dancing dances from of one of China's "national minority" groups (our best guess) on a lovely spring day.  A woman noticed and began showing Barbara some of the steps, which led to one of the men asking her to dance! This kind of thing tends to happen!  The further education and training Barbara got in her 50's as a Marriage and Family Therapist was an outgrowth of her earlier work as a Dance/Movement Therapist, which in turn grew out of her work as a professional dancer (we met when I was teaching at St Olaf College in the late 80's...

Our first day’s explorations helped us re-orient to both new and previously explored areas nearby. We passed fragrant jasmine bushes in bloom, lively corner markets, young people flirting by the side of Suzou creek as well as grandmothers smiling proudly as they attempted to keep up with a grandchild. We were pleased to discover that we were within a short walking distance of M50- an old ‘slub (cotton) mill’ that had been renovated into an arts and art studio complex.  We are also fairly close to the Huxi Mosque, which we visited last time during Ramadan (and booked marked as a place to which we want to return this trip). Exhausted by our exertions,  we returned to crash/sleep. (Did I mention it was a long flight???) 1933 building- slaughter house to arts venue The next day,  we had more energy and wandered further afield. We emerged from our hotel to discover a small ‘pop-up market’ outside our hotel as we figured out how to get to the metro sta...