Feng shui (wind & water)

Students went out to a restaurant yesterday with one of our Chinese students (who will be coming to ETSU this autumn). They ate numerous meats. One female said this was the first time she ever had lamb, duck, or donkey! She liked the donkey. Others liked the donkey, too. And I was afraid some of them might not be adventuresome.

Prof. Tuo gave a lecture on Daoism and religion in general. His pronunciation was difficult to understand but was enthusiastic. Everyone welcomed his talk, and they had many questions for him. He said that Mao consulted Daoist masters and felt he was also a Daoist adept in feng shui (used for predicting the best situations) to help deciding his military strategy or whether to reside in the Forbidden City (he chose not to live there on advice from a Daoist).

City Museum in the afternoon. A spectacular building finished this year. (One of the students got claustraphobic in a long circular passageway in the museum.) A great collection of Buddhist statuary, including some from the Buddhist Tantric school depicting enlightenment through sexual intercourse. The Chinese text accompanying these statues (translated for me by another of our Chinese student guides who wants to come to ETSU) said that intercourse was to be taken as metaphorical rather than literal.

Some of the oldsters went for dinner. The menus were in Chinese (as they are everywhere). There were pictures of food on the menus so we thought we could point to them. We discovered that the pictures were the same on each page--it was only the stationery the menus were printed on. So I and another fellow took the waitress out around the restaurant and pointed to what other patrons were eating. It was a great meal.

The Chinese are extremely helpful. The students are impressed by this. Some of the students already say they wish they could stay in China longer. However, at least one of the students got tired at the Forbidden City of seeing palace after palace in the heat.

I worried about how the students would react to today's lecturer's pronunciation because you could tell they were having difficulty with it, but some said how much they were interested in what he had to say about religion. Everything is an adventure, from buying postage stamps (you have to put the glue on them to make them stick), to negotiating with persistent souvenir sellers, to understanding the best approach a squat toilet.