Wednesday, June 27

SJSU students continue to savor their Beijing adventures while growing closer together as a group [Maybe it's our "sticky rice" technique surviving this city's packed subway system]. Folks are enjoying the class, even though our conversations about panopticism, the flaneur gaze, and postmodernity can get pretty thick at times. Fortunately SJSU students are doing a fine job of connecting abstract concepts to some of the concrete realities of life in Beijing. Their journal entries make for some fascinating reading!

Students are also buzzing about forthcoming plans. Believe it or not, a few are even planning to spend the weekend in Hong Kong. And some are hoping to dedicate our upcoming four-day weekend (July 5-8) to a Shanghai excursion. It's an amazing thing, isn't it?... how a place as seemingly distant as China can become open and inviting once folks take that all-important first step. "Getting there" is half the struggle. Cross that frontier and then just about anything seems possible.


Tomorrow we're taking some time away from classroom study, traveling together to hike a section of the Great Wall. So far the weather prediction calls for rain, but we're hoping for a little luck. None of us have seen more than a smidgen of blue sky during this entire trip, yet we've all managed to find lots of time to explore this amazing place, despite overcast and drizzling days. We are therefore cautiously optimistic about tomorrow. After our Great Wall morning, we're visiting the Summer Palace in the afternoon before spending our evening at the Peking Opera.

What's the most common reaction to this trip so far? Here it is: "Our class is going by so fast!"