Culture Corner: Nanjing - Part I

Located in Jiangsu Province, Nanjing is the city I spent my first year living in china.  I couldn't have asked for a better introduction.

This was the view from my balcony: the quiet back lanes of Nanjing.  My apartment building looked exactly like the others here, so I don’t need to include a photo.  (Except mine didn’t have bars on the windows…)

“And that’s the chalkboard we played hangman on… And that’s the desk where little Johnny passed out after drinking too much Kool-Aid… And that’s the bare concrete floor where Isabelle scraped her knee when she was trying to do a cartwheel…”  Actually, this is a university classroom, my little home away from home.

Not the picture of modernity inside, but something more from without.  My classroom was the third window in on the ground floor.

And these were my students at Nanjing Normal University.  From left to right, translating their Chinese names into English, they are: Circumference Meteor Shower, Post Very Happy, King Clever, Poplar Snow Beautiful, a blurry Display Quiet, yard gnome, Laura (I forgot her Chinese name), Yellow Happy Earth, and Leaf Favor.  Hiding in the back is Kang Chen, which doesn’t matter because this was probably the only day he came to class.  They are wearing jackets because according to them, 4 degrees Celsius was a bit too chilly a classroom to go only in a t-shirt.

(This is the end of Part I.  Part II is here, and Part III is here.)