Zhou Zhuang--The Venice of China

This past weekend, our program arranged for whomever wanted to take a trip to Zhou Zhuang to stay there for a whole day. Zhou Zhuang is supposedly known as "The Venice of China", where a village resides on a flowing body of water (I'm not sure which body of water it is though). I had a great time, despite the ridiculous humidity and heat. I bought some souveniers, but mostly for friends.

School has been going well. It's hectic, even though we only have most classes once a week. The only exception to that is Chinese class, which we have four times a week. Our teacher, Lilian, is bilingual and fluent in English as well as Chinese. She grades very easily on us as well, compared to the other Chinese teachers. All my friends in the lower level classes complain about how their teachers give them so much and grades really hard. I like our class too--we're really small and condensed, so the pace is set up for all of us.

The other classes I'm taking are: Shanghai Metropolis, Political Economy of China, and Religions of China. They all sound like really interesting subjects, but every professor relies too much on Powerpoint and basically just read off of the slides. It's not something I prefer, but I guess it's understandable, since they aren't native English speakers, and need a tool to help them with lecture.

It's currently 12:30 AM, and I need to get some sleep so I can do well on my Chinese quiz tomorrow morning, so I will leave you with pictures from Zhou Zhuang:


Laverne, me and Jen in Zhou Zhuang


Pretty lilly pads


Caroline (my RA) and I on a bridge


The "ferry"/boat we took to get to the little village. It was literally a boat with wood chairs as seats!


The Venice of China


Our English speaking tour guide. I still couldn't understand what he was saying half the time...


Three of us during lunch


Shen's House? We visited exhibitions of these old houses that existed during the Qing Dynasty


Ann, our student coordinator and I at Shen's House. It was so hot that day, so I bought a fan =)


Caroline, Scott, Wendy and Jen on our boat ride


Me, Abe, Laverne, and Nate on our boat ride


This was our boat rower! He was such a jolly man, he even sang for us!


I think this was at a teahouse, but this girl's playing the pi pa? I'm not sure what instrument this is....

More pictures to come soon!