Happy Easter ~ The English Zone

Every Friday at the Ford Motor Research & Engineering Office in Nanjing a class entitled "The English Zone" occurs at 12:00 noon.  Employees who want to know more about the USA or other Western cultures meet to learn a few more tidbits and practice their English skills.  This is lead by Morgan, a young lady who grew up in Howell, Michigan about 45 minutes from our home in Livonia. Gordon was invited by Ling Ling Li to attend Friday's session. She was delighted when he agreed to come.  Arriving late from a meeting he walked into a conference room that was packed with about fifty employees. On the whiteboard were words like Easter, bunny, forty days, etc. Obviously the lesson for today was "Easter Customs in the USA." Morgan welcomed the latecomer to the room and asked him to share how he celebrated Easter back home.  He began by telling them that with grown children the customs have changed but when the kids were little......and out came the Easter Bunny story.  Easter baskets with springtime toys, jelly beans, chocolate eggs & chocolate bunnies were hidden and Allison and Garrett had to find theirs in the house first thing on Easter morning.  His audience smiled with delight imagining the childhood excitement. He explained that through the years the Easter Bunny became quite sly in his placement of the baskets.  One particular year Allison could NOT find hers. Brother Garrett, three years younger, was already drooling jelly bean juice on his jammies and playing with matchbox cars but she was near tears and clueless as to where to find her treasure trove.  Subtle hints revealed that this year the Easter Bunny hid the basket in the OVEN!  Gordon's audience howled with glee for two reasons.  One because of the dramatic build-up with which he told his story and two because 98.8% of Chinese households do not own an oven to begin with!  With everyone still captivated he told them about the family bedecked in new Spring outfits attending Church with all it's Triumphant Trimmings like the Alleluia Chorus and Easter Lillies. They smiled and clapped when he finished and went on to dye Easter eggs.  Morgan's mother had sent the Easter egg dye and wax crayons from Michigan for the next phase of the lesson.  The Big Guy, still holding court, picked up a dry hard-boiled egg and marked it with a crayon. They watched so that they too, might have the technique necessary to accomplish their colorful result with the wax-resist. Childs play, of course, but interesting for first timers. He jumped up and went to lunch leaving Morgan with the newbies.  Gordon relays that the Chinese counterparts who attended "The English Zone" on Good Friday 2011 "oohed and ahhed" over each others eggs & displayed them in their office cubicle that afternoon. No doubt the egg went home and so did another little tidbit about the USA and our customs.

Ling Ling Li sent this with this message:
"Happy Easter, Gordon.  You are the best!!!"

Happy Easter Everyone from Nanjing, China!
Thanks for Reading,

Cricket

Wish List

Wish List

All our married life I have longed for a water feature in our yard.  Be it a fountain, spurting bird bath, pond or faux waterfall, it’s been on my “someday I’d like…”wish list.  Our first house had the makings of one but the Big Guy soon dismissed the possibility and ripped it out.  Our second home is seated in dense shade. Over thirteen gigantic deciduous oak and maple trees continually drop seeds, acorns, branches and oh so many autumn leaves, so he ruled that out as well.  Add to that the fact that any neighbor that has a pond loses their expensive koi fish to several local hungry herons…. okay, okay, I get his point.  

I was pretty tickled when we toured the small courtyard of our China villa and saw, you guessed it, a water feature!  This man-made pond is encircled with local geological rock forms that look to be centuries old.  They aren’t really attractive to me, but they’re historically geological to the area, which I find significant.  A little research has uncovered that these rocks are called *Taihu (Lake Tai rock.)

Sadly, the ponds bubbler does not work and the Big Guy purports the pond leaks and he can’t find the faucet for it anyhow.  Sad.  So now, three weeks into living here, I putter in my Secret Garden and sulkily look at the murky evaporating pond water and wish the darn thing were fixed.  After all, it takes up a substantial piece of the courtyard for something that is completely useless.  Again, Sad.  Late spring through early autumn is said to be extremely humid and hot here.  I’m not looking forward to a burgeoning mosquito population that breeds in the still water. 

One morning leaning over the pond as in a fairy tale I saw more than my reflection. “Wait a minute,” I said to myself, “What’s that bright leaf doing there in the pond?” Instead of a leaf I saw a six-inch neon orange koi.   I blinked and it disappeared. I’d say it swam away but I didn’t see that happen nor did its movement in the shallow water even ripple the surface.   It was just gone and all that stared back at me was my reflection.  So, I saw it once, but I did see it!  

This sighting may be just what I need to cast my net and get the Big Guy to repair the pond!  Maybe if I name that fish he’d be even more prone to put on some waders to repair the water feature I feel I must have thus subsiding my thirty plus years of an unfulfilled wish. 

You can help by entering the contest below:

Name that Fish!    Yú de míngchēng

·         Help me name the six-inch neon orange koi found in our pond.

·         Place your entry in the Comment section of this blog.

·         Winners will be selected by a panel of judges in Nanjing, China.

·         Grand Prize – A Postcard from China sent directly to YOU!

Thanks for Reading!

Cricket      

*Taihu (Lake Tai rock) -A single piece of rock, naturally formed, from Lake Tai (in the Yangtze Delta Plain, China). Great rocks, sculpted by the water of the lake, adorned the historic gardens of the scholar-officials for two thousand years. The naturally-occurring holes promote the flow of Chi ("Vital Breath" - life-force).