(Written by a student in Shanghai)

          I went on a trip to Jinshan last Thursday.  It was organized by a school where I used to teach.  There were forty-two of us, and because we hadn't met for three months, there was a lot of excitement as we offered greetings to each other and talked with our friends.  The two-hour trip from Shanghai went by very quickly.

          The village of Jinshan is famous for the painting that is done there by the peasants.  Many of the families have been painting since 1973.  One of the couples told us that they were the fourth generation to be involved in it.  They paint with watercolors on rice paper and their style is very colorful - very showy with interesting patterns.  I took some photos and have attached them for you.

          When we arrived at the village, we had been greeted with yellow flowers wagging lightly in the spring breeze.  They were from a plant called "rape", and it was  beautiful sight.  There are small bridges on their river, and on the outside wall of some of the farmhouses there are large paintings.  The people living there are painters; their homes are their workrooms.

          Upon going inside of one of the homes, we saw many paintings on the wall, and a woman was painting at a desk.  The people who lived there had created the designs and done all the paintings themselves.  All of them were for sale.

      After we had lunch, we visited the Donglin temple.  It was rebuilt in 2007 and is very grand.

(Written by a student in Shanghai.)

          It's a quarter of the way into April, but it's snowing up north in China today.  We're enjoying the spirit of spring, but the weather needs to improve.

          The date for Tomb-Sweeping Day in our crop year is established by the solar system, but the government regulates our holidays, and we only got one day this year.  That holiday is also called our Memory Day and most of pay our respects to our deceased relatives at their tombs. 

          We want them to know how much we miss them, and afterwards - as we walk through a park or the countryside - we see how spring is proceeding and try to put ourselves back in a good mood.

          A total of 2.7 million people did that on April 4th.  That was the official Tomb-Sweeping Day - and there were eight hundred thousand the next day.

          My parents left us six years ago.  I think of them often - not just on that special day.

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          The peony is our country's flower, and it blooms in April with large, variously colored flowers.  The two cities that always come to mind when we think of peonies are Leoyang and Heze, but Leoyang is also famous throughout the world as the former capital through nine dynasties.  I don't need to visit the two cities to see the peonies; I can view them in the Guji Garden or a nearby park.

          Guji Garden, built during the Ming dynasty, is famous for its beautiful, ancient buildings.  It's one of five very old gardens near Shanghai, and it has a peony that is one hundred years old.  I saw on TV that it recently bloomed with one hundred flowers, all of them red with a light, flowery fragrance.

                                    ***

          Shanghai and St. Petersburg have been friendship cities for twenty years, and I went through an exhibit of paintings about St. Petersburg's spring yesterday.  There were more than seventy of them, some of them representational, others quite modern, with a few in the impressionist mode.  I'd worked on gaining skills as a painter with my father as a mentor for about a year, and then had to give it up when I moved.  The exhibition reminded me of how happy I'd been.  I haven't painted for a long time.          

(Written by a former teacher from Shanghai)

          My friend Mrs. Wang came to see me last Friday.  She looked unhappy and talked about how her husband has been complaining about a lot of things, but there was just one topic that interested me - his hair cuts.  She had been cutting his hair since the 1970's, and he was rarely satisfied.  Most of the time, he complained about the way she did it.  That's not surprising, as she has never been a hairdresser.  I tried to make her feel better by relating this experience:

          My son had never entered a barber shop until he came to America, as I had always been his hairdresser.  He was a high school student, and one day when I returned home, he told me that he hadn't gone to school that day.  He looked very unhappy, but didn't say anything more.  I started to worry that he might be sick or have some terrible problem so I asked him several times what was wrong.  He finally pointed at his hair and said that he couldn't go to school with hair like that, as all of his classmates would laugh at him. 

          I tried to make him see that his problem wasn't that bad, and after patting his shoulders, I told him that if he'd wash his hair he'd probably feel better about going to school the next day, and we both laughed about it.

          That night I told my husband how our son felt about his hair.  He responded that it was very common to feel that way and gave me a mysterious smile.  I didn't understand why.  I had always cut his hair, too, and though sometimes he wasn't satisfied, he'd always said that it wasn't a problem.

          "Then why do you give me that strange smile?" I asked, and he slowly respoded with another smile, "Because I wear my hat all day."

          I had just finished telling Mrs. Wang the story when she burst out laughing, and I did, too.  She said that my husband had had a good sense of humor and wished that her husband did, too.  Then she'd have an excuse for doing such a bad job.

          I told her that I was slowly becoming more skillful by watching how the hairdresser cuts hair every time I'm in a beauty shop.  My husband had rheumatoid arthritis and his spine was rigid.  That made it difficult to have his hair cut in a barber shop so I did it for him.

          My neighbor wouldn't have that problem if he went to a barber shop, so I advised her to let him go there.  That would solve the problem, as she knew that she really wasn't a hairdresser.

          She was happy when she left my apartment, but I felt a bit lonely thinking of all thoseyears when I'd been so happy cutting my husband's hair. 

          I cheered up a bit, however, when I remembered what he'd said about the hat.