WeiFang: Kite Capital of the World and Blog Difficulties

Peking University and Shandong University invited the foreign “expert” teachers to an overnight field trip. It is the 35^th anniversary of the Weifang Kite Festival, the biggest kite manufacturing city in the world. Interesting. The site for the festival was about an hour outside of , reachedWiefang, through acre and acres of salt flats, and fields and vistas of a bay of the Pacific Ocean. Out in the middle of a field we also stopped at a restored temple to the dragon and salt gods. It had huge statutes in 3 different temples. Pretty, but very empty. However, there were tv cameras there taking our pictures, and officials giving some background to the temples. When we got back in the bus, I asked the translator why we stopped. She said, “Propaganda.” I said that maybe she should say “advertising” rather than propaganda. Language difference.

The kite festival had untold numbers of kites in the air. Many of them too big for people to control and they were anchored to cars, etc. Even though this was supposedly the reason for our trip, we did not spend any extensive time there and then headed to a lunch hosted by the city government, and a visit to the huge, gorgeous (and again, empty) art museum and a formal meeting with speeches, etc. Finally, we understood better the purpose of the field trip:  the city government is trying to bring businesses into the development area. The HR secretary jokingly gave out his cell phone number and said, “Call me. We want you to come here and work.” Rick and I were mentioned as the honored guests from the 15 of us from Peking University. I really have no idea why, other than we are the oldest ones in the delegation. I think that must be the main factors. A short stop at the kite museum and then back the 3 hours on the bullet train at 200 mph to Beijing.  Interesting but a little strange trip.

Blog Difficulties:

Our blog has been viewed about 3,000 times in the last 6 weeks. I am pleased. But when I got back to town last night, I saw that rather than 30-50 views per day, while I was gone it was 3 and 4 views. I am trying to figure out if there is something going on with the blog. If you have insight please let me know so we can fix it. We need feedback about this. I feel that it is a good start to getting the book published. Thank you.