Digging to America and lunch with "Amoy Bill"

What are Thomas and Helen doing in this picture? They are digging a big hole...all the way to America! So if any of you want to start digging to China maybe you can meet in the middle. Do you see the man watching them? Nothing better to do on a Sunday afternoon I guess. The really funny part is when Thomas traced 美国 (mei guo, or America) on the sand with an arrow pointing to the hole.

I have been in a blog slump, caused in part by spending more time on my Chinese which is a good thing. Today, though, I made time to go to the monthly lunch meeting of the Association of Xiamen Expatriates. Its an interesting group, but mostly the wives of men who have been transferred here for one reason or another. some of them are not that happy to be in China and confine themselves to the expat world uptown. But they are very nice, and this month had invited the author of Amoy Magic (Amoy is Xiamenin the local dialect-- see the link above to the web site. This is the lone guide to living in Xiamen that is available in English. Bill Brown and his wife, who I had met previously on campus, have lived here for 19 years, raised two children here and were the first foreigners to get residency in Xiamen. They are Americans, he is a professor in the business school. His wife was very friendly to me and had lots of good advice. The book is very funny and liberally sprinkled with puns and humor. He tells some very interesting stories about the history of Xiamen. For example, he says..."did you know that there without Xiamen there would be no USA? The Boston Tea Party which sparked the American revolution involved the dumping of Fuijian oolong tea off a ship that had just arrived from Xiamen ..." And when Columbus discovered America he was really looking for Quanzhou, which is also in our province, about 2 hours north of us along the coast. In ancient times it was the largest port city in the world...who knew? Fun stuff for a history buff.