On the way to Koh Lanta—me being grateful for some sun, surf, and fresh air and quality time in Thailand with my family
In my previous end-of-year post, I ended up writing a piece about my growing alarm about the unfolding global eco-crisis. Actually, what I originally intended was to write a wrap-up piece about my year in 2019, but that seemed rather self-centered given the dubious conditions of the world. So I wrote that piece instead. Now that I got that off my chest, I’m ready to go back and review my own personal experiences in 2019, in the spirit of gratitude for all the good things in my life.
First of all, I’m glad that I was able to spend so much good quality time with my family, not just my own immediate family in Shanghai, but also my extended family in the USA (I will get back to that later).
As some readers know, I live in Kunshan on the weekdays, where I work as an administrator and professor at Duke Kunshan University. Most of my evenings there are passed in relative solitude. I don’t mind this condition of isolation per se, but it does get rather lonely out there, and it’s nice to have the opportunity every weekend to reunite with my family here in our splendid city of Shanghai. Some of my colleagues aren’t so fortunate, and they can only see their families once in a long while, so I feel I ought to be grateful for the proximity of work and family.
One good thing that happened this past year is that we transferred our elder daughter Sarah to the Shanghai American School. Prior to that, she was attending the YK Pao School, which is a boarding school in nearby Songjiang, and she was living the same sort of life as me, returning every weekend to be with her family in Shanghai. YK Pao is a great school too, and we are grateful for everything Sarah experienced and learned there, even some of the harder lessons she learned as a boarder. And as a bilingual school, YK Pao provided an excellent transition for her from a Chinese education system (which she had in years 1-5) to an international one. Her Chinese is levels above mine—at least in terms of basic reading, writing, and oral skills, if not cultural and historical knowledge. But I believe SAS is more suited for her at this point in her life, and that this school will help her prepare well for the transition to college, which is coming up soon.
Speaking of which, I’m very grateful for the opportunity to serve as a Board member of SAS from 2016 to 2019. I stepped down from the Board last spring in order to be able concentrate better on my work at DKU. It has been a very rich and rewarding experience to serve for those years, and I learned a great deal about wise leadership and good governance through my work as a Board member. I was also able to meet many fine and fascinating people, both on the Board and administration of SAS, and at international conferences such as UNIS Hanoi and EARCOS and other events.
I am also grateful for the wonderful education our younger daughter Hannah is receiving in the Shanghai High School International Division. She has been there since first grade, and now she is in fifth grade. Not only is she an avid and voracious reader of English-language books, but she also has impressive Chinese reading skills. The other day she was complaining about her Chinese, and I helped her with an assignment and noticed she was reading a text from a famous Song Dynasty philosopher and educator, Zhu Xi, and that she could understand most if not all of the text. By any standards that’s impressive, at least to me! Moreover, with the strong emphasis on science in this educational system, her scientific curiosity and reasoning skills are advancing rapidly.
As for my wife Mengxi, I’m grateful that her own career in Shanghai seems to be developing well and she is as busy as ever with her work in television and MC’ing live events, and yet despite all that she still has time to help manage the family and provide us with many excellent experiences.
This past year, as a family, we were able to see many fine performances, perhaps more than ever before. Now that Hannah is older, it is easier for her to attend adult-oriented performances, by which I mean symphonies and the likes. Some of the highlights from the past year:
—A performance of the works of Johann Strauss by an Austrian Symphony Orchestra at the Shanghai Center to greet the new year in 2019;
—A thrilling performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony at the Shanghai Symphony Hall
—Equally thrilling: Prokofiev’s Third Concerto with guest pianist Martha Argerich, and a booming, triumphant performance of Respighi’s Pines of Rome at the SSH;
—Several fine musicals at the Shanghai Culture Center, including Titanic and Matilda, both world-class performances.
Speaking of fine performances, I’m also grateful for having established a working relationship with the Jazz at Lincoln Center club in Shanghai. This year I saw several great performances there including Wynton Marsalis and his Big Band, and my wife and I had the opportunity to meet Wynton and chat briefly with him afterwards. I was also invited by the club to give a guest speech on jazz history prior to a performance by Benny Benack and his band, which was also an excellent evening.
This past year marked the tenth anniversary of the Shanghai Flaneur group, which organizes guided walking tours of Shanghai’s history and culture featuring docents knowledgeable in Shanghai history such as myself. I’m extremely grateful for the opportunity to work with Flaneur over the past decade and run dozens of walking tours of the city, including my once popular music history tour, my tour of the heart of the French Concession, and my Bund at night tour. It has been an honor to work with the Flaneur group and a very enriching experience for me over the years.
Getting back to family, I’m grateful for the opportunity to spend time this past year with my family in the USA, even if briefly. I have parents living in Acton Massachusetts and also in Falls Church Virginia, and my sister and her family live nearby in McClean VA. Last May I was able to spend a few days with my dad, step-mother and sister and her family. One of the highlights was when my sister and her family took me to a Nationals’ baseball game, where they came from behind in a thrilling fifth inning that saw a few homers sail over our heads in center field. In July, I saw a Red Sox game at Fenway Park in Boston with my old buddy Steve Beam (for whose friendship I am also very grateful!) and took my wife and daughters to their first baseball game as well. It was fun if somewhat challenging to explain all the strange rules of this ball game in real time to them. Unfortunately, the Sox didn’t do quite as well as the Nats this year, but let’s hope they bounce back in 2020.
I’m also grateful that I had the opportunity to catch up with my aunt and uncle in Berkeley California and that I also was able to reconnect with an old friend and colleague from my years at UNSW in Sydney.
I’m certainly grateful for the opportunity to spend some quality time with my daughters back on the campus of my alma mater, Dartmouth College, for the Camp Dartmouth experience. My gratitude extends to Walt Palmer ‘90 and the other counselors who were there helping to run the program. It was great reconnecting with Hanover and surroundings and introducing my daughters to some highlights of the Dartmouth experience.
Unlike the two previous years, 2019 wasn’t a huge travel year for me, and much of my job at DKU focused on the administrative work of building up our new study abroad programming for our fairly new (in second year of operations now) undergraduate degree program. I’m grateful for the opportunity to work at DKU over the past four and half years and to have been able to make so many different contributions to the launching of the new undergraduate program, and now to the launching of our study abroad programming over this coming year. I’m grateful for all the challenges and opportunities this work has afforded me, and for my colleagues and leaders at Duke and at DKU, who have supported me in these endeavors.
Most of all, I am grateful for the opportunity to work with so many fine and wonderful students at DKU. This is hands-down the highlight of my job at DKU. In my capacity as Director of Study Abroad, in my role as a professor, teaching courses on Shanghai and Chinese history and culture, and in the research I do as a scholar, I’ve worked with and gotten to know so many great students this past year. This above all else is what keeps me happy with my job.
This past year, I was also able to join two extended field trips for DKU students, one to the mountainous region of Zhangjiajie in Hunan Province, and another to Siming Mountain in Zhejiang Province. Both were fantastic experiences, even if it was exhausting at times keeping up with young adventuresome people. I am grateful to DKU, especially the Student Affairs team, for organizing these field trips and for inviting me to join them as a trip leader. It’s adventures like these that make teaching and working in China a continuously thrilling experience.
I’m grateful that I had the opportunity to join the NAFSA conference in Washington DC for the first time last May, not only because it was a very valuable learning experience for my new position in the field of Study Abroad, but also because I was able to spend some time with my family there, as I mentioned above.
Speaking of travels, I’m extremely grateful that my old college buddy Cliff Bernstein (D’90) invited me to join the Dartmouth alumni event in Niseko Japan last February as the keynote speaker. It was a fantastic event, and I was able to touch base with one old alumni friends and to make new acquaintances with others, even if I didn’t take advantage of the skiing there. I hope to go again this year and this time I may try some skiing, so long as I can get into better physical condition over the next two months.
I’m grateful for being invited to join a workshop at Tongji University earlier this year, which led to a publication about the ballrooms of Old Shanghai in their journal Built Heritage. That was a very rewarding experience altogether. I’m also grateful for my long-term friendship and collaborations with Dr. James Farrer, who also contributed to the workshop and to the volume with a fascinating article on bar streets as cultural heritage. Speaking of which, I’m grateful as well for being invited to give a keynote speech on cultural heritage at an important conference on Chinese media held at Suzhou University last month. And for being invited to give a paper and talk at a conference on Chinese literature in Hunan last summer. These sorts of invitations help ensure that I still have skin in the game when it comes to my academic work. So keep ‘em coming!
One of the other things I’m grateful for these days is the opportunity to sing and play music with my colleagues and students at DKU. As everyone who reads my blogs and my work knows, music is a huge part of my life and work. I’ve been involved in a few musical events lately. I have also been hosting some musical gatherings recently in my own home in Kunshan, and these have been highlights of the past season. I hope we can continue these gatherings, as it brings me such great joy to play, teach, and learn about music with and from others. Speaking of which, I’m also grateful that I have so many friends in the music scene in Kunshan and can jam with them now and then in the Kunshan bar scene.
Speaking of music, readers of my blog site and my Facebook friends may have noticed that I spent a lot of time honoring the Beatles over the past year. In 2019, I decided to celebrate Beatle birthdays by playing some of my favorite songs of John, Paul, and George on guitar and/or piano (perhaps I’ll save Ringo for next year). The year 2019 also marked the 50th anniversary of the astonishing Beatles album Abbey Road, which I celebrated by performing the songs from that album in my own way. While I don’t expect people to celebrate my own musical skills, which are admittedly quite modest, I hope they appreciate at least the spirit of my homages to the Fab Four.
The Beatles have been my musical gods ever since I was a wee laddie, and more than any other musicians they have inspired my lifelong love for music. I also had the opportunity to further my own Beatle knowledge by reading some fabulous Beatle books this year, including the massive bio by Bob Spitz (which I’m still in the midst of reading—I will post a review when I’m done) and a fascinating study on musical collaboration by my Duke colleague Thomas Brothers focusing on the Beatles and Duke Ellington. I’m grateful to Dr. Brothers for his correspondence with me and for turning me on to his excellent book!
My new turntable and speakers (one out of frame)—thanks Mario!
And continuing with gratitude in the musical domain, I must give a special shoutout to two friends who have influenced me in a very positive way this past year, helping me reconnect with my dear old vinyl collection and with the art of vinyl record playing: Mario Cavolo and Brian Offenther. Mario hooked me up with an excellent turntable and speakers, and Brian, who works as a DJ and with whom I’ve had many collaborations over the years, has introduced me to some fine vinyl shops in Shanghai. Both of these eccentric musician friends of mine continue to inspire me with their eclectic musical interests and their passion for old-fashioned technologies and hi-fidelity.
Coming back full circle to my own immediate family, I’m grateful that we had the opportunity over this past year to take some holiday trips to places we hadn’t been to before, including Ningbo and Thailand. Traveling with one’s own family, especially when one has young children, can be stressful at times, but it is a valuable bonding experience for the whole family, and I always enjoy the opportunity to share my love of travel and adventure with my wife and daughters.
I’m sure that I could think of many more people and things to be grateful for over the past year, but these are some of the highlights that immediately come to mind. Finally I’m glad that I’ve had the discipline and drive to keep up this blog site over the years, and I’m grateful for all you readers out there who have made this a worthwhile experience! So, Happy New Year to you all, and I hope that you too have many things to be grateful for as we ring in the year 2020.