Kaiping, Guangdong
Sunday, 20 March 2005

    On Sunday, March 20, 2005, five or us from the Guangzhou Institute of Geochemistry visited some middle-school QQ friends of mine in Kaiping. We had a wonderful time meeting them!
    I had first been contacted on QQ last fall by Maple Leaf (Zhou Yanhua), who told me she was a student of English in Kaping. I had never heard of Kaiping, and eventually found that it lies 140–150 km SW of Guangzhou. We chatted a few times, and then another person appeared, Lovely Girl (Yu Dantong), who was the seatmate of Maple Leaf in their English class. In short order I was writing to five students from that class! (The others were Joanne and Tingting, and were later joined by Susan.) Lest you wonder why they were all girls, it turns out that there was only one boy in the whole class!
    I wanted to meet them during my four-week visit to Guangzhou, and the institute graciously provided a car and driver. We were joined by Ni Xiaohong, the English teacher at Zhongshan University who spent last fall with me in Rhode Island (and who made the detailed arrangements for the visit), and two students from the institute, Song Renfang and Ma Huimin. We met Maple Leaf, Lovely Girl, and Joanne at the bus station in Kaiping. A fourth student, Katy, soon showed up. The nine of us went to lunch at a Chinese/Western coffee shop, toured their school (which has many historic buildings), and then had personalized coffee at the coffee shop where Yu Dantong now works. Everything was delicious!
    I brought my camera, and took lots of pictures. I hope you enjoy them!

Kaiping 1
Kaiping 2
Kaiping 3
Kaiping 4
Kaiping 5
Kaiping 6
Kaiping 7
Kaiping 8
Kaiping 9
Kaiping 10
Kaiping 11
Kaiping 12

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