The college is starting to come alive again as students arrive back from their Autumn Festival holidays – mostly spent with families. The restaurants are beginning to fill up and the street food stalls are reappearing.
I’m still doing tai chi every morning, and during the break, it’s been good to spend more time practicing with the locals in the morning without the need to worry about preparing for the day’s classes.
This morning I played singles tennis for 2 hours with a student, Xiaowei Ma. He is a programmer who is now a junior manager in a software company and travels to other cities in China with the marketing manager. He’s a native of Suzhou, now living in Quzhou because as he says, “the air is better”.
Very few students play tennis, because basketball and volleyball are far more popular. We were introduced through the P.E. staff and were about evenly matched so the games were enjoyable.
The courts however are hard, smooth cement, and with a fine layer of dust it means that they can be very slippery, especially off the most used sections.
I’m still doing tai chi every morning, and during the break, it’s been good to spend more time practicing with the locals in the morning without the need to worry about preparing for the day’s classes.
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| Me with Xiaowei Ma on the tennis Courts |
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| The college tennis courts |
The courts however are hard, smooth cement, and with a fine layer of dust it means that they can be very slippery, especially off the most used sections.
I’m being a bit cautious with running, as I’d hate to fall and break something – especially with my record on holidays. Cement is very unforgiving.
