Final Day

The last day was spent doing some touring in the area of Guiyang with two college students who were some of our interpreters during the last three days.  They are international relations majors and will be studying in England next year.  It was fun to learn a bit about their lives.  They are both female and single children of parents who both work. 

Our first stop was a park along a small river.

After walking for about an hour, we had lunch at a local restaurant with “country food”.  It was a nice change from the more formal meals.

We then went to a center for the study of Confucianism.  It was built with government money,  and will be a place to teach children the skills promoted by Confucius, writing, manners, music.

Entrance to the center with our two students

At the end we saw a video that gave a brief history and then ended by saying how China wanted to be a world leader in promoting the principles of Confucianism.  These include respect for nature and fellow humans.  Of course this is somewhat contradicted by their current suppression of minority groups.  It has also been very frustrating how blocked the Internet is.  One cannot Google anything. I was out of reading material and wanted to get a book from Amazon.  Could not do that.  Have not had access to my New York Times the entire trip.