May 25th, visit to garden.

Communist Party sponsors a relaxing visit to the botanical garden for faculty.

On May 25th, which was the second day of the track meet, and a day on which classes were cancelled, some of the faculty of the School of Western Studies came together to enjoy a day of fellowship and relaxation in the Harbin Botanical Gardens, followed by a banquet at a restaurant on campus. The fun day out was sponsored by the Communist Party, so in some sense this was very much like the sort of “company picnic” we might have in the United States, or for unionized workers, this was like a union-sponsored recreational day. As this wasn’t a weekend and there wasn’t any discount for student admissions, the Botanical Gardens had only a tiny fraction of the visitors we saw a week ago when we visited on the first day of the Tulip Festival.

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	We assembled outside the gate and waited for the faculty to arrive. Zhou Ping, Shen Min, and Xiu Li are in the middle of this photograph.	The perilous bridge wasn’t so crowded today, and one of our faculty crossed it, risking his comfort as a fall into the water was a real possibility.	The leaves on the trees came out in the last week of April and the first couple weeks of May, so by this time just about every tree was covered in fresh new leaves.


	This couple had just been married two weeks earlier.	Shen Min with a colleague.	A rose garden was closed to visitors, but we could see it from nearby.


	These tulips were a later blooming species, and looked great, but many of the tulips we had admired just one week ago were already faded, as the weather had been quite hot all week.	Xiuli and Jessica posed together in a Dutch wooden shoe.	In the Dutch section of the garden a variety of windmills stand to give the place an exotic setting.


	Tulips.	There were several groups of students from elementary and middle schools visiting the gardens, and it was a pleasure to see the flowers and young people together in the garden.	A group photograph including eight teachers from the School of Western Studies.


	More tulips.	Wenpei arrives to join us. Xiuli, Zhou Ping, and Shen Min stand together.	Xiuli and Chuanmin arrive. Hu Jing-Tao, the leading figure in the Beijing-based national government, was visiting Harbin, and the streets were blocked to facilitate his speedy and safe passage to his destination, but this blocked traffic delayed Wenpei and Chuanmin from arriving in the gardens until we had already been there for quite a long while.


	A whole class of small children posing in a giant Dutch wooden shoe. The cuteness factor is off the scale here.	The jumble of brightly-colored gewgaws and pinwheels caught my attention. Notice the whimsical mushroom waste can in the back.	A sudden spurt of the fountain around this double joy happiness sign almost caught the grandmother and the little child, but they avoided becoming soaked.


	The snack stands in the Harbin Botanical Garden (or at least this one) sell hard liquor along with the teas and juices.	Some young people were roller-blading through the park.	A very impressive animated Chinese dinosaur in the dinosaur park.


	I think this visitor wants to brush the teeth of this dinosaur.	The kids with roller blades were practicing stunts and fancy foot work. I admired the floral bicyclists in the background.	Evan and Jessica at the banquet that followed our time in the park. We spent a long and happy two hours in the restaurant (from 1:00 to 3:00).


	Shen Min and Chuanmin.	There was enough food to feed three times more people than we had.	Later in the afternoon after I had rested, I went out for a walk and admired the late afternoon sun with storm clouds in the east. And there were some photogenic children running around.


	The happy couple stroll across the lawn.	Fountains in front of the library.	A group of long-distance runners circle the track.


	After watching these economics students playing soccer for a while, I joined in, and played for about half an hour with them.	On the way back from the stadium and my little soccer game, I met these two students. He is an agriculture student, and she studies French. I brought them to my partment to practice my Chinese and show them photographs of the farm in Oregon.	Professor Zhu on the left is the chair of the English Department. Here she is walking with Wenpei and Xiuli in the botanical gardens.


	I attempted to climb this climbing wall. I found my fingers and hands too weak and my weight too much, so I fell off at about this point.	One last look at the tulips.	A magnificant late afternoon view of the post-modern Stalinist gothic main building by the stadium.

I had another facinating and enjoyable day with my friends on the faculty of the School of Western Studies. I met some students (the soccer players and the young couple I met in the park on my way back to my apartment). Unfortunately, I was feeling too tired in the mid-afternoon when returning from the late lunch to have a Chinese class, but I did practice with my flash cards and increased my vocabulary by about twenty words.

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