Tuesday 22 November 2011

7:00 AM – I have breakfast in the dining hall:

  • looks like scalloped potatoes but is glutinous rice with bean sprouts and slivers of green pepper
  • congee with small pasta? balls
  • steamed bread with red and green peppers and green onions – a little hot/spicy but good
  • mystery pickles

8:30 AM – In class I make a book of seal impressions (yinpu). Wang Gongyi comes by to chat with Mo and afterwards we go to my room to look at books and wait for Eva to join us for lunch.

1:00 PM – I have lunch with Wang Gongyi and Eva at a restaurant across the street from the college, where I’m stopped from taking photos of the menu. I offer to pay for everything and Wang Gongyi overrides Eva’s objections ($53.12):

  • beef with pepper, red pepper, onion, and coriander
  • hot pot with vegetables and tofu
  • shrimp with gingko nuts
  • salad rolls with green onion?
  • durian pastry, which is very good
  • green pastry

After lunch Wang Gongyi and I walk to the art market to buy some paper; she wants paper for her class and I want some for personal use when I get home. I take her to a shop I had been to before and it turns out she knows the owner. They sit and chat while I look around the shop. I ask her about buying some paper as souvenirs for my classmates in Portland and she recommends red paper, which is hard to come by in Oregon. I pay $308.8 for several rolls of paper, a blank book for seal impressions, and two ink sticks which the owner assures us are good quality. We pay the owner of the shop $95.14 to cover postage since he will ship it for us. At another art shop I buy a small slate inkstone which the owners say is an antique ($44). Wang Gongyi is not so sure it’s an antique but approves the purchase anyway. The total so far for supplies is $352.80 (excluding postage). Then we walk to Hefang Street where I buy souvenirs with her help:

  • fan shop for a fancy black fan for me and a plum design for my wife ($31.07)
  • candy shop for two boxes of a Hangzhou specialty ($2.53)
  • shoe store for a pair of traditional shoes for me to wear while giving tours at the Portland Chinese garden ($6.02)

ATM for more money.

In the evening I go to the art bookstore near college. While I’m looking around Wang Gongyi comes in to sit and chat with the owner at his desk in the corner. I find a few books and show them to Wang Gongyi for her approval and am surprised to find that the shop owner doesn’t know that the famous Qing artist Deng Shiru did seals. I buy five books on seals and a book on seal script calligraphy ($83.40), all with her approval. One of the books she told me not to get I intend tol come back for another day when she’s not there.

I have dinner again at Mingtown and use their wifi ($7.45)

  • pumpkin soup with bread
  • Nepal milk tea

On the way back I stop at the French bakery ($3.64), then return to the classroom to practice until late.

It’s been a partly cloudy day with a temperature of 61 degrees F.