Interesting Reaction

I was at the university yesterday and ended up in a chance encounter with a Chinese colleague in which the topics of learning Chinese and traveling to China came up. I admitted to him that I strongly want to visit China and that next April would probably be one of my best chances for a while unless I get into a different line of work entirely because I always have to teach without the opportunity to take a couple or three weeks off in April. He asked, of course, what university I wanted to travel to in which city in China with the recommendation that if I had a sufficient *mathematical* reason, I could probably get leave from the department to do it. I told him I wanted to go to Beijing, but that there was no university I intended to visit and no mathematical collaboration would be on the agenda. That made him ask what would make me want to go to China, then.

I told him that I train in baguazhang, and his reaction was surprising. He stopped, almost about to say something but cutting himself off, and stood there for a moment. Then he said, "baguazhang?!" and wrote the three Chinese characters for it on the chalkboard next to us. I nodded, indicating that was exactly what I had meant, and he paused again before adding two exclamation points (!!) after his characters and saying, "Ohh... that's good martial arts." Though not exactly the same, the flavor of the exchange was similar to how I think I would probably have reacted to find out that some dude I was chatting with happened to play previously in the NFL, being that I don't really give a crap about football but can really appreciate what that means. I was pretty surprised to see his reaction.

Incidentally, I just found out from work that my 2009 China hopes are not to come to fruition. I've been scheduled, with an approved teaching overload, to teach this coming spring as "my skills and experience shouldn't be wasted." Ah, well, at least I'm appreciated. In any case, there won't be taking two or more weeks off this spring.