Duhua

I'm going to have to post some new pictures soon, but 'till then, here's a quick account of my latest adventure.
Last week I went to Duhua with several other staff members to do a special Christmas English outreach at a couple of rural schools. Our first stop was a middle school. About 3/4 of the students live at the school, the remaining 1/4 are close enough to home to travel back and forth each day. It was charming, in a way, but I'll never complain about the condition of a US school again. Facilities aside, it was a lovely experience. The students were eager and curious, the staff wonderful hosts, and teaching for the first time was a blast! We even got to put on a Christmas skit at a English club party in the evening for a thousand plus people. Definitely the largest audience I've ever been in front of!
After a huge meal, at the same place we had another huge meal for lunch, we crashed in our very comfortable hotel rooms.
The next day we got to repeat our classes of a lower level at an elementary school. Then lunch, followed by a museum tour.
Dehua is an ancient porcelain making center, famous for it's pure white bias relief ware- blanc de chine- to be precise. The museum is fairly small, but the 45 minutes we had to spend was far too short a time to take in thousands of years of dynasties, styles, and patterns.
Next, it was off to a factory, where we got to see some of the wares in production and watch the process of pouring slip into molds, letting it dry a bit, pouring out the center, and then finally removing the molds, trimming the seams, and drying it for firing. In another room we got to watch transfers being put on transfer ware.
After that, we went shopping. I'm not an expert, but I think I got some nice pieces, and for great prices. My favorite was a tea set the looked almost exactly like one I saw in the museum.
Finally, we headed home. The Chinese countryside is lovely. There isn't an inch of wasted space to be seen- the hills grow bamboo and trees, the lowlands are dotted with houses, and every inch of exposed dirt is planted with some kind of food crop. In many places, impossibly steep mountainsides are even filled with terraces.
Many of the old courtyard style houses are still there. I found those really intriguing. The back is a four room house that is about like a southern dogtrot, then wings are added to the sides. If the house is really fixed up, a gatehouse is added across the front, and possibly any number sheds and appendages on the outside walls. I couldn't get many good pictures from the bus, but I think I've got a couple.
The older buildings look so nice in the landscape. They are simple, but gracefully proportioned. Some are only made of mud, sheltered by deep eaves, so some combination of stone and brick, but they are so lovely.
++ After rereading this post, I can only home I get some Chinese soon- I'm rapidly losing English! Sorry folks.