Local Fall

• Boating on West Lake

• Picking spring tea in the mountains
In an extracurricular field trip, students might pick and drink the Hangzhou specialty, Dragon Well tea, with Mei Wei at his ancestral home in the Mei Family Village, where domestic tourism has exploded following the completion of a tunnel two years ago that connects this once remote community with the heart of Hangzhou. Farmers here now sell their prized tea for auction to overseas bidders in Shanghai at a price higher than gold, allowing for a level of affluence in the countryside that exceeds that of many urban residents, just one of the affects of the global market economy made possible after the reforms implemented by Deng Xiaoping.

• Early morning liturgy at Fayan Monastery

• Ghost Festival and Vegetarian lunch at Dharma Happiness Monastery
In the fall semester Area Studies course, Religion in China course, students might meet with the Buddhist monk Jikai during the Ghost Festival at Dharma Happiness Monastery at "Upper India" in Hangzhou, when pilgrims from the countryside gather to burn symbolic money and possessions for their deceased ancestors, whether a paper replica of a Rolex watch or the model of a private villa. Here students will learn how a foreign religion like Indian Buddhism, which seems to deny the existence of the soul, became Chinese by appropriating popular local folk traditions, such as ancestor worship, making clear to students that ritual is often more formative than doctrine, just as global symbols of modern affluence are conspicuously incorporated into traditional practices. Afterwards, students might enjoy a vegetarian meal in the monastery with the pilgrims.

• Grotto carvings of Lingyin Monastery

• Daoist fortune telling at Baopu Abbey

• Lunch at Fenghuang Mosque

• Hike to Liuhe Pagoda

• Tomb of Yue Fei

• Japanese War Memorial

• Visit to a state commune

• Participate in a mass wedding

• Practice martial arts in a public park
Students taking the taiji elective will practice Taijiquan several afternoons per week at the Quyuan Fenghe Park, which means Winding Garden of Breeze-blown Lotuses, located on scenic West Lake. Here Master Qu Wanqing will demonstrate how the Daoist theories of Yin-Yang and Five Phases, which students study in the Area Studies courses on Religion in China and in Introduction to Traditional Chinese Medicine, are also applied to this traditional Chinese martial art and longevity exercise. Those students who also take the Area Studies course, Traditional Chinese Culture, will visit the Mount Wu Square in the heart of downtown Hangzhou at the break of day, when the qior vital energy is best, to watch the hundreds of elderly residents who practice taiji here every morning, together with forms of qi gong that appear to require little or no movement at all, and even ballroom dancing, making clear the extent to which these principals continue to play a vital role in the lifestyle for many Chinese today.

• Acupuncture clinic and qi gong demonstration

• Chinese Apothecary
Students taking the Area Studies course, Introduction to Traditional Chinese Medicine, might visit the Qing dynasty Huqingyu Hall in downtown Hangzhou, which is still housed in the original Qing dynasty residence of Hu Xueyan (1823-1885) and is the most famous traditional apothecary in southern China. Here the American traditional Chinese medical practitioner, Dr. Greg Livingston, will introduce students to the two-thousand year history of Chinese herbology and the philosophical principals of medicinal diet, and local Chinese doctors might use pulse diagnoses to prescribe herbs to a patient or a meal cooked by medical experts for the students. The next week Dr. Livingston might take students to the Huqingyu Pharmaceutical Company on the outskirts of town, where factory workers industrially produce OTC Chinese medicine for patients who prefer to use on-line consultation to order their medicine instead, demonstrating how some traditions, while changed by the forces of modernity, are not easily overcome.

• National tea museum

• National silk museum

• Zhejiang Provincial Museum

• Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts

• Collect Spring Water in the mountains
Students might collect spring water high in the hills of Hangzhou above the Dharma Purity Monastery at Madhyadesa. While waiting in line under the bamboo canopy, students might have the opportunity discuss the urgent environmental crises in water quality with the local monks and elderly city residents, some of whom travel up to two hours by bike and carry up to twenty gallons of the precious water home several times per week.

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