An intensive summer course really is intensive: in what seems like no time at all, we've finished four of our eight classes, fourteen hours of instruction! Students have submitted midterm (!) essays, which are, from an initial scan, pretty good. When I've read all of them I'll be in a better position to describe just what a heavy lift it is for Chinese non-humanities students to have to write about not just any religious text but the Book of Job - and in a second language, to boot! Still, our class isn't as intensive as some, which meet 3 times or even 4 times a week (also at 3.5 hours a pop!).I chose the four-week format because I wanted time to explore Beijing between classes (and Shanghai next weekend), and have been doing pretty well, despite heat and rain. Today I went to the vast National Museum on Tiananmen Square and was enchanted all over again by the first stirrings of Chinese civilization. (I knew from my last visit to head for the ancient China floor below, not the revolutionary history floor above.) Three-legged containers go way back, and already early achieve a striking beauty, like the perhaps 3500-year-old bronze 爵 jue wine vessel above. It's from the 二里头文化 Erlitou culture, and was found just outside Luoyang in the Yellow River valley. How nice that that's my destination once the Renmin gig is over, just two weeks hence.
