Gratianus

I came home to my apartment just before 2 a.m. It is nice to be back after a wonderful trip. Tuesday, I slept late and then went in to my office. I had a very good meeting with my second teaching assistant. Then we had a Master's Tea with Gu Xiaocheng, who is a retired professor at Peking University. She became a student at the university in 1948, when the Guomintang still held Beijing but lived earlier in Japanese-occupied Tianjin. So she has lived through some of the most interesting events in modern Chinese history: Japanese occupation, civil war, the Communist takeover, the Cultural Revolution, and the Opening of China to the West. She had many interesting stories to tell, and she told them in near-perfect English and with great charisma.

So here I am in my office just before the talk.




And here is the building in which our offices are.