Eric's Beijing Diary

You're not going to believe this, but I was up in Wudaoko having breakfast this morning, and I found a cockroach swimming around in my coffee. I made him get out.

Today I made an interesting observation as I was teaching the freshmen in Langfang. I was trying to explain the basic principle of hydraulic systems to them, and I used, as an example, the hoist that is used to lift cars off the ground for service at a service station. None of them had any idea what I was talking about. It's just not part of their experience. Perhaps it's not too much of a problem, because these kids are going to be software engineers, and they definitely do know computers. Later, I was reading an article for them out of the China Daily, and I noticed one student playing with his laptop. I didn't think he would be able to concentrate very well on what he was supposed to be listening to if he was also working on his computer, so I told him to turn it off, and then noticed, to my surprise, that he was reading the same article that I was. He had a wireless internet connection, and had gone to the China Daily website as soon as I began reading so that he could follow along with me.