About

Opening doors into China

Thank you for visiting my blog, The Panda in the Room

 About the blog:  I’ve always liked this picture of my daughter, Ana, holding a red panda in Sichuan.  She looks confident, the Chengdu handler, concerned, and the red panda seems to be enjoying the ride. I’d never heard of a red panda before going to the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding. Often people really don’t notice the elephant in the room because they are so occupied with whatever else they’re doing. We weave through giant buildings, are oblivious to traffic and crowd noise, and cover our noses and mouths with paper masks to filter out pollution and go on with our lives and these have become our ‘elephants’.  It’s not that we aren’t aware, we just don’t have the time or energy to take them on. So it seems with China.

About me: As you may have guessed from my name, I am not Chinese. I didn’t really begin learning about China and Chinese until I was almost 20.  After dipping my toes into learning Mandarin for one year at the University of Montana, I went to Taiwan where I started my serious studies. I eventually  taught Chinese in public schools in the USA for 10 years, sat on the board of the Chinese Language Teachers Association in the US for 3 years, was a founding member and officer of the  Chinese Language Teachers Association of Secondary Schools (now Secondary-Elementary Schools) and then moved to Hong Kong where I continued teaching Mandarin in Hong Kong for seven years.

Final thoughts: I know that what I’ve discovered about China is only the tip of the iceberg. I do, however, feel that there is a crying need for people who grew up outside of a Chinese environment to know more about China. A few years ago, I wrote a long poem called “A Chinese Odyssey” based on my own experiences in China. I’m including a stanza from Chinese Odyssey at the end of each post and will use that stanza to  guide my decision as to what to write in the post.

I welcome your comments, your thoughts, your questions, and your suggestions.  The writing is all my own. If I borrowed something, I have tried to acknowledge the source. The images are either my own or taken from a website like Creative Commons.

Enjoy the journey,

Peter Dratz

P.S. I do hold the rights to my poem, my writings, and my photos, but am almost always open to sharing. Just ask.

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