The Long Goodbye

It would appear that the goodbye has started; tonight there was a pre-holiday dinner for the staff at the university and it was all very pleasant even to the point where I was left thinking that I might have been a wee bit hasty in my decision to leave. However, that is to be expected because despite the inadequacies of both China and the university where I work, I am tempted to think that they are both getting something right and so much so that there might indeed be a future for both of them. ..... and for me? There will be a late summer at Brunel in London, where my being in society will be accessed, this will be followed by an early autumn in Fuerstenfeldbruck and then probably a two to four hour day, earning good money, extremely easily, translating boring texts from German into English; sitting down at the Amper, coming up for air in the Tuerkenhof, living 'la dolce vita' until, once again, that ardent thirst for distant scenes, that "Wanderlust", arrives and ......
Whatever, tonight I said goodnight to my colleagues and I will miss a couple of them, I will miss the students, and all in all it has been a worthwhile year. However, for me the goodbye to China will now start with my third trip around some part of this rather big country. After the Beijing-Lhasa-Xi'an and the Sanya-Guangzhou-Guillin trip it is now down the Yangzte from Yichang to Chongqing. Consequently, my blog over the next couple of weeks will look more like a traveller's diary. The first instalment is tomorrow.