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It’s Like Sipping from a Fire Hose

A Webinar for Learning about China


As I noted previously, my first teaching stint in China was in the city of Zhengzhou. My teammates and I were assigned to a small provincial teachers’ college on Weiwu Road. Next door to the college was a fire station. Every few months or so, the firefighters would haul out their trucks for a good cleaning, hooking up the hose to the hydrant, pointing it into the cab, and then blasting away! It seemed like an odd way to clean a truck, but at the same time, brilliant.

One time I was ready with my camera. This has become one of my all-time favorite pictures from my 20+ years in China.

It was also the inspiration for the title of a webinar that I will present on August 26: Learning about China: Sipping from a Fire Hose.

China is complicated. It is both a 5000-year-old civilization and a 72-year-old nation. It has a free-wheeling capitalist economy presided over by a Communist party. Traditions run deep and change happens at a dizzying pace. Where do you go to make sense of it all?

In this webinar, we will explore ways to learn about China, from language and culture to history and contemporary society. What books to read? What online resources to dip into? The goal is not to point you to facts and figures, but to provide tools that will set you on a path of life-long learning.

To accommodate people in various time zones, we will do the presentation twice:

Session 1: Thursday, August 26: 1PM US Central Daylight Time (UTC 6:00PM)

Session 2: Thursday, August 26: 7PM US Central Daylight Time (Friday, August 27, UTC 12:00AM)

For more information, go to: Learning about China: Sipping from a Fire Hose.

Grab your rain gear and plan to join us!

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Image credit: Joann Pittman.
Joann Pittman

Joann Pittman

Joann Pittman is Vice President of Partnership and China Engagement and editor of ZGBriefs. Prior to joining ChinaSource, Joann spent 28 years working in China, as an English teacher, language student, program director, and cross-cultural trainer for organizations and businesses engaged in China. She has also taught Chinese at the University …View Full Bio


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