I begin with Chinese Art on Thursday. Then an interlude on Fiction Writing and finally, my favorite, Japanese Art. I’m really very interested in the Chinese art, but I wish the instructor was a little more focused. She talked about the first Chinese emperor’s terra cotta army at Xian. I’ve been there. It’s a fascinating place. In between fiction writing and Japanese art I went to the library and found a book about the soldiers so I could fill in information the instructor did not have time to give us. The best part about these classes is that they raise questions I never thought to ask, or never fully formulated. When I saw those soldiers I knew they had been created by some kind of a manufacturing process, but I never thought it through. The instructor raised the questions and never quite answered them. But now I know.

Some day I’d like to go back to China. I was there for only 2 weeks. I’m sure I could spend 2 years and never see or understand it all.