Kong Hay Fat Choy - or - Sin Knee En Quai Le - or = Happy Chinese New Year. It is the Year of the Dog, which is a good year for prosperity so they say.

We are selling our house in Boone. Hope it will sell quickly as did my brother Ron's.

January 21st was my last class until Feb 16th. We are in Hong Kong now visiting Sunshine's parents. Adventist writer Kay Rizzo has written a book on the life of Sunshine that will be in the bookstores this April. It is entitled "Red Star Rising". She is also working on producing some radio programs for the Adventist World Radio station on Guam for broadcast into China

Autumn is busy in post-kindergarten, pre-primary school and is still working on playing the violin with her mother. I usually pick her up after school at about 4:30. We then go up to the rec hall to play some ping-pong or badminton. I usually hang around to play some ping-pong with some of the adult students or school staff members. It helps in establishing a relationship with the students so if I enter topics of conversation which the government feel it best that we foreigners avoid, then friendship kicks in to protect me. I take advantage of holidays like Christmas and Easter to discuss religion with the students. We escorted a group of about 70 students to the Christmas service here at the Guangzhou church.

The smog here in Guangzhou (Canton) is a killer as it is often as thick as soup. I cannot wait to leave this place for hopefully some clean air further south in a less densely populated area. Perhaps we will go to Hainan Island, Kunming (the four seasons of spring city) or even to Shangrila (the name of a real town here in southern China north of Thailand). I have not ruled out going back to Vietnam to undo some of the damage the war caused.

The Cantonese food that is served in America is nothing like the Cantonese food served here in Canton. Everything here tastes the same as there is almost nothing that does not have soysauce, MSG, salt and tons of oil in it. Luckily I do not eat any meat here. I am tired of their bankquets where almost everyone gets smashed. I usually end up eating a plate of broccoli or potatoes soaked in a cup of oil. Yuck! I never see any of the standard Cantonese dishes found in American Chinese restaurants; especially things like sweet and sour anything.

This school here is not the best in anywhere. Most students are not interested in learning anything. One of my students was given 4 weeks of leave from my class so he could go back to his hometown to play on one of 40 teams in a basketball tourney. He only passed one exam out of five and that was with a score of 64. I had to pass him anyway. The same is true of all the students. The school's president recently jumped off the 10-story classroom building after only being here for six months. Seemed like a very pleasant guy. Probably couldn't get anyone here to change. No one actually wants to do anything to force the students to study, mainly because they themselves don't want to have to put forth any effort. They just want to play the game and slide into retirement.

I went with the adult trainee students to Zhongshan (pron - Jong shan) to visit Sun Yatsen's boyhood home. Most of the time he was in Hawaii studying medicine. I did not know that at the military school he set up outside Guangzhou, both Zhou Enlai and Chiang Kai Shek were teachers and administrators there. In fact, the Communist Party and the Kuomingtang were cooperating at the time. After Sun's death in 1926 at the age of about 63, things started falling apart between the two factions.

Wish everyone could come and visit us here. Bring a gas mask!

H5N1 bird flu doesn't seem to have much of an impact with anyone here yet. I think China has only reported about 8 cases with 5 deaths so far. That could change rapidly. The government is trying to vaccinate the 14 billion chickens in China. How would you like to have that job? The person in charge will probaly be executed if he misses one of them.

There were over 74,000 protests in China's countryside in 2004. Almost all of them were in the countryside where an estimated 900 million poor farmers live. The protests are usually about the government taking land away from the farmers and not compensating them. Many of the county governments have corrupt leaders who will hire thugs (maybe some of Monty's friends) to beat up or even kill the farmers. In a recent incident, 10,000 police and paratroopers descended on a village of only 5,000 farmers. One five-year-old girl was killed. The officials claim that the girl suffered from a heart attack. Beijing seems to pay lip service in many of the cases of corruption. The problem is so big here. Actually, over 170,000 officials were disciplined just last year.

We all went to Honolulu for an evangelism series in the Chinese church during the summer. Sunshine went with an evangelism team to the Chinese churches in Melbourne and Sydney, Australia and then to Auckland, New Zealand. Autumn joined her for another trip to Manado, Indonesia. All the pastors deemed all the trips to be successful.

We alternate between the Adventist group meeting at the Chinese government's Three Self Movement church and an unauthorized house church on Sabbaths.

Must go. Attached are some photos.

Roger and Sunshine Stahl