One of the nice aspects of living here in Jia Ding has been the easy access to a wonderful Tai Ji Chuan instructor!  I will miss "teaching" practice as I travel through China, Canada and the U.S. during the next couple of months!  I will need to practice everyday for the next few days to make sure and cement as much of the forms into my routine as possible so that I may maintain a routine.

With my schedule set for the Fall, I am just waiting for my work visa from the government for next year to travel.  Which is not too disconcerting as I have a paper to review for the Handbook of Technology Management and two journal abstracts to write.  I also need to move my stuff out of the hotel and get ready for trekking. 

OH and taxes to finish!!!  I figured out that I still will not have 330 days outside of the U.S. as I will be up in Wisconsin for a couple of weeks, Iowa and then Colorado for at least a week and I already have 3 weeks of skiing!  Oh, well - I must pay U.S. taxes on the income in China - IN ADDITION to the taxes I paid in China!

On a totally different topic:  The Shanghai stock market took the largest one day dive in a year (their words), here is the picture from Xinhua hua (China Press News):

                             


Again notice the green - on the Chinese stock market, that means a decrease.  When it is ALL GREEN, like above ... "The benchmark Shanghai Composite Index dived 7.73 percent to end at 3,072.33 points." 

Why?  Because in an effort to slow down money supply growth and therefore inflation, the PBOC (Central Bank of China) increased the amount of cash a bank must hold on reserve.  The required reserve ratio was increased to 17.5%!  "The reserve-requirement ratio would be raised by 0.5 percentage point on June 15, and another 0.5 percentage point on June 25, which would bring the ratio to a record high of 17.5 percent."  At least they give a little bit of notice, eh?!