We went to Xi'an...

IMG_6165, originally uploaded by zawelski.

...for the weekend. We had a conference. We saw the Terracotta warriors. We did other things. We came back.

We taught all day today. I planned on blogging. We spent fifty minutes on Skype with our credit card company trying to resolve a billing issue. This warrior is now going to bed - details later!
(posted by Dave)

Jane here! I’ll add: We flew on an airplane! We stayed in a nice hotele! We shopped! We bargained! I invoked making a Chinese salary, living in China, in order to justify paying close to what I found out was the price Chinese people pay for cute hand-stitched fabrics.

We balanced out all the warrior stuff with our retreat on peace. Here’s a story: A long time ago, there lived a tailor who was also a great sage. The king wanted to present him with a gift, one that hearkened to his tailor craft. He presented the tailor-sage with a pair of diamond-studded scissors. The sage said, “I cannot accept these.” “Why not?” cried the king. The sage replied that a scissors divides. He asked for a needle instead. Why? Because a needle binds fabric together. Yes, it jolts at first when joining the two different elements. But it passes through, unites and is, in fact, often forgotten once the product is finished. But it is the needle that can bring peace by uniting.

Okay, that’s my story, one of the two aspects of hand-stitched fabrics from this past weekend.