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JISHOU, HUNAN — I’m old enough to remember when vampires were scary, the kind of guys no girl would want to hang out with — unless they really wanted to be both ravished and undead.
Now teenage girls swoon over the impossibly sensitive and chaste modern-day vampire guys, who swear off human blood and suck only animal blood. I am surprised PETA doesn’t get on this flagrant abuse of helpless animals, but the animal control folks are tickled pink, I bet.
 Bela Lugosi as Dracula The vampires I grew up with (not literally, mind you) were all versions of the ghoulish Count Dracula from the novel by Bram Stoker — not very pleasant at all.
They couldn’t stand sunlight, which could kill them. So they only moved about by night. None of this new-age sparkly effects we see nowadays.
They without exception attacked only humans for their blood. Any sex would do, but Dracula in the movies seemed to have a taste for the ladies. And of course the victims, once bitten, would also become vampires. (The sexual connotations here are pretty obvious, but alas lost in today’s abstinence-only vampire ethos. How bloody dull.)
They were technically undead, neither alive nor dead, but somewhere in between. Of course, they were immortal. And creepy. Unlike bon vivant immortals like The Highlander or dashing and glib, yet strangely shy Edward, vampires just suck the life out of a party. If they had any social skills at all while alive, centuries of walking around at night biting people in the neck pretty much burned those skills out.
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JISHOU, HUNAN — While folks in the West were celebrating Valentine’s Day, the big day here was the beginning of the New Year, and the Spring Festival. I arrived in Jishou on the 12th, so I could spend New Year’s Eve and Day with one of my friend’s family.
Spring Festival is rich in traditions. One of my freshmen, Wu Chengjun (Smile), is from the countryside of Huayuan County west of Jishou.  Smile Wu On her own, she has been blogging in English in her QQ space about the Festival. They were so interesting and honest, that I asked her if I could share them with my friends in the States. She said I could.
I’ve made corrections to Smile’s punctuation and some of her grammar, but everything else is her work. I hope you enjoy reading her diary entries.
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11/2 — the Year of the Ox
The day after tomorrow is the Spring Festival. My folks bought many things today, such as meat, vegetables, fruit, hot food, new clothes, and sweet wine, which you can drink with a kind of bread made of rice. The fruits are not only apples and pears, but … I don’t know its name in English. It looks just like “1.” It tastes sweet. In Chinese it is: zha gan. Though when we talk about fruits, we may remember bananas, we don’t buy it during Spring Festival,I don’t know the reason. Maybe it’s dear. Maybe the children dont like the softness (because every parents think first from their children — I just personally think that). Of course, you can find many red pictures with a good word on them, such as fu (福). The picture means good luck ^_^！
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