Renaming a Chinese person

Miracle!  We received all of our clothing back, delivered to our room, in pristine, hermetically sealed packages, better than new, with all of those previously embarrassing stains completely eradicated.  Here are Sue and Sophie on a little afternoon relaxation before our evening dinner engagement, showing one of those packages.

Meanwhile, Peter was in the other room slamming down some math problems.  We let Jack stay alone in the room this morning and he was productive on his own math assignment.

I took a quick snap of this lady cooking a stir fry on the street.  It looked delicious but we had other dinner plans.  The cook here commented on how I might want to actually buy something rather than just taking pictures.  How selfish!

After crossing the street this guy was selling small apples,or leechi nuts or some such thing. His cart was parked right in the way of anyone who was making a dash onto the sidewalk from one of the crosswalks, ostensibly to make sure the greatest number of people viewed his goods.  The police came by and told him to move on, so after apologies, he moved down the street to the next crosswalk.

We were actually on our way to dinner with a new friend we invited out, called Shiangzi (pronounced sheeangzzhuh).  He had seen the boys on campus and he was really anxious to practice his English so he befriended them. 

Shiangzi is 23 and getting his Master's degree in communications. His mother and father are poor cattle farmers and he has been in the big city for about 3 weeks.  We are the first foreigners he has ever spoken to.  He took the boys to the field to play soccer and practice his English and we took him out to dinner to learn more about him.

OK here's the hilarious part:  I asked him if Shiangzi was his family name or his given name and he said no, it was a name he had picked as his ENGLISH NAME!  After we got done laughing, we told him that this perhaps wasn't the best choice for an English sounding name.  Most Chinese pick English names like George or Sally, but this nice young man picked Shiangzi.  Jack decided that wouldn't do, and said, "I can't remember your name,so I'm going to call you John."  So Shiangzi told us he would be John from now on... and that's how you rename a Chinese person!