Harvey Teres, professor of English in Syracuse University's College of Arts and Sciences, is blogging from Nankai University in Tianjin, China, a city of 15 million that few Americans have ever heard of. He received a 2013 Fulbright U.S. Scholar grant to imbue Chinese students with a knowledge of, and passion for, American literature and culture.

He is teaching two courses, "Twentieth-Century American Fiction" and "Introduction to Literary Theory" (grad), in the English Department of the College of Foreign Languages. He is accompanied by his wife Xueyi Chen, who hails from Chengdu, China, and their 10-year-old daughter Julianne, who will enroll in a local Chinese primary school to turn her adequate Mandarin into fluent Mandarin. This is Teres' second Fulbright in China and third visit. Although his Mandarin, according to his wife, is pitiful, he knows a little something about Chinese culture. His blog posts will chronicle his experiences.