'State of the Nation' report

There are no photos right now for this report because I find it a tiny bit awkward mixing my teaching with snapping photos of people.
At present I'm on a roll - teaching every day since the start of the month.  So my current life is all about people.  Most of the teaching is in small groups, one to three students at a time and never more than three classes in a day.  It seems as if its not much, but there is often an hour of travel out and back.  I ride the subway and the buses or sometimes i take a taxi.  It feels as if I'm helping my students.  Maybe I help them a lot.  One reason for this is that I have so much experience to help me understand their needs.  The second reason is that helping students is my prime motivation (as opposed to building a career, making money or wanting them to like me).  The third reason is that there isn't anyone else around who can do what I do.  Other foreigners are mostly not teachers, or they have little training or experience, or they are just way too busy.  Anyway there are not many and there are none who are my age.
What does all this amount to?  I have to face the fact that I'm rather popular.  It's a strange feeling because I really like it and feel secretly a little guilty about liking it.  One of my goals was to live my life in such a way as to be less selfish and do things that are useful to others.  Now that my plan is succeeding so well there is a new challenge.  If I like it that people do actuallylike me then I am in danger of slipping back into a selfish existence.  I get personal benefit.  Not a problem, or is it?
Many of the people I teach are attractive young women.  Many of them are single.  Today my 15 year old student interrupted the lesson by looking at me and saying, "You have such beautiful blue eyes."  Seriously!  I now she is mostly just amusing herself by distracting from the lesson, but the point is I'm very vulnerable to this kind of approach, not from 15 year olds but adults are another matter.  Some of the 30 year olds do a more sophisticated version of the same thing and I totally fall for it.  Try talking to someone 1-1 about their speech for half an hour.  You are looking at the other person.  The other person looks very nice and is very friendly.  As you are looking at them you're not thinking about yourself so you tend to forget details about yourself (like for example that you are 65)  The other person is looking at you so she is not confused in the same way.  The problem is compounded by the fact that Chinese people do not box each other according to age groups the way western people do.  Of course I frequently find myself entertaining inappropriate thoughts.  Will this lead to trouble?  There are two people inside me saying two different things:
1)  Go ahead and have a relationship with a beautiful girl.  No matter she is younger than my kids.  She's an adult and is quite capable of making her own choices and taking responsibility for them.
2)  You're way too old for this.  There are a number of reasons to keep my relationships on a surface level.  They (the women) are interested in Marriage and babies (mostly).  Probably I couldn't keep up physically with a 30 year old  anyway.  Chinese culture is very different and I never really know what is going on.  Relationships with women have created a lot of trouble for me, so why should this not follow the pattern.  I'll just end up getting hurt.
So all of that is obviously unresolved.  One good thing is I have uncovered one of my deep patterns - I long to jump into the romance. It works best if the person I want is somewhat mysterious and not available.  I get fixated and seek validation.  Its a deep seated well of insecurity to constantly seek approval from someone who is not giving it.  In such a situation my behaviour becomes increasingly irrational and needy.  I remember doing this when I was 18 - projecting this romantic drama of unrequited love onto someone who has no way to deal with it.  I can rationalize the process, but its still immensely powerful.  I have done it many times in the past, and the results have never been good.  On the positive side, I have also had some wonderful real relationships.  However, the pattern I described above is always waiting to strike and it tends to imbue the real relationships with the sense that something is missing.
Unfinished business.  I guess I'm not ready to be a monk.  A major principle to keep in mind is like the Hippocratic oath, "Do no harm."