I remember almost like yesterday, Christmas evening 1995. We were whisked off the train along with our colleagues and rushed to a late banquet in what was then downtown Rizhao, a port city in Shandong Province, China. After a more than nine-hour journey from Jinan, Shandong Province's capital, we had arrived late and the then Vice Mayor was waiting to toast us. That was our introduction to this coastal area, the start of our archaeological settlement pattern survey and collaboration with our colleagues from Shandong University. Now, ten years later, my mind was focused on these memories, rather than on our cab driver as he skillfully navigated the rain-soaked pavements. Swerving, skidding, changing lanes to avoid oncoming trucks, our driver bypassed numerous accidents (and even more puddles) on the new highways that carried us from the airport in Qingdao to the relocated rather Orwellian looking downtown of Rizhao, entirely resituated and built on coastal farmland subsequent to our initiation of this research project.

Ten years later, we already have physically walked over an area of over 800 square kilometers of Chinese countryside, finding hundreds of archaeological sites, including a few that are more than 6,000 years old. But most of these ancient communities whose archaeological residues we have found, recorded, and mapped date between 5,000 and 1,800 years ago, from the Chinese Late Neolithic through the Bronze and Early Iron Ages. We are one of several collaborative teams that have pioneered these regional-scale techniques to describe and interpret settlement pattern changes in China, and now, our project is the longest ongoing Sino-American collaboration in our discipline.

To begin this season, our team is composed of six people, although the cast is supposed to change as we move along. To start, our team includes Anne Underhill, my curatorial colleague at the museum who is the team leader and a China specialist, my wife Linda Nicholas, who is an Adjunct Curator at the museum and who carries the maps in the field, Shandong University Professor, Fang Hui, a rising star in Chinese archaeology who speaks excellent English, and two graduate students from Shandong University, Ms. Wang and Ms. Lu. Over the course of our investigations here, well over a dozen Chinese students have participated in our survey and learned the field procedures.

This year Linda and I began our journey in Chicago, flying United direct to Beijing. After a brief overnight there, it was back to the airport and off to Qingdao. In Chicago, as well as Beijing, the inclement weather was fast approaching on our heels. But the clouds and rain caught us in coastal Shandong where we were driven in steady rains as we rode down the coast to Rizhao, our base and a town about a third to a half million people.

Because of the rains and wet grounds, we did not get out to survey until Friday afternoon, using the morning to tour the new local history exhibit at the Rizhao Museum, where our research project is prominently featured including pictures of Anne, Hui, Linda, and me at work. Despite wet grounds, blustery winds, and a bit of jet lag, we did manage to begin this years' survey after lunch on Friday. We surveyed this first day to the southwest of Yao Wang Cheng, a large site (over three square kilometers) that we mapped in 2003. Although we were walking over and checking low wet fields, we did also find our first site of 2004, a well-buried Western Zhou period (early first millennium BC) settlement nestled near the bank of the Zhu Zi He (Bamboo River) that was exposed in part through contemporary vegetable gardening. The Zhou period settlement is today covered by small plots of cabbages, carrots, and radishes with the former stored for the winter in underground trenches covered by earth. Despite the presence of farmers cultivating and picking the cabbages still in the fields, we were able to collect about 15 potsherds (fragments of ancient vessels) including some large fragments, in two small areas of collection.

Now, as I put the final touches on this dispatch at 6 AM Saturday morning, I am mentally preparing for our first full day in the field. As I walk in the fields and write these messages, I find myself thinking of my mother, who passed away not too long before we traveled here. Naturally, she was a big fan of these missives, yet occasionally, she also kept me grounded discretely pointing out some of the things that I had not managed to explain adequately. Since I can no longer have this invaluable help, I hope that some of you will take it upon yourselves to let me know when I am not clear or too cryptic. Although I will have to depend on my assistants in Chicago to rely your communications, and cannot promise to address every response, I will make every effort to rectify any omissions and obscurities that emanate from this keyboard while we are here.

The word for the day is Qingdao, which is composed of 'qing' (deep blue) and 'dao,' which means island. Qingdao is the home of Tsingtao beer, which is available in the States.

Image Captions: 1. The breakfast buffet at the Xu Ri Hotel in Rizhao. 2. Part of the local history exhibit at the Rizhao Museum.