The Mountain is Far Off

We had a Saturday language session today. As I've said, the there are 20 of us here, but the language classes are in groups of four. So you get to know your fellow three group mates pretty well. Thankfully, we all get along and seem to enjoy each other, which makes the four hours pass a little more quickly (if that's possible). The attached is a picture of my fellow language classmates with our teacher, who we call Zou Laoshi (Teacher Zou). We have all been given Chinese names, which we will carry with us throughout our time in China. The way they go about forming it is to take something akin to your last name as your Chinese family name, and then they just give you something for the equivalent of your first name. I should also say that in China one is always introduced by one's family name first. It is a real sign, I think, of the importance of the family in China, that you are a member of a family first and an individual second. Anyway, since there is nothing close to Vernezze in Chinese--there is not even a letter 'V'--they gave me as my last name "WU." "W" is about as close as Chinese comes to a "V." As for the first name, well it's "Yuan Shan," which they tell me means "far off mountain" or "the mountain is far off." There are a couple of ways you could interpret this, I gather. Either that you have ambitious goals, having set your sites on a mountain, and that you have a long way to go, because the mountain is far off. Probably somethingof both of these apply.