Month: February 2006

Recently, as I was coming home from an airport run, the taxi driver and I were chatting.  The initial conversation topic was my Chinese ability.  The poor guy was so flabbergasted by my ability to actually talk to him that he could hardly keep the car on the road.  Once he settled down and we’d…

This is something I wrote a year ago and posted on the other site (which will shortly be closed down).  Hope you don’t mind a little recycling. Recently I went to MacDonalds for supper.  A co-worker is travelling this week, so I called his wife to see if she and their 3-year old son would…

It’s just around the corner–another government "campaign" — this one  to ‘civilize’ the residents of Beijing in preparation for the Olympics.  The campaign will be launched next month, and will be coordinated by the Capital Civilization Office.  4.3 million families will receive booklets on manners and ettiquite, and "civilization supervisors" will be deputized to monitor…

 These are two new signs that have gone up on the road that I bike everyday between my apartment and my office.  The bottom one is, of course a stop sign. The Chinese word is ting.  Stop signs are a relatively new thing in Beijing.  In fact, I can only think of this, and one…

This afternoon a friend and I visited one of the ancient Buddhist temples in town.  In front of the temple is a fun park that we stopped at on our way in.  It was a great day to be in a Beijing park—lots of sunshine, and lots of people out enjoying said sunshine.   We took…

 This sign is hanging inside the stall of a women’s toilet at a restaurant here in Beijing.  It reads, “if you need to poop, please go to the second floor.” Presumably there’s a toilet up there!  Actually, it’s an improvement from the sign that used to be there, which said “no pooping allowed.” No, I’m…