Archives for March 2006

I havn’t posted much this past week because my cousin and her husband have been visiting from the States.  Tuesday and Wednesday we did the whirlwind tour of Beijing.  Wednesday night we took the overnight train to Xi’an to see the Terra-cotta Warriors.  Today they flew on to Chongqing to cruise the Yangtze River, and […]

This is from the "only in China" file:  a Chopsticks Tax.   Reports the Los Angeles Times: "Is China at a fork in the road? Beijing this week slapped a 5 percent tax on disposable chopsticks, dealing what many Chinese say was a powerful gut punch. In cafes here Thursday, people dropped their chopsticks and had […]

Well, not exactly.  The truth is, my bike has been stolen.  Right from the supposedly secure storage area in the basement of the 20 story apartment tower that I live in, even though the basement is also home to the squadron of security guards that are ever-present!  But there’s a little socio-linguistic double-talk that takes […]

In one of his speeches to the National People’s Congress this week, China’s president set forth a new set of 8 "Do’s and Don’ts" that he wants Chinese people to live by.  Here they are: Love, do not harm the motherland. Serve, don’t disserve the people. Uphold science; don’t be ignorant and unenlightened. Work hard; […]

For the past two weeks, the National People’s Congress (NPC) has been in session in Beijing.  This body is China’s top parliamentary body made up of delegates from all the provinces, municipalities and special adminstrative regions.  Alongside the Congress meeting, another group meets, called the China People’s Political Consutative Congress.  This group is made up […]

No, this is not about the proliferation of small dogs in China.  This yellow snow is falling from the sky. Reuters has an article today about yellow snow that fell on Korea Monday: South Koreans were treated to a rare weather phenomenon on Monday when yellow snow fell in the capital and elsewhere across the […]