A couple of weeks ago, my favorite taxi driver, Mr. Z was taking me to the Beijing airport to catch a flight to Bangkok. As we were on the airport expressway, nearing the terminal building, the traffic slowed significantly as we approached a construction site. Mr. Z. wondered aloud if we’d see my “lao pengyou […]
Where Everybody Knows Your Name
I’m writing this from the beautiful Bangtao Beach on Thailand’s island of Phuket. 10 years ago, I and some friends found a wonderful little family-run "bungalow" hotel right on the island’s longest and most undeveloped beaches. I came here 6 years in a row , but this is my first time here since 2002. One […]
No Socks!
My older sister (that would be jiejie in Chinese) and I have a running verbal battle going about socks. She loves them. I loathe them. She changes her socks at least twice a day, and I always (jokingly, of course) tell her that I’m happy changing them twice a week! I’M KIDDING, JAN!!! My feet […]
Old Blurry Eyes
This afternoon, as I was working in my office, an American colleague, who’s new to Beijing, came in an asked me if I knew where he could buy a pair of reading glasses. I told him that there were lots of eyeglasses stores in the area and that I supposed any of them would sell […]
The “Smile Wristlets”
There are now only 582 days until the opening ceremonies of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. How do I know? Well, there are countdown clocks all over town, and on most local news outlet websites, so it’s really kind of hard not to know, unless one intentionallly averts one’s gaze, which one is sometimes tempted to […]
The Water Walla
In a previous post (Bingzi Walla ) I wrote about the meaning of the word "walla." In Urdu (the language of Pakistan, where I was born and raised), it means a man or person who does something like a trade. There was the fruit walla, the vegetable walla, the fish walla, and so on. Each […]
