My mom turned 80 on Sunday, and she was here in Beijing to celebrate. She and a bunch of other people. In honor of this special occasion, I decided to host a week-long “Birthday/Vision Tour” for any family and friends willing to make the trek across the ocean. 11 showed up! We spent 8 days […]
Hometown
Yesterday I had one of those conversations that reminded me of how very differently Chinese and Americans think about some of the fundamentals of life, in this case hometowns. I was chatting with a taxi driver and asked him if he was a "lao beijing ren" (old Beijinger). He replied that he was, but then […]
A Chocolate World
The LG Company has recently come out with a cell phone brand called ‘Chocolate.” I became aware of this a few months ago when I started to spot huge billboard ads that said I CHOCOLATE YOU!’ What a great line! Chocolate as a verb! Now there’s a term that I, the self-appointed President of the […]
Sigh
As I was walking up the alleyway to my apartment building after work this evening, I spotted a darling little girl, maybe 3 years old riding her tricyle with grandpa trailing behind her. As I looked at her and smiled, she looked up at me with big eyes and said at the top of here […]
Got Flies?
Just when we thought we might have seen everything in the "Getting Ready For the Games" department, a story like this comes along. It seems there is a gentleman in Beijing who is doing his part to clean up the city for the Olympics by buying flies. He hangs out near the entrance to a […]
Avoid Fatting Down
On the way out and back to Kashgar last weekend I had to make connections in the airport at Urumqi, capital of Xinjiang Province. Flying domestically in China has its own set of unique features, but one that is particularly annoying is the lack of “interline” (or intra-line, for that matter) connecting, where you can […]
