A friend and I are leaving soon to spend the weekend in Hangzhou, a city near Shanghai. I first learned about the wonders of the city when I was studying Chinese. My textbook had a dialog that went like this: A: What is the most beautiful city in China? B: Suzhou and Hangzhou. Wanting to […]
World’s Most Spoiled Dog
I live in a fairly upscale apartment complex in Beijing. A lot of people who live here have a lot of money, and the flaunt it–I can’t keep track of the new Beemers, Hummers, and Lexus SUV’s that my neighbors collect. I, one of a few foreigners, peddle in and out on my Giant bicycle. […]
Down to the Marrow
This one falls into the category of "just when you think you've seen (or heard) it all, and there's nothing left here to shock me." Quite obviously, only fools think like that. A colleague and I wneto to our favorite neighbhorhood restaurant for lunch today. After we ordered our usual dishes — gongbao jiding (kungpao […]
Singing in the Hutong
This afternoon some friends took me to a newly opened Christian gift shop in a hutong near Xi Si. As we were inside looking at all the stuff, I spotted a cute little girl standing just outside the door singing away at the top of her lungs. I grabbed my camera and headed outside, to […]
A Chinese Phelps
From The Foreign Expert website comes this translation of a very funny post floating around on the Chinese internet. It's called "If Phelps were a Chinese Athlete…" If Phelps is a Chinese athlete, and as a Chinese wins the magic 8 gold medals in the Olympic Games, then what will happen? First, the threshold of […]
If You Don’t Hear from Me for Awhile….
…I will be glued to my computer wading through some LIFE Magazine’s entire collection of China photos, that have recently been made available through the Google Image search. Old pictures of Beijing. Old pictures of Shanghai. Old pictures of a China that no longer exists. It’s just too much for this history and photography buff […]
