Note: This is a guest post by the good folks at the Learn Mandarin Website. They also recently interviewed me for a post on their site about effective language learning methods. Learning Mandarin Chinese can be undertaken via a wide variety of methods. Recently, we at Learn Mandarin Now spent considerable time interviewing a […]
Better Than a Sandwich
I have some friends from Beijing visiting for a couple of weeks, which is always a rip-roaring good time. One of the fun (and sometimes challenging) things is keeping them well-fed. They are not enamored with a lot of American food, so I’ve been trying to make sure they get a Chinese meal in every other […]
Friday Photo: True White
During my first year in China, one of my teammates was from California. When the weather got warm, she bought herself a bamboo chair so she could sit outside in our courtyard and work on her tan. Our students were horrified because they valued lighter skin; they couldn’t understand why she would try to make […]
A Book for Today
In light of today’s date (June 4), allow me to recommend a book: The People’s Republic of Amnesia: Tiananmen Revisited, by Louisa Lim. From the Amazon description: On June 4, 1989, People’s Liberation Army soldiers opened fire on unarmed civilians in Beijing, killing untold hundreds of people. A quarter-century later, this defining event remains buried […]
The No Smoking Dance
Nobody can launch a massive nationwide propaganda campaign like the Chinese government. Whether it is to promote an event or mobilize support in favor of a new policy pronouncement, they are in a league of their own. Today (June 1), a smoking ban goes into effect in Beijing that will outlaw smoking in all indoor public places […]
