A great mystery here in the Middle Kingdom is the Chinese love affair with Kenny G, the bushy-haired soprano sax player, who anchors the "smooth jazz" genre of music. Kenny G music blaring out of stores, or wafting through hotel lobbies is as ubiquitous here as chopsticks and dumplings (OK, so I exaggerate, but only […]
Smoke!
Tonight as I was riding home on my bicycle, I noticed the air smelled of smoke. When I got home I checked the Yahoo! weather for Beijing (I need to know how many layers of clothes to wear tomorrow), and, under "current conditions," it said, simply, SMOKE. This is the only city I know of […]
Beijing Manners
China’s main English language newspaper, the China Daily published a story last week on the urgent attention that the city government and Olympic Organizing Committee are paying to the manners (or lack thereof) of Beijingers. Here’s how the article starts out: In addition to grand concrete venues for the 29th Olympic Games, Beijing is busy […]
Xinshou
A friend of mine recently bought a new car. Yesterday she called me up and asked if I wanted to join her and her husband to go antique furniture shopping. Well, that’s something I never pass up, so I said sure. We arranged for a place for her to pick me up and she told […]
Nai Nai Hao
Recently while in a nearby park with a friend, we saw two very cute little kids being pushed by their grannies in strollers. We stopped and chatted, and I said ni hao (hello) to the kids. One of the grandmothers smiled and prompted the kids, saying, shuo nai nai hao, whereupon my friend broke into […]
Wear More Clothes
The day before I left for Kashgar I made a phone call to the Northwest Airlines office in Beijing to make a change on my ticket home for Thanksgiving. I had called the day before to ask some questions and had talked to a very nice young man who had been very helpful. I told […]
