As the paparazzi of Time looks up the celebrity’s skirt of Destiny, and the banker of History robs the taxpayer of Fate, it’s time to face the fact that 2009 is less than 24 hours away. The year 2008 brought Olympic joy and horrific natural disasters, and saw the global credit crunch bite hardest in [...]
Archive for December, 2008
Disturbing Violence in Kunming
China has a well-deserved reputation for being safe, and violence directed towards foreigners is usually very rare. In the four and a half years I’ve lived here, I had never encountered abject hostility from Chinese people toward me or anyone I knew due to our laowai status. Two weeks ago, though, a violent incident occurred [...]
US-made Optima dog food killing dogs in China
American-made Optima dog food that has been imported into China is being quickly and diligently recalled due to aflatoxin contamination. If you are in China and feeding your dog Optima dry dog food – immediately stop and have your dog checked out by a vet for symptoms of liver failure (yellow/orange urine, jaundice in skin/eyes/gums, [...]
Laowai Interview: John Pasden of Sinosplice/ChinesePod
What would laowai life in China be like if it wasn’t for the plethora of fantastic blogs out there sharing knowledge, experience, humour and advice with us? Probably a whole lot more productive, but certainly a lot less entertaining and informed. It is with this in mind that we kick off a new series here [...]
Why Do We Have to Work on Sundays?
I had one thought this year when I saw China’s public holiday schedule — man we’re going to have to work a lot of Sundays this year. When I first came to China almost five and half years ago, this idea of working weekends to create a week-long holiday was one of the country’s great [...]
Photo of the Week: Taking a Break
I know we all could use one. (photo by Django Malone)
LLW on the move…
Just a quick note to let everyone know that should they be unable to reach the site over the next 24 hours it’s because we’re moving to better servers. Our servers are currently located in the US, but for whatever reason the pipe to the data centre is being squeezed when it hits its last [...]
China public holidays for 2009
CNReviews was good enough to share the official Chinese public holiday schedule for 2009 – the year of the Ox/Cow/Bull/Thing With Horns That (assuming appropriate gender) Giveth Milk. Check out the original post for more details, but the key dates are: New Year – Jan 1-2 Chinese New Year – Jan 25-30 Qingming Holiday – [...]
Help keep Sichuan warm this winter
Hong Kong-based photographer, and sometimes LLW blogger, Derrick Chang is on a mission to keep Sichuan warm this winter. Though the region is usually most associated with hot and steamy bamboo forests, when the winter months hit, much of Sichuan is very cold and rainy – a fact that is no doubt looming on the [...]
The Secret Life Of The Laowai
In a previous a blog post I complained about how Chinese textbooks aimed at foreigners seem to have a rather incorrect idea about the life of the foreign students. In these books, Ai Mi, Bi De and Da Wei are constantly discussing school, Chinese food and tourist sights. Typical foreign students’ activities such as getting [...]
