Just a quick note to let everyone know that the Lost Laowai blog‘s address has changed ever so slightly. Though all the old links and feed will be automatically redirected, should you wish to update your bookmarks and RSS readers, the new addresses are: http://www.lostlaowai.com/blog http://www.lostlaowai.com/blog/feed/rss UPDATE: http://www.lostlaowai.com/blog/feed Again, all links should automatically redirect even [...]
Archive for 2008
What is melamine? Is it in my milk?
Every few months the media seems to dig up a new quality control issue with Chinese products. Many of these are largely just typical media fear factoring, but the recent “melamine in milk” debacle is very real and very wide-spanning. If you’re like me, you probably gasped in horror when it was reported that all [...]
The Faith of the Fooled
In the people of the United-States of America and the People’s Republic of China we have two examples of a citizenry brazenly immune to the betrayals visited upon them by their political leaders. After 8 years of Bush chaos, death and destruction, a Republican candidate still stands a good chance of seceding him at the [...]
US Dept of Commerce: Sichuan Earthquake Relief Webinar
The US Department of Commerce is hosting a free webinar to discuss Sichuan earthquake reconstruction activities and how American businesses can best help China rebuild. “Learn about current recovery and reconstruction priorities, how architecture, construction and engineering firms can best approach the market, and how a Design Team is making headway in helping China Rebuild [...]
Chinese Tourists accidentally buy 600lb chunk of Nuclear Waste
Because Chinese can be Lost Laowai too, can’t they?
Three men – one of whom is surnamed Liu, while the other two are surnamed Wang – purchased a glittering “treasure” for $2,000 in Kyrgyzstan. They brought it back to Xinjiang, hoping to make a fortune by selling it.
Because they knew nothing about the 274-kg stone, they sliced off a piece to bring to Beijing for expert analysis last January.
Last September, geologists at Tsinghua University concluded it was depleted uranium and called police.
Prosecutors in Aksu decided against arresting the men, because they obviously had no idea what they had purchased. The men have undergone medical examinations and appear to be in good health. China Daily via Digg.com
Mind Sports coming to Beijing
Photo by Shyald As the de facto editorial desk for Lost Laowai, I tend to get a lot of e-mail touting all the amazing things that “YOUR READERS WANT TO KNOW ABOUT”. I, perhaps overly liberally, trash the majority of them. However, having just received notice that the 1st World Mind Sports Games is coming [...]
Photo of the Week: People of the Island
I don’t usually pick the newest submission to the Lost Laowai Flickr Group as the photo of the week, as there’s always a backlog of great photos I like to pull from – however I couldn’t resist this stunning shot of a small inhabited island in Hunan by Douglas M. Paine/Alphafish
And it’s off to school I go
My second year of Chinese studies in China is about to start, this time at a Shanghai university. The first day of the semester consists of a placement test. All of us new exchange student wait outside the classroom, clutching our newly sharpened pencils and feeling like we did on our very first school day. [...]
Inflation of Egos in Taxis
Nothing boosts one’s ego in the early days of learning Chinese as conversations with taxi drivers. I’m sure we all have had this experience; you step into a cab and spit out your address (carefully memorized, of course), the cabbie subsequently nods and tells you how good your Chinese is. A bit later, once you [...]
Does China Know How to Balance Its Culture History with Progress?
Yesterday I decided to take a walk to the redeveloped portion of Shanghai’s Wujiang Lu — one of Shanghai’s famous food streets. I was surprised at the new portion of the road. It was clean and wide. There were shopping malls on either side connected by walkways over the street. As nice as it was [...]
