What Peter Hessler did in his memoir River Town, Tom Carter does with China: Portrait of a People. A new wave of camera-toting expats will soon come to China hoping to follow in Carter’s footsteps.
I write this within a week of coming back to America after a year of teaching English at university in southern Hunan. While it was a wonderful experience, I was eager to get back home and move on to bigger and better…
I went to a wedding last weekend.
I'm not sure if it was a traditional wedding, if there really is such a thing among these billion grains of loose sand. I do know it took place in the bride's hometown, outside. In the summer. A Hubei summer, no less. The mosquitoes were on the hunt, as were the flies and an old man chugged by, puffing on a cigarette between deep coughs, shirtless. Caked in enough layers of sweat …
Charles at ChinaGeeks pointed me to the following video in his most recent post, "What an Idiot Foreigner Shows Us About Xenophobia and Sexism in China."
The video shows an extremely drunk foreigner stumbling down the street, having an incredibly patient cop try to help him out, exclaiming he loves China, hugging said cop, kicking at his father-in-law, falling off one of those coin-op children's rides outside a sh…
There I was, a 6-month China veteran, standing in the middle of a Beijing street, having my first ever argument with a tuk-tuk driver, while my shell-shocked parents and younger brother gaped in awe. To my credit, the argument was in Chinese. Not to my credit, my part of the argument consisted of about 3 phrases over and over: "You didn't say that." "You said 20 kuai." "I said 4 people, you said 20 kuai." Ai yo.…
Michael Steverson, better known as "Expatriate Games" in the blogsphere and on Flickr, has put together an awesome project entitled "Xin Nian Hao - 24 Hours in Liuzhou". The series of photos and accompanying stories chronicle an entire day (one photo an hour) over CNYE and into the early morning hours of the first day of the new lunar year.
The 4:35:19 AM shot was my favourite for the story that followed the s…
I really like Spring Festival. Honestly. Every year I hear the arguments about the "crazy Chinese and their crazy fireworks", but despite the noise (and limb-losing danger) I have to admit that I get a bit caught up in the season.
I suppose I've not been here long enough yet to truly understand what that holiday feeling is, certainly not to the extent my wife and her compatriots do. Being home for the Christmas se…
When people think of "Rice Chasers" the common thought is of non-Asian men chasing Asian women. In fact, it’s often believed that Asian men are the most discriminated against by white women (dating wise). No one ever really thinks about crazed non-asian girls chasing after Asian men. I guess those people have never been to an Anime (multimedia) convention. While it’s not very common now to see a laowai girl with a Ch…
For their Perspectives feature in the Expat Corner, eChinaCities asks laowai and native Chinese alike to comment on issues that affect all those who live in China. This week's question was, "Would you rather raise your children in China or abroad?" I ended up writing a much longer response than is necessary for the Perspectives feature, so I'm posting the longer version here. The final Perspectives article should …
Chinese names, to the untrained ear, may sound somewhat similar. They jumble together in a scrambled binary of Changs, Wangs, Wus and Hus. They are hard to remember, since they are all 2-to-3 segment K'NEX sets of syllables that fail to strike a strong note with western minds. Yet upon further intensive (albeit unscholarly) investigation, you will find that Chinese names, when translated word-for-word, are in fact mo…
Fěicuì
Not your typical blog post, but I hope you find it useful
Everywhere in China you can find Jade. They sell it in street corners, in subway stations, in supermarkets, and in jewelry stores. Some Jade costs as little as 1 yuan and some as much as 100k+ yuan. Whether it’s black, blue, green, yellow or white, Jade is very shiny and alluring, though it’s often a mystery to foreigners and Chinese people alike.…
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