Popular Beijing-based blog Beijing Cream has just released the inaugural episode of The Creamcast, a weekly podcast hosted by John Artman and The Good Doctor.
The podcast's first guest is long-time China expat Frank Yu, founder of Chinese start-up Kwestr. The format is very much unstructured and conversational, and will remind most of a typical night out with a group of foreigners shooting the shit about living in…
I’m trying to be a good citizen or resident or businesswoman or whatever you want to call me.
I figure I use the things that tax money buys. I use the roads and the street lights at night. I use the parks and the heavily subsidized public transportation.
So I figure it's only right that I ought to pay taxes.
Since avoiding paying taxes remains significantly easier than the act of actually paying taxes, I pre…
There's always "one more thing" that wasn't mentioned the first time around.
I'm in the middle of the registration process for a client's company.
Because I know the process, and because the sole reason for hiring my personal assistant Jimmy was to have someone who stands in lines, things are going much much faster for him than when I did the registration on my own -- but things aren't exactly going smoothly.
…
After my last post for Lost Laowai, where I expressed my annoyance with the irritating and pointless public announcements in Chinese public transport, I will now move on to another aspect of life in China which I find irritating: the tendency of the Chinese to address foreigners in English even when it would be easier for both to speak Chinese.
This particular irritation is perhaps not shared by all the foreig…
Over the years I've lived in China, certain aspects of life here have begun to bother me more and more. I think it's normal. Every long term expat has their pet peeves about China. There is one particular thing which began to irritate me when I had been living in China for around three years, and has bothered me ever since. I am talking about the constant noise pollution you suffer when you take any means of publ…
Time may provide you with the skills to manage Bad China Days, but there is no cure.
I'm finally home from an extremely stressful morning downtown. I had to head to the PSB to get my visa sorted out. Surprisingly this was not where the stress came in. With the exception of a small delay due to the new girl behind the desk entering something wrong and having to ask her supervisor how to do everything, the whole vis…
When I started at a four-year college in 1998, I didn't think it the least little bit odd that the schedule included in my orientation package already had the date of my graduation ceremony listed. Considering that family and friends would be traveling from out of town and would need to plan in advance, this made perfect sense to me. Why would it be any other way?
Fast forward to late September of 2002 and I was…
Seventy six trombones led the big parade in the Music Man. One hundred and ten cornets were following right behind. All of them were delivered by the Wells Fargo man. It's a shame that Wells Fargo doesn't have their act together as well as they did back in River City. Maybe if they did, my parents would still have access to their bank account. Of course "parents" starts with P and that rhymes with T and that stan…
A recent submission over at the Hao Hao Report has stirred up a bit of conversation about China's One-Child Policy (OCP) and specifically an American organization that strongly opposes it.
For most of my life the OCP debate was completely absent in my daily dialog. I don't know that I ever gave it a moment's thought before coming to China. Living here though, and watching as China-centric headlines increasingly fi…
I've given some thought to doing an MA in TESOL. After all, I taught it in China, liked it, so why not earn 5,000 RMB a month instead of a mere 4800?
All I need is a golden ticket.
Luckily, I found one, via a Google ad on a message board. Upon seeing the heading, Master's in TESOL, I immediately clicked through to find a big banner full of jolly students on a pristine campus that has clearly gone beyond the cal…
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