China has called up its first black athlete in the form of 19-year-old Ding Hui, who is in fact mixed-race. The ace volleyball player (pictured, below right) has a Chinese mother and a South African father, and speaks only Putonghua (Mandarin Chinese) and Hangzhouhua (the dialect of his home city, Hangzhou). It will be good [...]
China Posts
Zheng Jie’s Wimbledon Win Gives China Reason to Cheer
I love tennis: watching and playing. What with queueing with the common people overnight twice to get my tickets, fond, overpriced strawberry & cream memories of posh debenture holders drinking champagne and dozing in their seats, oh, and the tennis, Wimbledon necessarily remains my most eagerly anticipated annual sporting event. Forget football, it’s those long [...]
A Modest Proposal
I first became aware of the enormous language gap in China three weeks into my first year, when I taught English at a public high school in northern Jiangsu. One afternoon, feeling slightly homesick, I hopped into a taxi with a simple mission: to go to McDonalds. Being completely unable to speak Chinese at that [...]
University ESL Teaching: What you should be asking about!
Teaching ESL at a university in China is a good gig: low hours, long holidays, weekends and more than enough money to survive on. If you’ve chosen this route you’ll find that most universities (and agents on their behalf) are very happy to offer basic terms, conditions and vague information to hurry you through signing [...]
Eager? Or Just Inappropriate?
The scene should be familiar to all who have lived in China for awhile: You’re out at a cafe or bar with a group of friends, having a beer and a few laughs (or is that a few beers and a laugh?). A Chinese man, or woman, approaches your table and asks to speak. He [...]
Space Invaders
With a U.S. ailing spy satellite being put out of its misery two days ago (Feb. 20th, 07:26 PST) by the U.S. Navy, comes a new source of confrontation between the U.S. and China, just a matter of a few days since Steven Spielberg resigned as an artistic director of the Beijing Olympics in protest [...]
