A couple of weeks ago I saw something that I’ve been trying to make sense of ever since. Here’s what happened: I was on a bus here in Suzhou, which drew up to a set of traffic lights at an intersection. To my right, on the corner of the road, I noticed on old woman had fallen off her bicycle, and was sat in the road, unhurt, but somewhat dazed and bruised.

I’m not sure why the old lady’s accident had occurred; but since her bike was in perfect shape, and she was unhurt, I guess she had just lost balance and come down to earth with a bump. None of the passing cars stopped to help, as can be expected …

Ah, May Holiday - one of China’s shimmering Golden Week vacations. Just a quick little reminder what awaits any laowai silly enough to venture outside and catch up on travel next week.

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Anyone who’s lived in China for more than a couple weeks has likely amassed a pile of pirated DVDs.

Coming from Western countries where the prices are 15-30x more, it’s tough to throw even the worst ones away (I’ve still got my copy of Benchwarmers for Christ’s sake).

Getting them home is one of the things I’m continually asked about, and not one I have ever have a clear answer on. Though most China Post offices wont (knowingly) let you ship them out of the country, generally speaking stashing them in your luggage hasn’t traditionally been a problem.

That may be changing.

I just read via Seth Godin’s blog that the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) is using dogs to sniff …

A supporter of open-source software managed to take the spotlight away from the bazillion dollar man, Bill Gates, during the Windows creator’s visit to Beijing yesterday.

The unidentified man waited until Billy was finished congratulating some students at Beijing University, and then stormed the stage brandishing a sign stating: “Free Software, Open Source”

I saw this one first at Ya, I Yee, and read further about it in the Shanghai Daily and Associated Press accounts.

As might be guessed by this site’s use of WordPress and Joomla, and a number of other behind-the-scenes open-source projects (including …

This is just going to be a few sentences long, but I was hoping people would check out the Manchurian Candidate’s website: www.kyle.cn

It has a very interesting list of all the school killings that China has had (reported) since 2004. If you think the US is violent, check this list out.

This is something I wrote up in the summer of 2006, but have done nothing with since.

“Now you know what China is like,” the taxi driver said after he dropped me off this evening.

I dropped a friend off at her home, and as I didn’t fancy my chances at getting the last bus home (busses on the route tend to stop at around 9:30 or 10pm) I took a taxi. I live on top of a hill on the outskirts of the city, ten minutes walk to the nearest bus stop at my quickest pace, more like 20 when tired and returning home. Behind this hill is an army firing range, a cremitorium and a chicken farm.

The taxi was …

As most everyone with Internet, cable, a radio or a newspaper knows by now - there was a terrible shooting at Virginia Tech University yesterday where a man shot and killed 32 people, injuring 15 others.

What’s quickly coming to light is that the killer was very likely a 25-year-old Chinese man in the US on a student visa.

It’s interesting to me, as this morning when I first heard about the shooting, and well before anything about a Chinese connection had been released, I immediately pictured the Chinese reaction: “Yet another loony shooting people in that overly violent America.”

Everything here, media-wise at least, comes with a bit of hype-and-deflectionism. To see if my thoughts were right, I baited my …

Time and again, I find the things I enjoy most about my job have little to do with teaching and everything to do with the absurdities I confront in the classroom. I wonder sometimes if this makes me a poor educator, but I don’t linger on it. My students have no books, their teacher has no experience, the class has no goal and the university has no clue.

I have a new class on Mondays; it was thrust upon me last week by the mysterious administrators who run my English Department. I think I met some of them at a banquet in December, but they were plastered on baijiu and singing, while I was gorging on free food and avoiding …

The big news in China the past couple weeks has been about Western fast food chains (McDonald’s, KFC and Pizza Hut) underpaying their staff in China - particularly the part-timers.

The issue was sparked by accusations from China’s top trade union that McDonald’s was underpaying their employees (Reuters/China Daily), in some places by almost half, and also forcing them to work full-time hours, while only providing part-time benefits.

From Shanghaiist:
Out of the cities mentioned … the largest gap is in Zhengzhou McDonald’s, where the wage is 3.9 RMB/hour and the legal minimum wage is 7 RMB/hour. By the way, working for 3.9 …

Just a quick note to say that Lost Laowai now has its own official group on Facebook. If you’re a member of the popular social networking site, be sure to join the group of fellow lost laowai!

Come see who else is a member, put faces to names around the China blogsphere (yikes!), ask questions if you’re new to China, or post complaints if you’re not.

Lost Laowai Facebook Group