For the laowai who likes movies, there are certainly a number of offerings available this month to tempt you out to the movie theater instead of staying at home and watching pirated DVDs. While Nicki has just reviewed the “Flowers of War” with its serious historical plot line involving things few of us really want …Read More
Today, for my all-to-close-to-Christmas birthday, my hubby took me on a date. We saw the new and somewhat controversial Zhang Yi Mou directed “The Flowers of War,” starring Christian Bale. For those of you who haven’t been following the controversy involving Mr. Bale, the movie is a period piece set during 1937’s Rape of Nanjing. …Read More
I’m a huge bibliophile. When I moved to China in 2005, half my luggage weight allotment went to books. I knew that, living in Hainan, I probably wouldn’t have access to the kind of foreign language (i.e. English) bookstores you can find in Beijing or Shanghai. So I brought my own. Of course I could …Read More
If you’re planning a trip, or living in China, chances are you own a Lonely Planet guidebook. In the past, using LP showed the world you were young and crazy, and would rather stick toothpicks in your eyes than hit up the main tourists spots with all the other blue-hairs. (Or as others saw you: …Read More
I realize I’m about a decade late posting a review of Peter Hessler’s River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze, but it was only recently that I finally took the time to read it. I can’t be certain why it took me so long to pick up Hessler’s seminal work, but I think it was …Read More
I first heard of MandMX.com back about a year and a half ago when they featured Lost Laowai in a comic of theirs. So when Magnus, the “M” of MandMX, contacted me to let me know they’d compiled their large collection of bilingual, China-themed comics into a new book, I was excited to get my …Read More
A little down recently about my regular VPN’s lackluster speed, I started testing out a new service called ibVPN (Invisible Browsing VPN) and am decently happy with the results/ease of use. The service is strictly PPTP and not SSL, which I suppose is both a pro and a con. From my experience PPTP is faster …Read More
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 …Read More
One of my favourite Chinese sites, Neocha, has teamed up with the very talented producer Dave Liang, of The Shanghai Restoration Project, and created eXpo, a 10-track collection of Chinese electronic music that goes on sale today. I generally accredit Neocha as the source of reversing my opinion about creativity in China. The site is …Read More
I spent all of last weekend in Shanghai with my girlfriend, with two main purposes: to do some shopping for summer clothes; and to visit Shanghai Zoo, as my girlfriend has never seen any wild animals in the flesh, despite being quite expert on them from being addicted to CCTV-10’s nature shows and BBC natural …Read More
I ran across an article at Found in China entitled Chai Ling: then and now, which made mention of Philip J Cunningham, author of a new book called Tiananmen Moon. Over the years I’ve seen an article here or there about Cunningham, but had no idea he was so intimately involved in the protest, being …Read More
When I started writing a blog, I didn’t anticipate that I would end up reviewing a Chinese TV series filmed in the early 1990’s. The reason I decided to write the review is that, like a lot of expats living in China, I had viewed a lot of homegrown TV with a kind of resigned …Read More
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