From the FP Cities issue, two opposing views of Chinese cities: 1) They’re all the same, says Isaac Stone Fish in “Unlivable Cities”: Why are Chinese cities so monolithic? The answer lies in the country’s fractured history. In the 1930s, China was a failed state: Warlords controlled large swaths of territory, and the Japanese had […]
My last post was kind of whiny and dour, and really, I don’t despair about those things, I kind of just accept it. Stupid people are found everywhere in the world, so I hope China doesn’t come across as any worse than other places. There are certain things in my life here that I wouldn’t […]
This article in Prospect by Mark Kitto was so depressing to read, mostly because it’s dead accurate. People who come to China are largely idealists, ready to absorb an exotic, polar-opposite culture, widen their views of the world and humanity, and discover whatever it was they felt were missing in their former lives. Unfortunately for […]
Once, when I was very young (i.e., impressionable), my sister told me she had just eaten a peach with a worm in it. Not that she ate the worm or anything, but she saw it wriggling around in the peach and, I guess, ate around it. To this day, I wonder why she didn’t show […]
A couple of weekends back, we picked up a bunch of big scallions for 1 or 2 kuai. Scallions (da cong or “big onion”) here come in three sizes: regular, big and giant. The ones we got were like the big ones in the picture below (not even the giant ones!). They literally did not fit in […]
Made this a couple of weekends back: It’s a carrot cake with ginger lemon cream cheese frosting! Boyfriend once told me his favorite cake is of the carrot variety. It’s a wonder it’s taken me so long to make one, though, considering how easy they are to make and how accessible the ingredients are in […]
Blueberries, peaches, unsweetened yogurt, and just a tiny amount of honey:
I just don’t understand. We have the most medals, and we worked so hard to catch up to China on golds, and now we have and we’re still second? This isn’t over yet, China! Anyway, I gather you are all having fun with the Olympics as well. Last week, I took a brief nighttime nap […]