I signed up for a SPA package. It’s the mistake that keeps on tormenting me. Click to read Part I and Part II. Fast forward another four months. I’ve been going to my SPA for seven months now, through the winter and into the beginning of spring. Now, I usually try to go once a […]
I signed up for a SPA package. It’s the mistake that keeps on tormenting me. Read how I got myself into this mess here. When I went to get my free back massage, my SPA lady was nowhere to be found. Unfortunately, I couldn’t ask for her because I didn’t get her name when she […]
In my post on House of Cards, I mentioned that there was very little censorship of foreign TV shows in China; licensed websites have most shows people want to watch from back home available for streaming as soon as they air. It seems that officials at the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and […]
Every laowai in China makes a few mistakes here that he will regret forever. I’m not talking about major things like not learning enough Chinese or not immersing oneself in the culture enough — just daily decisions we wish we hadn’t gotten ourselves into. Mine is when I signed up to join a SPA. And […]
The other day, a major state-owned media outlet published an opinion piece that basically was just a gleeful trashing of Ambassador Gary Locke as he departed China and his posting here. The article focused on the fact that Locke, a Chinese-American who arrived in China in 2011 to great fanfare and admiration, actually turned out […]
Every so often, a new music video for Beijing — from Shin’s One Night in Beijing, to the 2008 Olympics anthem Beijing Welcomes You, to last year’s Beijing State of Mind — crops up to showcase the culture and various lifestyles in our fair city. This latest one, by Stephy Chung, is by far my […]
So I figure by now, everyone has seen the second season of “House of Cards,” or at least enough that you know that China plays a big part in the season’s storyline (definitely more than Kate Mara did). And by big, I mean that Kevin Spacey had to deal with basically all of the issues […]
Benjamin Carlson recently made a list of five Communist Party catchphrases commonly used in writings on China. They are: Referring to China’s “century of humiliation” Crediting the government with “lifting hundreds of millions out of poverty” Needlessly referring to China’s “5,000 years of history” Calling China’s supreme leader “the president” Referring to free thinkers as […]
2014 is otherwise known as the Year of the Horse. Horses are remarkable creatures, full of symbolism and stuff, so why not act like a horse in the Year of the Horse? Edward Snowden, who “used to have a good job in the security business,”* is not like a horse. It would have been better […]
You may remember the Great Smog that kicked off 2013, an entire month of days that looked like the above picture. It was dubbed the airpocalypse after a giant cloud of smog blanketed much of northeast China and sent Beijing’s air quality index soaring to almost 800 (just a few years ago, the air monitor […]