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 […]
Remember that derecho that passed through Washington, D.C., last month that left 1.5 million people without power? That was a storm. Rain and winds up to 90 mph, knocked-down trees, caved-in roofs, minor flooding — not saying some of those things couldn’t have been avoided (most of all the week-long power outage), but it’s hurricane-like […]
After a reminder from James Fallows, I finally watched “Last Train Home“, a 2009 documentary by Lixin Fan that has won all sorts of awards (and is available on Netflix!). Fan follows an older couple from rural Sichuan as they work in a Guangzhou factory and try to find a way home every Spring Festival […]
It must be a universal truth that every year that I am in China, I will get some sort of random health problem. The first year I was here, I got devil eyes. Last year, I got spots. Now I have mouth sores, inside and out! From whence did they come? I don’t know, but […]
Apart from this one time when a taxi driver seemed to fall madly in love with me as he was driving me home, I don’t think any Chinese man has ever taken a fancy to me. I’ve always felt that there just wasn’t any connection there, but I didn’t know why. This list at least […]