Do we have great timing, or what? Our upcoming travel to Vietnam, like our just-completed trip to Hunan, coincides with the Chinese New Year, when most people in Asia travel home for the holiday, making tickets scarce and expensive, and train and bus stations sloshing pools of black hair and sharp elbows. (Our first China… Continue reading Fireworks (updated w/ photos)
Category: Life in Beijing
Our daily existence in China, and how it’s funny, boring, frustrating, or whatever.
Ode to the Flying Pigeon
When we first moved into our apartment in Beijing, we found that the previous owner had left, among other things, a copy of a slick design magazine (Wallpaper*). Its pages were a parade of posh restaurants, oddly-shaped buildings, furniture and gadgets for the well-heeled. Amidst the catalogue of images was a feature on China’s young… Continue reading Ode to the Flying Pigeon
Unplanned ventilation on the no.10 line
Everywhere you look these days, a subway line is going in. Right now there are four operational subway lines: the number 1, an east-west line in the south-central part of the city; the number 2, a ring that follows the old second ring road; the number 13, an elevated subway that loops way up into… Continue reading Unplanned ventilation on the no.10 line
English is my business
Working in Beijing when you don’t speak Chinese isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
Requiem for the receipt store
Not far from where we live is a grocery/odds and ends/clothing store housed in a giant warehouse. Its English name is the “High Honesty Supermarket,” its Chinese name is “Chinese people’s supermarket (华人超市),” and we call it the receipt store. It is a typical Chinese department store, in that every section is overstaffed with three… Continue reading Requiem for the receipt store