Category: Life in Beijing

So I’ll break the weeks-long silence on our blog by talking about the thing people are always talking about: the weather. At the moment we are emerging from the bone-dry Beijing winter into the gusty, dusty Beijing spring. Spring is a very windy time here, and for the past few days the cracks in our… Continue reading Everyone knows it’s windy

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)

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

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

Working in Beijing when you don’t speak Chinese isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.