This is my last day in Hanoi. I liked everything except for the work and I could gripe about the weather. I really can't teach children well and the job offers I had for adults bit the big one ( Read more... )

Louis Cha is an icon of Chinese martial arts novels, and this novel apparently his masterpiece since it has been translated. The primary tension in my mind was the conflict between literary adventure logic, which would lead to the heroes winning, and historical knowledge that the Qing Dynasty would not be overthrown until the twentieth century. As ( Read more... )

I finished my MA dissertation. I think I will take up Zen meditation to keep my nerves from overwhelming me as I wait for the results ( Read more... )

“Having made an utter failure of my life, I found myself one day, in the midst of my poverty and wretchedness, thinking about the female companions of my youth. As I went over them one by one, examining and comparing them in my mind’s eye, it suddenly came over me that those slips of girls - which is all they were then - were in every way, both ( Read more... )

“Truth becomes fiction when the fiction’s true ( Read more... )

When I lived in Taizhou, there wasn’t much for an intellectual guy to do for fun. It was a boom town, which meant lots of KTV, bars, and restaurants, and I only liked the last option. The clubs and bars were all just too noisy and smoky. So once a semester I went to Nanjing and loaded up on cheap editions of Western classics and expensive ( Read more... )

It’s been nine years working in China, and now that I’m preparing for the next stage in my life, I’ve been pondering the meaning of the experience ( Read more... )

The Chinese government did a poll and found that half of Chinese wish most of their holidays would be cancelled. The things is, if there’s a holiday, Chinese (and their western employees) are required to work the weekends to make up for it. This means most people don’t actually get any more rest, and perhaps less if they feel the need to actually ( Read more... )

Funny new law passed by Beijing: if an adult doesn’t visit his or her parents “often” enough, the parents can sue their child, and the parents define “often.” The Chinese Net is all atwitter mocking the new law, and even an older man in a televised street interview made fun of it saying, “No, it shouldn’t be a law, but getting married by thirty ( Read more... )

At the company I’ve signed on to start working for in July, one of their full time teachers has gone back to America for a funeral so I’m already in the classroom subbing for him at an hourly rate. It’s a generous hourly rate, but it was a long day with students who already have me missing Nanjing University, and I’m still at NJU for ( Read more... )