I was just talking with my reporter friend from Chengdu and we started talking about the Olympics, specifically the huge PR campaign.  I didn't know these little "jing-jings" were officially dedicated to each character or that they were called the "5 Friendlies."  The cutesiness of these mascots actually feeds my constant conviction that most ( Read more... )

One thing that most Chinese people with foreign friends find is that they love to complain about China.  Usually these are small things that everyone can agree on - the bus is always late, the weather is too hot, the lines are too long.  Occasionally, however, you’ll run into westerners who take issue with the government, the party, or Chinese ( Read more... )

My letters of invitation finally came in the mail today, which is a relief.  I can now get my visa.  Unfortunately, upon review of the standards for applying for said visa the Chinese government, in its infinite wisdom, has decided that it will not accept visa applications that are mailed directly to the embassy / consulate and will only take those ( Read more... )

I received this email from a friend of mine the other day.  He is an ex-marine, Harvard grad who is currently teaching in China.  Met him my first year over - intelligent, acute, loves China and a great person - what I picture P.J. Ivanhoe to be like.  He wanted to talk about Confucianism:

His letter (used with permission):

Glad you got a Chinese ( Read more... )

Glad they have that little counter there on my Chinese blog.  Not bad turn out for a random introduction of myself.  Then again, in a country with more internet users than the entire population of the US, percentage wise 32 ain't that high, but then again I always was terrible at math.  It almost feels like I have a little following - and we're ( Read more... )

Well, I've started a real Chinese blog (the one I'm always referring to is actually just a language learning site).  You can go see it here!  Actually, I'm going to have bar
( Read more... )

I got an email from one of my former students today.  She was a good friend of my and we were bordering on being close (that's a close friendship, y'all), though for some reason there just wasn't enough mutual interest or connectivity to move beyond teacher-student relationship to friend-friend relationship.  That's how I viewed things until I got ( Read more... )

The last few nights have been...processing.  (verbs can be adjectives, right?)

I've been building up my return to China in my mind quite a bit, with my vacation in Taiwan melding into my return to the mainland.  The wonders of Taiwan are tending to supercede what I'm sure the mainland will be like.

Taiwan, I believe, will be great: Great friends, ( Read more... )

Mostly due to the good reception by my sister of faked photographs of myself I decided to pull the stunt again when I got some calls over at my Chinese blog to provide photographs of myself.  While I no longer have the excuse of not having a digital camera, I do have the excuse of not having taken any pictures of myself yet.  So, since I'm the ( Read more... )

I was reading a response about the 64 Movement in which the author states that the resulting "resolution" to the problem allowed the CCP to purge all the liberals from the party and ultimately harmed the evolution of freedoms in China.  This sounded eerily familiar - purging the liberals to solve problems that were originally caused by too much ( Read more... )