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(Hopefully, I’ll have pictures inserted throughout this long-ish post soon.) The first stage of cultural exchange is commonly called the “honeymoon” period, the time when baby expats get moonstruck by being in a brand spankin’ new place. But when I first got to China, I didn’t feel particularly excited. It could have been a [...] Our genealogy is a little more convoluted than it needs to be, and our last name probably can claim partial credit for that. “What, your last name is Dutch?” people repeat after I tell them. “Are you Dutch, then?” I say no and watch them flail in further confusion. It can [...] After my last class of the morning I decided to go exploring. Heck, it’s a nice sunny day and I need to get out. An easy option was to look around the Sea World area, a few miles south of my neighborhood. As all Shenzhen expats know by now, our Sea World does not [...] ‘N, to confuse you, because it could be either IN or AND. That was part of the “slang” lesson I taught today, employed for confounding purposes. A friend somewhat indirectly recommended that I watch the Bill Murray movie Lost in Translation. I knew before that it was a very well-received and critically applauded film; [...] Even though I’ve frequently visited the shopping venues right next to it, I hadn’t actually gone near Shenzhen’s Kempinski Hotel until today, when I came to find my parents who had just crossed the border from Hong Kong to Shenzhen. For American prices it’s a good deal to book, I hear. But I [...] The Los Angeles Times is the only paper that I have read which consistently runs the occasional column on Chinese and Chinese-American interest stories, and more remarkably, only about 50% of them are the Communist-demonizing insinuation pieces you usually find in American media. Today’s article was one of the other 50% and speaks of [...] One of the biggest complaints of previous Asian-American teachers in China that I have heard of is that we have a relatively difficult time securing extra-legal (to use a euphemism) employment that most other foreign teachers enjoy. That is, because of the technical restrictions on our visas, it is illegal for us to teach [...] “Of course I think it is very important for young people to know about history,” said Wang Laoshi. The four of us from the English Department were clustered together again at the lunch bench in the teacher’s canteen, and after somehow getting on the subject of family trees (”Family tree is jiapu! Say [...] My post titles are getting intentionally stranger and stranger as I think about what would most poetically capture what I want to say. I disclaimed a long time ago that this blog would be an “experimental prose testing ground,” though so far I’ve kept that largely at bay (both for coherency and intellectual property!) But [...] I just had a phone conversation with my grandma and I am psyched about it. Explication: she doesn’t speak English; I’ve never spoken much Chinese. She lives in China; I only just got here. She is the telephone grandma whose voice you come to love through the receiver of a handset, and [...] |
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