On my last day in Shenzhen, I woke up early and sorted through my things. I cleared my desk of the things I had made ready for the single day and ran a final check through my suitcases. Even though I was leaving them here for a few days, I wanted all to [...]
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Things are winding down; a year has come to an end so quickly. I’m in the middle of a gradual moving process that includes gathering travel documents and saying goodbyes, both formal and informal – last week there was a banquet with the English department and the school principal for me, and I’ve bought [...] I was thinking again the other day about coming here, and whether I accomplished what I thought I might, or if I even had figured out what that was to begin with. I realized that sometimes when you look into a dark corner, you don’t always necessarily find out what’s there. Sometimes you just find [...] My dad sent me a video interview that Charlie Rose did of Lee Kuan Yew, the Singaporean statesman. Charlie Rose: I met a Chinese delegation recently who’s here, in the last couple of weeks, and spoke to a very important member of the government – not the highest level, but still highly important – and asked [...] Yesterday I went with Niko to get measured for a suit. We wound around the Dongmen markets for such a long time that I got confused; hopefully I’ll be able to find the place again on my own. Dongmen is a crazy place; my Hong Kong aunt had warned my mother that I [...] In the Malaysia post I talked about China’s racial homogeneity and how it is a far more definitive element of the Chinese identity than most people realize. After 6000 years of inexorably assimilating minority tribes and even conquering outsiders (the Mongols and Manchurians) into the Han culture, the Children of the Yellow Emperor all harbor [...] Only thirty minutes ago, Dad emailed me and my brother to tell us that he and Mom had been with Suzanne when she passed away an hour earlier. What had I been doing while they were sitting by her hospital bed? Chatting with a friend on the Internet, then putting my laptop into [...] Five weeks ago, my co-workers started asking me where I would go for the Lunar New Year vacation. “Will you go back to America to celebrate with your family?” they asked. “Uh, no, I’m going to Fuzhou to see my grandmother,” I replied. “Ah,” they all nodded appreciatively. Wait, I wanted to clarify, [...] Returned from Fuzhou yesterday. Am going to Malaysia tomorrow. Both were/will be with family. It’s travel, so I haven’t been able to update this like I wanted to, but I promise that soon I’ll provide at least some kind of relative background on these two places and their significance. It’s almost the (lunar) [...] Having two weeks off before I begin traveling around China to see family is nice in that without morning classes to worry about I can get out of my corner of Shenzhen and make sure I’ve actually become familiar with this place and how it works. They say Shenzhen doesn’t have “culture,” but surely [...] |
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