So here is the inaugural edition of of “Weird Wednesdays in China“, a wacky bi-weekly roundup of strange news in China. Some of it will be timely, all of it will be timeless. On order this week, crabs, pigs, chains embedded in arms and helpful directions from Google maps.Read More
“Freshman?” Jack said. “The first I taught freshman English, all the girls came up to me after class and asked if they could come home and fuck me.”
…and we never had another group dinner.Read More
Recent chatter on the sinoblogosphere has brought to my attention a rivalry of which I’d previously been unaware. Now living in Shanghai, I am all to familiar with the idea that there are two parts of China, namely Shanghai and then the countryside. And I also know there’s much talk about whether Beijing or Shanghai …Read More
Welcome back one and all to the October edition of Fact or Fiction. Those of you who read any or all of the last ten will know, every edition I will have a guest and we will discuss a few of the big issues in China of the day. Every answer will have a “Fact†or a “Fiction†and some justification to go along with it.
My guest today, Sara is a fellow inhabitant of the great city of the Five Ram City. Sara Jaaksola always had a dream about visiting China. But only February 2010 she found the way to make it true and is now enjoyning her life in Guangzhou. In her blog Living A Dream In China, www.sarajaaksola.com, she writes about her life, experiences and studies in this amazing country.
In less than 2 weeks Guangzhou plays host to the Asian Games. Given we both have front row seats to the construction and hype, it seems like a pretty logical talking point. So, join us today for Fact or Fiction XI: Let the Games Begin!!!Read More
A great capture from the very talented Poland-born, Chengdu-based photographer Michal Pachniewski. In his words: “I was just about to take the picture when she stopped me for a second. She took of her red hat, combed her hair and posed for me. Sweet moment.”Read More
Seven years of my life are gone. Looking back, it doesn’t seem that long, but I guess it was a long time. I always find myself nagged by a single, ugly feeling: that I wasted my time. That no matter what I did, I never used it wisely enough. For all the stress my rebirth in China brought, there was a lot it did away with. I had time plenty to write a novel, to learn a programming language, hell to learn a real language. What did I do?
The ‘what ifs’, those are the worst feelings. Those are the ones that haunt you. I read somewhere that you will regret your virtues more than your vices. I can’t say that I disagree with that. There are things I did when I was younger that I felt horrible about at the time, but as I grow older, I don’t feel so bad anymore. Maybe it’s the positive you can draw out of even the worst situations…or hell, maybe it is just getting older. Wondering what more you could have done.
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I first heard of MandMX.com back about a year and a half ago when they featured Lost Laowai in a comic of theirs. So when Magnus, the “M” of MandMX, contacted me to let me know they’d compiled their large collection of bilingual, China-themed comics into a new book, I was excited to get my …Read More
If you’re wondering why Japanese business in your neighbourhood have broken windows, or why that mob just marched by shouting anti-Japan slogans and you’ve not got the foggiest idea what the hell the “Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands” dispute is all about, Kyle, aka The Manchurian Candidate, does a damn fine job of laying it all out here. …Read More
Lost Laowai’s sister site, the Hao Hao Report, hit a rather remarkable (to me at least) milestone today — 10,000 submitted articles. For a site that depends entirely on member-submitted content, I find that fan-frigin-tastic. It truly would not have been possible without the amazing dedication of its motley membership, and so before I go …Read More
Those first few years were the worst. You enter a period in your life where you can’t say for sure what you’re doing or even who you are. Each day the same as the last, they blur together like a flipbook. You can only see flashes of what you did, what you were. Little isolated fragments that do nothing to illustrate what happened and everything to add to the mystery.
“Why do you come to China?”, my students ask me, which is pretty much “What’s a nice laowai like you doing in a place like this?”. Well…I suppose I came here for a better life. I suppose. It’s hard to say. It’s hard to know what I was thinking. Look at it like this: I was treading water in the middle of the ocean, waiting for a boat to come by.
China just happened to be the first.
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I was randomly browsing the Apple App Store and came across “China Trip Planner“. The app is put out by the state-run China Radio International (CRI), one of China’s oldest media institutions. By its own words, “It is widely acknowledged that the CRI English Service provides the world with one of the most efficient and …Read More
Today is one of the days of the year that I’m most filled with homesickness. It’s a day that my whole family gathers with one solitary purpose: gluttony. Today is Thanksgiving in the Northern Section of North America. The holiday today of course tends to be about eating, but it is deeply rooted in being …Read More
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