Quincy Carroll’s Up to the Mountains and Down to the Countryside is, on its surface, a tale of two foreigner teachers in China — the idealistic, ‘in search of the real real China’, young Daniel; and the jaded, booze-soaked, cynical old Thomas. For anyone who has lived in China, they are characterizations of personalities we’ve all met, and perhaps been, at some point.Read More
This new collection from Signal 8 Press brings together 26 stories from the lives of expat women living in Asia. Being an expat woman living in Asia myself, I jumped at the chance to read and review it.Read More
Telling me I don’t know China is a big claim, and I have to admit my long-term laowai ego caused me to take a serious pause before digging into this book — one of the initial offerings from new expat-run Taiwan-based publisher Camphor Press.
My doubts quickly abated as You Don’t Know China deftly dispelled several misconceptions I had long carried with me. Hubris in check, I found myself thoroughly enjoying John Ross’ witty and well-researched collection of mythbusting the hyperbole surrounding China’s present and past.Read More
The editor and author dishes on the behind-the-scenes decisions and drama that went into producing Unsavory Elements: Stories of foreigners on the loose in China.Read More
Having grown up in Canada’s largest wine region, and spent a fair amount of time living in its second largest; I’ve always been surrounded by it. However, the culture that revolves around wine is never something I’ve found terribly interesting. The pomp of the industry, and the intrinsic status of being “in it” that has been carefully fermented, bottled and sold has always sort of turned me off.Read More
“Living with Dead Hearts”, a documentary exploring child abduction in China, isn’t a pretty story, but it is an imperative one. The independent film, released this week, explores the heartrending topic of children being kidnapped and sold into slavery, sex or simply to another family.Read More
I was pretty eager to sit down and watch “Seeking Asian Female“, Debbie Lam’s new documentary exploring ‘Yellow Fever’. I’ve always been a bit skeptical about the whole Asian fetish thing, and, admittedly, a bit defensive about it — my wife is Asian and I’m Caucasian. I suppose the thing that gets my back up …Read More
It was my intention to sit down and write a review of “The Man with the Iron Fists” this week. I just watched it a couple nights ago, and had a lot to say about it. Well, enough to fill a few paragraphs here. I was going to cry foul my disappointment at what RZA …Read More
This week FluentU (who changed their name from Fluent Fix – which personally, I liked a bit more) announced that they now have over 300 videos available for Chinese study on their site. 308, at the moment actually, and more all the time. Congratulations to the FluentU team on all that hard work! But what’s …Read More
Truthfully, I didn’t know what to expect when I hit play on Dayyan Eng’s latest film, Inseparable. A look at the cover had me curious, a look at the cast had me interested and a look at its location had me sold. But, if you’re expecting Inseparable to be Kick-Ass, it isn’t. If you’re expecting …Read More
I started writing a review of Leslie T. Chang’s “Factory Girls” several months ago when I first finished the book. Embarrassingly my attraction to shiny objects and bits of ribbon had shuffled the unfinished post into what was surely eternal-draftdom, until I happened across it this morning while doing some housekeeping here on Lost Laowai. …Read More
I’m going to assume that most of the readers of Lost Laowai are the kind of people who bother to run VPNs and the kind of people who follow the China blogosphere. If so, they may have seen Troy Parfitt’s “Why China Will Never Rule the World” coming up again and again. Peking Duck, Seeing …Read More
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