A new year and a new douche bag to add to our “Bad Laowai” category. Ryan Fedoruk, a 40-year-old former part-time English teacher from Canada, sublet about 30 apartments to more than 100 foreigners in Shanghai before taking the money and running.Read More
Because living in China didn’t feel uneasy enough, a new draft law currently under review will require any foreigners staying longer than 6 months in China to have their fingerprints taken by the Entry & Exit Bureau and kept on file. China Daily: Foreigners who stay in China for more than six months will be …Read More
I’m trying to be a good citizen or resident or businesswoman or whatever you want to call me. I figure I use the things that tax money buys. I use the roads and the street lights at night. I use the parks and the heavily subsidized public transportation. So I figure it’s only right that …Read More
I’ve taught English to two-year-olds in split bottom pants. The trick there is not letting them sit on your lap for storytime. I’ve taught English to bartenders and asked them to repeat after me. Bud…Wise…Er… I’ve taught businessmen and doctors, flight attendants and fry cooks. I’ve taught Little Emperors in large classes, I’ve taught university …Read More
We had a three day weekend and an invitation from a friend to visit his hometown of é»„æµ in ä¹ä¸œ County. By the time I’d finished teaching at five, hastily thrown a few things in a bag, forgotten my cell phone (loaded with books, podcasts, and games) on the table, and caught a cab in …Read More
I caught this video on Hao Hao Report. Basically, Vahram Diehla is a 23-year-old American who is pleading for some advice on how to quickly raise some money to get the hell out of China.
According to his blog he’s working up in Dalian as an English teacher, but the ESL racket has lost its luster and a woman on the other side of the ocean is pulling at his heart strings.
Read More
A couple years ago I wrote about how absent trust is in day-to-day living in China. With food scare after food scare, unfortunately nothing seems to be improving. So, it’s little surprise to read that Greenpeace is reporting, “Banned pesticides detected on vegetables in Tesco and other supermarkets in China.” The following sums up the …Read More
I realize I’m about a decade late posting a review of Peter Hessler’s River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze, but it was only recently that I finally took the time to read it. I can’t be certain why it took me so long to pick up Hessler’s seminal work, but I think it was …Read More
Keith, already suspicious of John, is doubly suspicious now that John missed their dinner appointment. On a rainy Friday, he wonders about John’s motives for being in China, as he implements a fresh idea into the classroom: a poetry exercise, where the students go outside, and use English to write a poem about what they …Read More
Home & garden Television (HGTV) is hunting for some Shanghai-based American expats to feature on a new international series profiling what it’s like to live abroad. HGTV Producers want to hear from fun, outgoing, enthusiastic Americans Expats who are living in Shanghai RIGHT NOW! In each episode, our host will experience Shanghai through the eyes …Read More
Two Italians, a Chinese and a Japanese walk into a hospital… This would be the start to a joke, if it didn’t end with a perforated ear drum, a smashed monitor, some dead fish and perpetuation of the stereotype that foreigners in China all view themselves as overly-entitled drunken douchebags.Read More
Our hero is John, who is wandering through life without purpose. This wandering led him to a humanities degree, then to unemployment, and finally, to the great refuge of unemployed humanities majors: ESL in China. Though Wuhan later becomes an existential swamp for John, here at the beginning, everything is new and exciting. This is …Read More
Return to Top ▲
