Seventy six trombones led the big parade in the Music Man. One hundred and ten cornets were following right behind. All of them were delivered by the Wells Fargo man. It’s a shame that Wells Fargo doesn’t have their act together as well as they did back in River City. Maybe if they did, my …Read More
I find it unlikely that there could be a foreigner in China that doesn’t know the name Dashan, and there’s certainly no Canadians unaware of the mystical Big Mountain of Chinese. 大山 comparisons, jokes and CCTV9 Chinese lessons have been a formative staple over the course of my time in China. This past November the …Read More
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
It’s already mid-December and although we live in China, Christmas decorations have gone up around town and the local Carrefour and RT-Mart are playing Christmas music. Christmas is a time when many people  like to give gifts to friends and family, but for expats in China it can be difficult to send gifts to whatever …Read More
A recent submission over at the Hao Hao Report has stirred up a bit of conversation about China’s One-Child Policy (OCP) and specifically an American organization that strongly opposes it. For most of my life the OCP debate was completely absent in my daily dialog. I don’t know that I ever gave it a moment’s …Read More
I’ve given some thought to doing an MA in TESOL. After all, I taught it in China, liked it, so why not earn 5,000 RMB a month instead of a mere 4800? All I need is a golden ticket. Luckily, I found one, via a Google ad on a message board. Upon seeing the heading, …Read More
iLook China recently ran a guest post by Lionel Carver (no idea if that’s a pseudonym or not), which details the writer’s experience being a guest of the government in a Chinese jail. Subtitled with “A Cautionary Tale for Expats in China“, I was curious to read both what Carver endured and, perhaps most voyeuristically, …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’m a huge bibliophile. When I moved to China in 2005, half my luggage weight allotment went to books. I knew that, living in Hainan, I probably wouldn’t have access to the kind of foreign language (i.e. English) bookstores you can find in Beijing or Shanghai. So I brought my own. Of course I could …Read More
Nearly a year ago I posted about a documentary film being made by ChinaGeek‘s founder (and one-time Lost Laowai contributor), Charlie Custer. The film, now titled Living With Dead Hearts, explores the issue of kidnapped children in China and how it affects the parents, the children and the whole community. And it needs your help …Read More
I’ve shared more than one bone-head foreigner story on here, so it’s a nice change to read a story of the opposite happening. Thursday afternoon, upon seeing a woman drowning (allegedly an attempted suicide) in Hangzhou’s West Lake, a 30-something American tourist wasted little time jumping into the famous lake and swimming to the rescue.Read More
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