In the 1990s, two cultures crossed paths as they travelled to opposite ends of the earth. In 1993, specifically, nine rappers from New York would release their first album, launching their careers as one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed hip hop groups of all time. The Wu Tang Clan (named [...]
One of my more embarrassing moments as a student of Chinese came not here in China but back in Maine in the fall of 1998, when I returned from a year in Beijing to the University of Maine at Farmington along with a teacher from the Chinese department of Beijing University of Technology. As I’d [...]
When spring rolls around in Beijing, it means more than just the appearance of green after months of grey and early darkness, more than singing birds and flowers and the occasional rain shower. To old school Beijinger’s, springtime means the beginning of park time, and Beijing’s many parks begin to show signs of life after [...]
Things that China lacks: oil, a decent network of highways, a quality control system for food and drugs, clean air in its cities. One thing that China absolutely does not lack: people. Everywhere you go in China, with the exception of some of the more sparsely populated Western provinces, you can’t help but feel surrounded [...]
The first thing you learn: nobody’s even heard of General Tsao’s chicken. Negative on the tangerine chicken as well, and the shrimp lo mein is nowhere to be found. The good news is, there’s mooshu pork a plenty, but if you’re going to survive for very long, you’d better have some idea of what [...]
When I first started coming to China and getting involved speaking Chinese on a daily basis, I was often confronted with a situation in which I thought I knew what was being said because I understood each of the words used. It’s an easy approach if you’re translating directly, but direct translation has its [...]
More than any other city in any other country on earth, Beijing is a bicycle town. It is home to more than 10 million bikes and is accommodating to its bikers. Every road has a wide, sometimes very wide, bicycle lane on each side, and Beijingers make sure that the space is used. [...]
It’s 6:30am when Wang Zhifeng steps out of his 14th floor 1200 RMB/month apartment in the Haidian district , waving goodbye to his wife as he closes the door behind him and lighting up a Double Happiness cigarette on the way to the elevator, elbowing-grabbing his fruit jar of green tea to do so. [...]
At first glance, it’s the picture of a certain ideal: a teacher standing at the head of a classroom with a piece of chalk in one hand, the students listening attentively and hanging on the teacher’s every word. The students are quiet and reasonably well behaved, repeat like a chorus what the teacher asks them [...]
“Sooner or later everyone sits down to a banquet of consequences.”
- Robert Louis Stevenson
The art of the business deal here in China goes one step further than the boardroom, and it’s in the arena of the banquet hall that many a deal can be made or unmade. A banquet is a way of bestowing respect [...]
