The last you heard from me (well, before my Forrest Gump meditation), it was March 2011 and I was reveling in handcrafted cheese. What happened to the rest of 2011? Was I stuck in some sort of lactose-induced coma? I guess you could say my life was feeling pretty normal, too mundane. Kind of like [...]
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Please excuse me, I’m feeling a little bit sorry for myself. I wrote a post yesterday about all the things I love about Beijing, but today I can’t seem to let myself post it. I’m moody. I’m wondering when exactly our lives will be totally back on track. The waiting period of the last three [...]
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I’m a little “frazzled” in my quest for decent coffee here in Linyi. Here the results of a mini-tasteoff: Instant Coffee Taste-Off! Outside of the US & Canada, instant coffee is ubiquitous, and especially in Asia, more common than brewed! What’s an espresso drinker to do? As you might have figured from my constant complaining, [...]
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Ginger Is Your Friend If Mao could see the consumer culture that has swept his land, I’m sure he would have flipped over in his grave a few hundred times (and had he actually been buried.) Instead, he lies cold and waxy in a huge mausoleum in Tiananmen Square. I’ve seen him. It was not [...]
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Monday Mélange Sometimes I wish I could scream it out loud During my years as a foreigner in China, I’ve experienced endless amounts of staring. In my little city of Linyi, many of the locals have never met a foreigner before, so when they see me in the street, they can’t help but stare. Here [...]
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China Reflections: The Language Issue This is really embarrassing to admit, but after four years in China I still speak like a toddler. And not even a really smart toddler. My Mandarin skills are deplorable. Sure, I get by and by that I mean I can tell a taxi driver where to go, answer questions [...]
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China Reflections I’m back in Linyi and to be perfectly honest, I am suffering from some serious post-vacation blahs. I am not at all sure how I feel about being back in China. Or more specifically, Linyi. This little city is feeling just a little bit too little these days. September 1st was the fourth [...]
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Today was a good day. I’ve been having lots of bad China days recently, probably because it’s hot and I’m ready for a vacation. Anyway, China can seem so wonderful on the good days, so I’ll take as many as I can get. This one started off well. The weather was rainy and the visibility [...]
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Last month I was forced to renew my passport. This is a pretty momentous event in the life of an expat. Our passport is our most treasured and protected document. With it, we can travel and live legally in our chosen expat domain. Without it, we are naked in expat purgatory, trapped, reliant on our [...]
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Okay, I know I am sometimes lukewarm on China, but nothing makes the heart grow fonder than absence, and I have been gone for a month. Plus, the return to China took so long that I had plenty of time to ponder and change my attitude towards being back, towards the locals and towards China [...]
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I'm an American expat living on the fringe of Chinese society. Thanks to a lifetime spent moving around, I often feel like an outsider. This blog explores life in Beijing, China, the occasional aviation topic, expat issues, random travel experiences and interesting things I see, read and hear. If you want to know more about my latest hobby, visit Sewing on the Fringe, where I blog about learning to sew in Beijing. And for daily documentation of Beijing's ever changing air quality, visit My Beijing Window. And, yes, I do wear my santa hat year-round. ;)
